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.

Cat-Lizard-Thing

Here's a little picture I made on a website where you can do a bit of collage.

In recent news I co-starred alongside my Dad in my brother's college film. It's a superhero's origin story. It involved running around for four hours in the cold and rain down by the much sanitised, now colourfully lit docks.

Flying Monkey

The Wizard of Oz was on twice over the Christmas break and I found those flying monkeys rather charming.

My first Published Card

After years of painting cards for my family's birthdays and the likes, I have a card that's available in the shops.

I only had one day to paint this and I painted it much bigger than it would be printed, A3.

Some of my Dolls

I started painting my Munny up, he's in the early stages at the moment, the very early stages! He's going to have a blingin' medallion, which I might use gold leaf for.

Beside him is my new kokeshi, which Dad got me for Christmas and behind them are my Little Apple Dolls. I have one more who's not in the photo, her name's Animula. Not my choice, I would have called her Black-Eyes-Like-A-Shark's-Eyes.

My First Review

Sweet! My first review (that I know of, I'm sure someone's made their feelings about me known somewhere before). This was in BookFest for the Children's Book Festival. The review is for the book The Henny Penny Tree by Siobhán Parkinson.

Dublin Comic Con & Hellcat Colour Sketch

I've not fully recovered from the Dublin Comic Con because I'm a delicate flower, but it was a great night. Or nights for other people who were partying a lot harder than I was. I really need to build up my stamina or maybe I should just not sit on concrete steps in cold weather while waiting round for people.

Anyway, here's an old colour sketch of Hellcat. She all twisty like a cat. Yep, cats are like that, all twisty and stuff. That's cats for ya.

Sketches in me Moleskine

Here are some sketches I did last night while watching Shaun of the Dead. As you can see they are totally inspired by the movie. I don't know why there's a turquoise tinge over the whole thing, if anything it should be yellowish.

Kokeshi Dolls

Here's some more Japanese inspired stuff I've done. My little kokeshi dolls.  Traditionally they're painted wood, but these I made out of paper clay. The smallest is little over an inch high, she was the first one I made. I've made three others for my family. The one on the left needs a little more sanding before she's fit for painting.

Noh Mask

I really enjoyed painting this. I always thought these masks were for kabuki theatre but they're for noh theatre which is a few hundred years older.

I wanna paint more of them, especially the hairy noh masks.

Pan's Labyrinth

Here is a work in progress, which I started ages ago in my Moleskine. One day it may get finished, I don't know. But I'm pretty happy with the interim stages so far.

ASBO Fairy Tales

At the moment I'm illustrating a book of regular fairy tales, which is a bit weird after illustrating these anarchic versions.

ASBO Fairy Tales on MOM's website.

One new book and two slightly older ones published by Michael O'Mara

I've just finished illustrating a new book for Michael O'Mara. The deadline was pretty tight, but I got it finished in time, phew.

Below are the previous books I illustrated for Michael O'Mara. The bottom two illustrations for the books were done in the style of Anne Anderson as requested.

The Nursery Rhymes Book on MOM website.

The Games Book on MOM website.

Images copyright Michael O'Mara.

Regarding Mooney's Bust

Stephen's making a bronze bust of Mooney for his wedding. I volunteered to make the armature.

There are some very good instructions in the book From Clay to Bronze, but I had to make a few substitutions as there isn't an extensive line of plumbing materials in the local hardware. 

There are no threads on the pipe or the thing (possibly a floor flange) holding it to the board so I used epoxy glue. I also had to cut the pipe with a hack saw.

I'm so proud of my work, I may be a little disappointed when it's covered up in clay.

Father's Day Card

Here's the card I made for Father's Day (several weeks ago now).  Why an orang-utan? Because my Dad likes orang-utans.

On another note, I once caught a banana this big.

The Henny Penny Tree

After working on Ice Dreams, I illustrated The Henny Penny Tree by Siobhán Parkinson for O'Brien Press.

This was a wonderfully fun story to illustrate. It's a warm quirky tale about three sisters who are given coins by their Uncle Fergus. At first Littlest doesn't know what to do with her copper coin.

Here it is on their website.

These images are copyright O'Brien Press.

Ice Dreams illustrations

These are some of the illustrations I did for the book Ice Dreams, written by Grace Wells and Published by O'Brien Press.

Grace's story is warm and witty and just fantastically written. The village of Moutsouna is in trouble after their only source of income, the ice factory, shuts down. The twins have a plan to save the community, but it will take everyone working together to pull it off.

Here it is on O'Brien's website.

These images are copyright O'Brien Press.

My Colouring on Angel Covers

Okay, I'm finally putting up some of the work I did over the last few months.

Here are the covers I coloured for Angel: After the Fall. The pencils and inks are by a Mr. Stephen Mooney.

I think my favourite is Cover 5, Illyria and 

Gwen getting all charged up in red and blue.

He can't pay bus fair, there's no room for change in his fuzzy little britches

I've been so busy with work of late I have neglected me blog amongst other things. So here's a cute 'tail', to fill some space on here. Copied from www.dailymail.co.uk.


Bus drivers have nicknamed a white cat Macavity after it has started using the No 331 several mornings a week.
The feline gets onto the busy Walsall to Wolverhampton bus at the same stop most mornings - he then jumps off at the next stop 400m down the road, near a fish and chip shop.
The cat was nicknamed Macavity after the mystery cat in T.S Elliot's poem.