ROUNDUP.

I am very very bad at keeping up with multiple platforms and stuff, so.

I am using Tumblr as my main blog/site for now.
I post a lot of wip on Faceboob erm book

I am also on Etsy in case you feel like buying any of my work/supporting the cause/etc.

I am in the (slow) process of setting up a proper website.

And also come check out my illustration collective Ink Soup here and here, we are totally badass and will conquer the world.

xx

colour and riso.

Testing out the Risograph at uni and adding a little colour to my work. Original illustrations in b&w. I am quite excited about this, it's looking interesting!

Shell of HK

(For some reason these never got posted, cheers blogspot.)
A few pages of a project I did, based on photos provided by the great students of HKDI. The man concept behind it is to walk someone through a post-apocalyptic Hong Kong, with the text adding information to the images. It stemmed from the idea we always have of HK as this busy, bustling, overcrowded metropolis, so I wanted to show it under a different light. Also, a lot of the photos I was provided with showed many abandoned flats and nearly whole buildings that had been evacuated and left to themselves. It seemed like such a stark contrast to what especially westerners' idea of Hong Kong is that I really wanted to play on it.

ink and quink.

Also using quink is pretty fun. It's just made me really undecided.

more inky goodness.

Testing out new techniques, mainly using brushes and ink and seeing what textures I can get out of fucked-up brushes. I'm still trying to maintain a high-contrast look, was a little inspired by Raymond Pettibon for the last one.

Red.

So I thought I'd do a little "work method" post. This is mostly how I work when doing a single image, spur of the moment, eye-candy piece. It generally starts out with a photo, something that catches my eye because of pose, colour, composition, anything. What I like of the original photo decides how much of it I'm going to take - if it's just the pose, I'll change pretty much everything else about it, if it's an expression, again everything else goes, if it's composition most elements will stay in one way or another. This photo was particularly stunning - the eyes, the expression, the colours. Damn I wish I could do my makeup that nicely. So I pretty much just wanted to draw it as it was. As I went along and started inking (mapping pens, ftw!) I started picturing it as just the face, all focus on the expression in the eyes. So when I got to adding ink to the black coat bit, I found myself covering everything up that wasn't the face. Sorry hands. Sorry tattoos. I thought about cropping it but I really love the composition and the contrast between the fine mapping pen lines on the face and total black encircling it.
So yeah, that's how I sometimes work. :)

scraperboard

Theda Bara and Rory Manning.
I've been experimenting a little with scraperboard these days, as if drypoint and monotype and general inking wasn't enough. I am all over the place this term. But anyway! Even though a little difficult at first (perhaps mostly to do with the shitty tools and cheap scraperboard - actually, not even cheap, it was fairly expensive, it just doesn't seem to be very good) I think I've kinda got the hang of it. And in doing so I created two images if Theda Bara - which is quite project-based, at least -  and Rory Manning, a model (I think? I don't know, she's utterly gorgeous and kind of a ghost on google). It's a great way to study contrast and lighting, really makes you think about negative and positive space.

Lulu

I've been wanting to do something on Louise Brooks ever since I watched Pandora's Box a few years ago. Actually, I've been smitten with her since well before then, as I grew up with Crepax's "Valentina" stories. So when my current project started going in a 20s direction, she was definitely going to have to be one of the subjects/characters. This ended up being a mini-project within the project, a little zine done in a mixture of drypoint and monotype (professional printmakers might kill me about it) which allowed me to have detail while maintaining the swishy inky goodness of monotypes. I'm also fairly satisfied with my hand drawn type. This will eventually be reformatted to fit the book I'm creating for my project as a short narrative under the name "the Courtesan".

squares.

 

Messing about with format and inking.

a little eye candy catch up.