Of Dogs and Monsters...

Perhaps my favourite request is for illustrated names. The name in question was James, the clients very young son, and I was asked to include a beagle, a skateboard and some monsters.

Sweet.

So as always I began pencilling in, very loosely, will little idea of what the final outcome might look like.

Pencils first...

I'm a sucker for robots, aliens & skulls, so plenty of those scattered alongside the beagle and skateboarding hairy, fairy.

You will also spot the bubble blowing creature that has a habit of appearing in my work and may gain a blog entry of his very own one day.

The next few images show inking and the various layers of watercolour.

....then some inks.....

I inked the drawings twice, using different pen nibs for different areas, a technique called thick'n thin....or thick and thin if you're offended by poor English.

I should probably ink in the lines using a brush, but it's very time consuming and I'm happy with how clean they look.

....a few watercolours.

It's amazing how watercolour brings out the characters and the detail.

So, now a confession....

What do you notice about the robot?

Yup, just the one leg.

Not sure what happened, but I somehow managed to go through pencils, inks and a layer of watercolour before I realised.

Check out the final image to see how I corrected it.

Finished image...enjoy James.