Keep it indie family

Here's a new strip, about an ageing trendy indie dad bringing up his son in his own mould. A music based strip might be easier to get in to magazines, I'm figuring. Any feedback for these would be greatly appreciated. Should I keep going?

Research, but not in the Pete Townshend way.

Here's an over-elaborate post for an under-whelming illustration I did a few weeks ago. I'm not sure why I saved process shots so regularly. I guess I must have thought I was onto something really interesting at the time. How wrong I was.

This is the reference photo I took on Easter Sunday near Rottingdean. Something about taking a photo of a little girl playing on the end of a big rock thing and shrieking as she tries to avoid the salty foam, and then going on to post said picture on the internet feels wrong.
I wanted to capture a wave crashing against the rocks and rising up, but could only wait for about ten seconds, what with the very real threat of arrest.



I built up the drawing in layers, on four or five sheets of paper, and somehow the girl, being the hardest bit to draw, just got left out.
Here's the first layer, simple pen and ink:



This spray I made by flicking ink on a page, and scanning and colouring it. It probably looks best at this point:



Some block colours:



Shadows made up of scanned painted ink, coloured and overlaid at varying opacities. This really didn't work as well as I hoped it would, and the colours are wrong too.



And then, just to make sure it was definitely rubbish, I put in a load of silly flares.



So there you go. Pretty shit, but hey, at least I didn't design that 2012 logo!

Coach

I'm writing this blog entry on a coach with wi-fi, and in doing so: I am tasting the future. I am tasting the future and it tastes good. Cold, metallic and good. This must be how John Logie Baird felt when he watched television before anyone else, pushing at the very boundaries of technology, standing at the very edge of science and peering over the edge into the abyss. Probably with a Grand Designs repeat on More4. I am a 21st Century Fox. I am Robocop. I am James Dyson. I am Levi Roots.
The trouble is I've recently checked the BBC news and facebook (the me-me-me news) so I'm slightly at a loss as what to do.
The coach is taking me from Oxford home to London. You see I've started doing the old switcheroo commute: London to Oxford. Last week I did three days of work experience at a Graphic Design company, which was fun, and kindly they've asked me to come back regularly and in return have offered to give me a small amount of money to help me pay for t-shirts and cider and rent. It sounds like a job, and it is really. It's only two days a week though; I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing. It means a five day weekend, I guess, which is only two days short of the ideal.
Graphic design is surprisingly fun- almost as fun as internet on the bus. Already I've taken a logo from ink-marks to photoshop re-touchery to large prints to mounting and done a small illustration for the cover of a book. It's also a training type position, so I'm learning industry secrets all the time, and when I leave I'll have all the skills to pay the bills.
In preperation for the work experience, I knocked up these logos speculatively for the Brighton based Latenite [sic] Lounging record label as a kind of practice.



Which is nice.