Fan art

[ISPYSHHHGUY]

Today I did some fan-art of the nitwit of a newt, The Dark Newt! I thought Lew's fantastic Dandy character was worthy of some fan-art for making me laugh for real every week since his debut!

What do you all think?

It's very good looks almost as if it was done by Lew himself.

I'm getting paid for cartoons to illustrate a website on chicken-breeding.

How bizarre.

There's not a lot of work in the comics biz these days, and although I often got nice replies from DCT especially [Mr Kerr remembered me after 10 years!] I stopped submitting anything anywhere for several years. I never stopped drawing though, just for the love of it.

About a year ago, I discovered that cartoon jobs are global today, and working from home you can flog stuff through agencies, to anywhere from Ireland to Greece. Two weeks ago I had a live online Skype video interview with a cartoon Editor in deepest Alabama! Still waiting on the outcome on that one........There's more work than ever in this [cartoon] field, and I get enquiries every week. Payment is often less than comics work, but sometimes its a lot more

Assignments vary from designing characters for companies [I'm involved with this right now] to the bizarre [like this chicken-breeding one]; I've worked for this guy before, you can get repeat work if folk like your stuff. Some people give you complete freedom, like in this case.

Never thought I'd ever go totally freelance as this, but I love the sheer diversity of these assignments.

Learning Gimp techniques definitely helped, though I find the computer a pain at times [it's found me work, though]

[ISPYSHHHGUY]

I'll even draw strips about ladies' underwear if someone will pay me!: [a very enjoyable assignment, actually]:

[stevezodiac]

Those cartoons were pants (well someone had to say it).

[ISPYSHHHGUY]

I'm just glad it was you, Steve!

[stevezodiac]

I gusset had to be.

Me and my mate used to have pun contests as teenagers.

[ISPYSHHHGUY]

[stevezodiac]

This isn't fan art but its very impressive so I thought i'd share it with you all. From yesterday's Daily Express. These pictures were drawn with ballpoint pens by Samuel Silva a Portugese lawyer and can take up to 50 hours per drawing.

[AndyB]

The Express needs to brush up on its big cats... should we draw up a list for them?

(fantastic pen work!)

[felneymike]

About a year ago, I discovered that cartoon jobs are global today, and working from home you can flog stuff through agencies, to anywhere from Ireland to Greece.

Today? Judge Dredd's look was created by a Spaniard and a lot of Commando was drawn in Argentina!

[Digifiend]

The Express needs to brush up on its big cats... should we draw up a list for them?

(fantastic pen work!)

True, that's no tiger - is it a leopard, or a lioness?

[AndyB]

I would have said leopard, as lions' spots fade towards adulthood and are hidden by their coat anyway.

[stevezodiac]

Its a shame none of you have the good grace to admire the man's excellent hard work.

[Digifiend]

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/odd/news/a4 ... tures.html
Ah, so the cat's a jaguar. You can also see a comparison of that girl with a photo of her. Some slightly mispositioned hair on the right, but otherwise very accurate. Thing is though, there's no such thing as a yellow ball point pen, so yellows and flesh tones shouldn't be possible. This Samuel Silva must be lying about his methods.

[-MikeD-]

This Samuel Silva must be lying about his methods.

Well, he is a lawyer...

He appears to be using some clever optical colour mixing - a kind of Divisionism. And biro pens have a natural transparency that grows in intensity with layering. Six colours is a profusion using this technique. Maybe he made a mistake mentioning Bic pens which only seem to be available in four colours..?

As for the art...taken at face value it's very cleverly crafted, but there's little real creativity in tracing.

[felneymike]

You used to be able to get multi-coloured biros that had all sorts of colours in them. My brother used one to colour a comic he made once. There was pink, yellow and dark yellow which could probably be carefully combined.