Clip Studio Doodles

  A while ago I saw that Clip Studio was having one of its periodic sales so I bought it, installed it and mostly forgot about it.  I fired it up and thought it didn't quite have the immediate ease of use of Paint Tool Sai in terms of deploying its tools.

  This year I discovered that people sell large "Brush Packs" for art programs.  I had spent some Christmas money on some for Photoshop and then on some for Clip Studio.  Photoshop is a bit of a monster that my old computer groans a bit under so I let the license expire for it.  It didn't feel like something that natural to sketch in in any case.

  For Clip Studio I bought the Frenden super set.  I have barely explored the full range but I've found it an interesting experience.  It's been so long since I've drawn but I used the soft "pencil" brushes and then used "acrylic" to layer over the top, mimicing the way that I paint my gaming models in real life.

  These were doodles from imagination, without reference, to see if I could recall some basic anatomy and posing.

  I haven't had the confidence to really draw digitally in a long time.  I think this will be the program / tools which I use to get back into it.

Warhammer Art: A Dark Congregation

  One thing I have been striving for is the dark, crowded style of traditional Warhammer art.

  I don't just mean that exemplified by John Blanche, but also artists who came later to GW like the late Wayne England or David Gallagher. 

  Codices and rulebooks were filled with lavish illustrations which veered from ink splattered, frenetic visions to meticulous illuminations.  I attempted to do something approaching that with this picture.  I put the pencil on the paper and told myself to fill the page, even if it was just very roughly or without precision.

  I am very happy with the result, a dark congregation praising some blasphemous, forgotten God. Drawn for Khordal's topic on the Ammo Bunker forum.

Warhammer Art: Harry the Hammer

I was at a friend's house as he hosted an Oldhammer weekend, and I was enthralled with the old Warhammer sourcebooks; Realm of Chaos and Slaves to Darkness.  I'd also come across a 25th anniversary of Warhammer piece of artwork by John Blance of "Harry the Hammer".

Harry was the original Chaos Warrior on the front cover of the 1st edition of Warhammer Fantasy Battle and has had a couple of models made in the time since which follow the archetypical Chaos Warrior formula.

I thought I'd have a go at something nicely embellished and covered in skulls so I cracked out the sketchbook as my friends played 3rd edition WFB!

A Return to Life Drawing

Unfortunately, I've been away from life drawing classes for a year or two, which has left me quite rusty not just in sketching but in imaginative work.

I joined my Dad for a session on Thursday and was rather pleased by the results.

These are soft pencil pieces on A3 / A2 sized paper, so far too big to scan.  Had to take a picture of them and edit the levels in GIMP to make them a bit more presentable.

Model was a lovely lady who was a gymnast in her youth in Russia, so had a good sense of pose and positioning.

Warhammer Art

I am resolving to draw more and learn about digital art, to make that something I can pursue as a career and not just as a hobby.

To that end as I draw things, even partial illustrations like this - I will be adding them to my blog as I attempt to break out of the trappings of the amateur.


When Dark Angels were redesigned for 40k, relics were a recurring theme. They appear on the Landspeeder Vengeance, on the Nephilim fighter, on the Ravenwing Command Squad... But there is no reliquary retinue, as you sometimes see in Space Marine official art.

In the 2009 and 2014 Space Hulk re-issues, one of the Blood Angel objectives is a beautiful model of a dead marine in Terminator armour on a throne. I always thought that would be a wonderful base for a conversion of a beatified Space Marine, mummified in his armour, surrounded by chapter serfs and thralls, swinging incense and lighting black candles, providing a morale boost or a force field save to nearby rank-and-file troops.

I liked the image of a Space Marine with candles burning across the back of his armour so I quickly sketched it:

Chaos Space Marines have an aesthetic that is mutable as Tzeentch, and I think the best examples of it are found in the Forge World conversion sets and the "Dark Vengeance" Chosen models.  It's something I never quite get right but occasionally I do an ink sketch I really like:

An older Vampire Counts sketch - I had a strong mental image of a very dark, skeletal Dire Wolf,  and half decayed steeds for Black Knights:

Illustration for a BBC Radio 4 adaption of Neil Gaiman's excellent "The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains".  They hosted the pictures on their websie for a while.  Some were very simple, by school children doing a class project, others were by very talented illustrators:

Ponies!

I’ve been rather aimless in terms of finding good imaginative things to draw without objectives.  But seeing how easily even a little 10 second doodle can cheer people up has put me in the mind to try and draw things for people around me.

I have a couple of very sweet girls in my life who are fans of My Little Pony.  I thought it would be fun to draw them each a character in the style of the show.  It turns out there’s an excellent spin off comic of the cartoon with an excellent and characterful illustrator called Andy Price:

http://comicsalliance.com/artist-andy-price-my-little-pony-friendship-is-magic-comics/

I attempted to mimic his style for these pictures.  The scans aren’t very good but I feel I managed to imbue the original pictures with a degree of character.

 The first is a "cutie mark crusader", meaning she does not have a "cutie mark" (the flank symbolthat denotes a pony's talent) but I had her making friends with a butterfly to suggest that her talent will be to do with animals, the same as the girl I drew her for.

The latter I named "Inkwell" and gave her a pen-nib as a "cutie mark" to suggest her love of reading and writing, as that felt appropriate for it's intended!