Sebastian Chow

There were many stands at London Super Comic Con 2016 this year but one stand I spent quite a bit of time at was the very welcoming art stand run by Paul Kercal and some of his student helpers.

From what I can tell there are various bits of tech and software coming together to help form this stand:

• Promethean hardware: Imagine a flat screen TV that acts as a giant touchscreen monitor, has multi-touch functionality and a whiteboard style marker as a drawing stylus. This was running windows and Art Rage software. This was great fun to use and reminds me of use a big whiteboard with markers (incidentally my current work place has whiteboard paint on the walls which is great for doodling while making coffee in the kitchen). I used this screen twice doing a couple of sketches, one I even managed to colour. 

Yesterday I attended the second ever life drawing session at the Orbital Comics Shop. I've been waiting for something like this to be organised and had missed it the first time round. It was a great opportunity to draw with artists interested in comic book illustration. Many artists attended with us all crowding around the main table.

Des Taylor lead the class providing helpful tips into his own process. Des follows a similar style to Bruce Timm, using minimum brush strokes to get maximum detail on the page. Typically he tries to get as much information down on the page quickly to provide a rough form. Then he refines the picture and finally adds detail before inking and colouring.

The sessions were split into 15 to 20 minute drawing stints with two great models posing for the class. Nina Hearne and April Banbury provided many interesting poses and did a great job holding form despite getting numb limbs from the poses. There were many great artists who attended and it was refreshing to see a variety of styles, particularly from a group of tattoo artists who came along.

This was really my first life drawing class and I learnt a lot from it. Firstly I draw way too slow... like really really slow. I've always known this but the class really highlighted it. Getting as much of the drawing down on the paper in rough form not only helps with the flow of the drawing but really helps to improve eye-hand co ordination. As I continued, anatomy weaknesses started to come through particularly when drawing hands and feet. I also realised half way through the class that I was trying to draw in a traditional art style when really I was interested in comic book illustration. When I applied my usual comic style I produced a piece I was fairly happy with and even got it signed by Nina Hearne when the class finished.

I really do hope there are more of these classes, they are very useful and above all great fun.

Check out the pics below (click to enlarge) as well as one of the sketches I did (there was only one sketch that I felt good enough to post).

These books are great for sketching in. The paper quality is really smooth and works well with brushes. This one was a gift from some old colleagues and I thought its time I put it to good use.

These are just some random doodles. I had an passing idea for different t-shirt designs based on the theme "Astro-Zoo". Each t-shirt design would be an animal in different Astronaut garb, although don't ask me what the monkey below is wearing on his head... antenna?