The Fairy Tale Book

These are some of the illustrations from my most recently published book. I'm really, really happy with how these came out (of my hands, my talented, talented hands!).

I'm currently working on a book in colour for O'Brien Press, which I'm really enjoying.

Here's The Fairy Tale Book on Michael O'Mara's website.

Copyright Michael O'Mara.

Some bloke

I've been posting a lot of pencil sketches of late and I've got some inked sketches I'd really like to post next time. I've been trying out my Deleter nibs, I really like the G nib, the line quality isn't so far removed from my pencil work.

Sketch of a lady

Happy Paddy's Day! This lady is just a sketch done on scalubrious* cartridge paper.

*Turns out this isn't a real word just something my parents used to say a lot. I had a devil of a time trying to find the correct spelling. From context I believe it mean luxurious, typically, but not exclusively in reference to food. Of course I'm being sarcastic the paper is like KVI brand.

Fork it over!

I now have a nice relaxing schedule, comparatively so, so I have time to do things like blog and sketch and blog those sketches. Here's a sketch I did on the back of a bright yellow folder. 

The last thing I was working on is to be shown in Bologna to buyers, so I might not be going to the Bologna Book Fair, but my work is.

Sketches in colour no less.

The big guy here has been painted with watercolour. It goes onto Moleskine sketch book paper kinda weird, it beads a bit when you first paint on it and it never really takes the watercolour properly, it can smear after it's dried and then rewetted, as I discovered today.

The lady was inked with a brush pen.

Sketches

Some more sketches from my Moleskine. My personal favorite is in the bottom right hand corner.

More Sketchy-Wetchys

Life Drawing

It's been 8 years since I last did life drawing. I wish I hadn't left it so long, not because I'm unhappy with the results, but it was so enjoyable to do, I've been missing out all this time.

Flowers for my Birthday

My Dad got me flowers for my birthday. They're just beautiful, great colour combo too. With my experience with colouring I appreciate this sort of thing (should I be adding smilies here to indicate my glibness).

There may be further birthday related posts for a while, it's the only thing I've got to discuss other than work.

More sketches

I have some life drawing to post and I will when they're scanned. But these puppies were ready to go:

More from the Moleskine

I've been super busy the last month and I was ill too, but finally I have a little free time to blog and stuff.

Here are some Cthulhu-esq sketches I drew on my birthday with my new 0.7 mechanical pencil. It's a pentel graphgear and it's really snazzy. I love drawing with 0.7's, you can get a lot of line variation out of them.