Transformation - Part 1

I have introduced my natural untreated leather cover a while ago. This was the very first cover I ever did and it is clearly my pride and joy. This is the cover that houses my Hobonichi Techo (A6) and it's a cover I use every day.

A few months ago, I also made a bright red A6 and LMC sized cover with a Deadpool design on it. I documented this largely in this post and this one.

I have temporarily removed my Hobonichi and placed it in the Deadpool A6 cover while I work on the plain leather one.

Before I start drawing on it, I need to prepare the leather, which means I need to give it a bit of a clean because over the weeks, it has developed some marks and I need to have those removed.

I have removed the closing elastic band and I have wiped the cover clean with a damp cloth. I have seen different instructions recommending to use mild soap and then some form of conditioner but all I want really is to remove the main black marks and freshen it up a little.

This is now done, so I will have to wait until it fully dries. In the meantime, I'm going to start working on the actual design and I will be gathering my supplies.

Catching up on the #29faces challenge!

I am way behind on updating the blog and I am missing days 20 to 22, so here they are:

Day 20:

Day 21:

Day 22:

Days 18 and 19: #29faces challenge

Here are my offerings for days 18 and 19 of the #29faces challenge:

Spontaneous fountain pen drawing

Gimp and Inkscape collaboration

The Deadpool Traveler's Notebook Project - Part 1

Before going to see the Deadpool movie and since discovering that you can actually use markers on leather, I had been thinking about making myself a traveller's notebook (TN for short) in red with some Deadpool illustrations. I wanted to do one in large Moleskine size (LMC) and so I started to take some measurements. I already have one TN in LMC size from Morgan LeFae'sTrinkets and I really love how the size is so portable and still big enough to doodle, paint and write. When I measured my TN it was slightly bigger than A4 size by half a centimetre. The difference was too big to just wing it with an A4 piece of leather and I definitely needed something bigger. So I looked for the next size, which is A3 and once I did some calculations, I figured out I could definitely pull off an LMC TN as well as an A6 one!

I went to all the textile and furniture shops that I could find in my town and the general answer I got was that it was difficult to find the thickness of leather I needed for my project.

So I turned to eBay and found what I was looking for.

I ordered my leather and when it arrived, I noticed that the 'inside' of the leather was not suede, like I usually see on other pieces of leather and discovered later that the top side was also treated and polished.

My project isn't finished yet but I wanted to post a few pictures of what it's looking like so far.

Back side of the piece of leather. Completely waxed!

Right side, looking really bright!

The 2 A6's

After the drawing

Both the A6 (top) and the LMC (bottom)

I guess I should have known that the top side was waxed but the penny didn't drop until I started drawing on it and that the marker started to go all funny and stopped working all together. I finished the drawing with some China ink and this morning it's looking slightly sticky. I would love to do a little Deadpool logo in the back of the leather and maybe also write Deadpool above the main drawing but first, I'm going to have to test on the leftover bits of leather.

I'm planning on cleaning the leather with some acetone and then using a file to make it a bit rough. I wonder how it's going to look once I finish to use the file... I hope the paint is not going to leave the drawing. But if it gives it an edgy style, I might try it on the LMC...

Watch this space for more updates!

Days 16 and 17 of the #29faces challenge

Here are my two sketches for days 16 and 17.

Days 12 and 13 - #29faces Challenge

This is for day 12 and this is my daughter made with markers and watercolours. It's probably one of the first times that I managed to get the skin tons so well. I have done it by mixing some beige, yellow and a touch of pink. I have increased the amount of pink around the cheeks to give her a rosy look. I also tried to not draw or paint the pupils and it doesn't look too bad, so this is something that I might have to keep in mind for the future.

Day 13 looks like this:

This is Hiro Hamada from the movie Big Hero 6. I took this picture from the manga and I really like how his hair is so messy and spiky. I'm not quite happy with how the mouth turned out but it will have to do for now. One thing I really liked is that I could easily use my basic colour scheme of 3 colours with black, red and grey and it looks great.

Days 10 and 11 - #29faces challenge

I'm a little bit late to post so here is day 10:

I doodled this one evening and I didn't use a safety net any pencil first, which is highly unusual for me.

And on to day 11:

Back to my old stomping grounds with this sketch of Sailor Moon. I discovered the series when I was already going to the university and at the time, it was not so cool to reveal that you were still watching cartoons at the ripe old age of 20. So I watched it in secret but now that it has become cool, I can proudly come out of the anime closet and say, I watch Sailor Moon and I like it!

Days 7 and 8 - #29faces challenge

Here is my offering for Day 7:

This is a portrait of John Constantine from the Hellblazer series. It was bound to happen as I like this character a lot. This was not the picture I had originally intended to draw but my muse decided otherwise and this was the picture I ended up with. If I remember correctly, it's the latest incarnation of Constantine that is being shown in the new comic series of Constantine. I wasn't too fond of his hair so I just skipped it!... I really like how rough his face still looks like.

Day 8:

This was something I doodled while watching TV with no clear idea of where I was going. I had started with Harry Potter and the others came along.

When I was spending my semester abroad at the University of Wolverhampton, England, I met plenty of people and since I'm not that good with remembering faces, I decided to draw a cheat sheet for myself that I carried along. In it, I would draw each person I met with their name and nationality (there were many nationalities and I also needed to differentiate the Germans from the Austrians) and their characteristic that made them unique. It really helped me a lot and it looked a lot like the Harry Potter drawing I did above.

#29faces challenge - Days 5 & 6

It seems I have forgotten to post the last few #29faces challenge pictures for the past couple of days so here they are:

Day 5:

In case you didn't guess who this is, it is Neil Degrasse Tyson. I have only recently been made aware of how awesome he is and I thought he would make an excellent subject for the challenge. I used markers mainly with 2 different shades of grey and black.

Day 6:

This is a sketch of one of my favourite comic book characters called Nemi by Norwegian artist Lise Myhre. You can follow her on her Facebook page.

29 Faces Challenge

This month, I'm going to take part in the 29 Faces Challenge. This is something I have both been dreading and looking forward to doing. I tend to draw animals more often than I draw people so as a consequence, I don't do people all that well. This is why I thought this would be a really good challenge to try in order to spend a whole month focusing on something that gives me trouble so that I can make some progress somehow.

The Facebook page for the challenge can be found here: https://www.facebook.com/29Faces/?fref=ts

The blog page can be found here: http://29faces.blogspot.com/

Here is my offering for Day #1!

I am a big fan of Bruce Timm's style, especially the animated series he worked on (Batman Animated Series and Superman Animated Series) and I thought it was a fitting homage to his style to draw one of my favourite superheroes of the DC universe.

Decorating my Nerdmaids

Since I have received my two Nerdmaids, I have been using them a lot. Well, I have been using mostly the light one and I have added the Hobonichi Cousin for 2016 to Nerdmaid Dark and I'm waiting for January 1st to start using it on a daily basis.

I use my regular Nerdmaid for journaling mainly and I'm applying the One Book July challenge for the month of November. Since I'm doing more writing than sketching, I need to always have one pen at hand at all times. Until today, I had simply placed the pen inside the book and closed the TN with the elastic band and it was working although denting the inside pages a bit.

So today I went stationery shopping and I bought some self-adhesive pen loops by Leuchtturm. I had used them once for my dark brown TN by Morgan LeFae's Trinkets and it was working well.

I used some scrapbook paper that I placed behind the notebooks and where I attached the pen loop.

Back of the scrapbook page

So I went scrapbook paper hunting and after looking at many shops, I finally found some beach themed paper among all the Christmas paper. I also found some pen loops in different shades of blue (there were at least 3 different shades that I saw in the shop!) and I went to work. Here is the result:

And a last family photo for the road!

New Projects!

I have recently been commissioned to work on a few jobs for a couple of friends of mine.

The first project involves an illustration of a short story. Two of my friends, Mel Skubic and Stevie Conradi have been working on a series of short stories to be published as an anthology and I was lucky enough to have been picked to work on one of the stories. The proceeds of the sale for the anthology will go to BipolarUK. Among the other artists involved in the project are Jordan Christopher Diamant and Aubrey Diamant. You can find more information about them right here.

The second project I am working on is also for Mel and Stevie. I was asked to donate a sketch or painting that will be sold in an auction and the proceeds will also go towards BipolarUK. I have already created 2, which I need to send out.

I have also been requested by my daughter's kindergarten to prepare a banner for this coming Sunday as a header to a proposal they intend to make to gain more funds for the school. Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture before it left the house. It's going to be a joint artistic effort between me (I wrote the words and some illustrations) and the children of the school (they will be colouring the letters).

I will soon post links to all these projects I'm involved in for anyone who will want to take part in it.

In the meantime, here's a teaser picture I composed (tweaked by Mel) for the anthology.