Art Project March

This is what I did in March
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This page just contains my art. Click here if you want to see everything.






31 March:

Khimaera wants a: Dragon in flight. Alternatively:
Demonic Summoning

I've drawn a lot of dragons in the last few years, so I decided to make this one mechanical, just for fun.


There are an awful lot of rubbed out lines in the wings at the top here, the original is a massive smudgy mess. If I were to redo this, I'd approach it a completely different way.



30 March:

Claire would like to see: An Outlandish Knight. Alternatively:
The source of all secrets
A reason to get up in the morning
Where all my socks go

I didn't really get a stong mental impression of an outlandish knight, so I drew some knights in an outlandish setting.


This took longer to draw than expected. Large textured surfaces take forever to set up.



29 March:

Draxar wants: The tears of the goddess of endings when someone dies before their time.

I didn't have a particular goddess in mind, so I drew a generic one.



28 March:

Androidkiller intones: With This Laser, I Thee Wed.

Well, I managed to get most of the way through the year without using these characters...

It's not much of a wedding...



27 March:

Canashir wants to see: Melody for violin & piano, Op. 35bis No. 5: Andante ma non troppo.

This piece of music puts me in mind of water, and then later, fairies.

it's remarkably easy to draw swirly patterns like this.



26 March:

Alex tells me that: The abyss stares back, and it likes your tie. Alternatively, any of:
Control code
Dryders are more complex than you think
The Mayans were right...

Cutest. Abyss. Ever.

In all honesty, the Abyss was easy to draw. The human, on the other hand, much less so.



25 March:

Winterlove would like something: Far from home.

I have drawn so many little cartoon earths over the course of APM.

They gave me a list. #3 was "punning".



24 March:

Salavant wants to see: God(s) in mundane office scene(s). Alternatively, any of:
The Platonic Ideal of a citrus fruit.
Someone falling, calmly, from a great height.
The best climbing frame in the world.
A event in the 20th Century illustrated by molluscs.

Because Salavant has sent so many comics for this APM, I decided to draw a comic for this one. It's another large image, bercause it's so text heavy - apologies if it doesn't fit on your screen.

So, there are lots of pantheons and gods to choose from, I was spoilt for choice when starting this out. After a couple of hours browsing wikipedia, I realised that I could spend a week researching this, just to get gods that made sense in context. The Roman and Greek gods are all pretty samey looking, so I went with the pantheon I knew best, with variety to suit - the Egyptian Pantheon.

There are hundreds of Ancient Egyptian Gods - and interpretations and descriptions vary a lot too. I based these interpretations (somewhat loosely) upon the descriptions of the Egpytian gods given in the Odyssey Larp. These descriptions aren't exactly aligned to the most common descriptions of the Egyptian Gods, but they provide variety and interest. I've altered them a little further to fit this modern setting.



23 March:

Jasmin would like something to: Self-assemble.

I call him Herbert.



22 March:

Zebbie wants to see some: A hamster running in a wheel. Alternatively, any of:
"My desk" (as in, the desk of the person drawing)
A scene with a bright low light off to one side that casts long shadows from everything.
An unmade bed.
"What I see when I run"

I decided to offer a quote today

I like Yoram Bauman - Recommended watching.



21 March:

Ley wants to see some: Geese dressed as cats.

This needs a little cleaning up I guess.



20 March:

Dave P submitted: All of the lyrics to 'Desolation Row', by Bob Dylan, with emphasis on verses 21-22.

This took... a while.

I'm significantly more familliar with the lyrics to this song than most people in the world at the moment. My apologies for the size of this image, it needs to be this large to make out the details.



19 March:

Ian asked for: A lift less ordinary.

I could have drawn piles and piles of machinery, but this didn't actually need any more detail to work.



18 March:

Joey wants: An animal with the wrong number of heads/limbs.
Alternatively, Cliffs or Something really tasty.

I'm quite happy with these.



17 March:

Cillian thinks that: This looks like a good idea.

I'm not sure I agree:

Like all other "full of mechanical junk" pictures, I stopped when I got bored, rather than when I filled the page.

These characters are prototypes for a comic I intend to produce in a couple of years time, with this kind of layout for individual strips. I'm very pleased with the face shapes and expressions in the main panel, and the level of detail, but the linework with pencils is quite variable in brightness, and some of it is a bit smudgy. If I were to be doing this to the standard I'd like, I'd have to rework everything in the picture with inks before shading it.



16 March:

Greg asked for: Three Simultaneous Apocalypses.
Alternatively, he'd like either: Repetition or Rouge Angles of Satan.

I enjoyed drawing this one more than I thought I would...



15 March:

Because this is the halfway point, let's go with Chard's rather meta suggestion of: Art Project March.

Maybe it's time to update the banner logo for this page? I'm not sure if I prefer what I drew though, the word "project" is a little unbalanced compared to the rest of the image.




14 March:

Drac asked for: A crown atop a turle atop a mechanobadger.
Alternatively, he just wants a mechanobadger

I drew machinery until I got bored. Much like anything else in this style, there isn't really any limit to when you stop.



13 March:

Chris Coward wants a picture of whatever: Mylo Xyloto is.
Yeah, I know what Mylo Xyloto is.

Chris Martin was interviewed about this once, and let slip that the name "xyloto" existed because he thought music came from everywhere "as if one had xylophones for toes". Xyloto sounds like a girl's name to me, and this image came to mind.

I'm quite pleased with some of the highlights here.



12 March:

Being Monday, it seems like the perfect time to take Chevron's suggestion of: The realisation of a perfect day

Yeah, this is a pretty corny.



11 March:

Rosie asked for: A demonstration of the intelligence of octopuses. (Or octopodes, if you prefer.)

I've been wanting to draw this for months. This is the perfect excuse.

I've about twenty more in my little book, so maybe there'll be a reprisal sometime.



10 March:

Emily wants to see: The man with the Key to the Door of Reality, underneath the Mat of Insignificance.

I believe this is a lyric from a Bill Bailey song.

It's quite liberating knowing that it doesn't matter what you're drawing. It's impossible to get this image wrong. At least it would have been if I hadn't forgotten to draw a mat.



09 March:

Jim asked us to show him: Four-Sprung Duck Technique.

I wanted to draw two full wings, but there wasn't a lot of space to the side of the paper.



08 March:

Estantia would like a run in with: My Little Cultist.

I decided to make some little cultists that you can print out and use for roleplaying games.

The idea is to print these out landscape on A4 card, then fold them in two. The tabs should fit through the slot in a standard miniature base, and then fold out underneath.



07 March:

Nicholas Taylor wants us to study hard and obtain a: Magister in Catbus.

I actually managed to finished this one before anyone else!

Drawing buildings takes far far too long... This version of New court St. John's is reasonably acurate, but the central tower has been shortened a bit to fit it on the page, and I've missed out the back wall of the court entirely (it wouldn't add a lot to the image.)



06 March:

It's Mum's birthday, and she wants to see: The Queen of all Kittens.

To be honest, I can't rightly explain how or why I drew this.:

Well, enough practice at it, and I'm now convinced I can draw a cute cartoon kitten reasonably repeatably. That's progress!



05 March:

Colin Love asked us to find: A Prophecy in a Teacup

I decided to draw a more literal teacup than intended, and then had no idea how to draw a prophecy in it...

I'm reasonably pleased with this one, but it took ages to draw the cup. The saucer I sketched out with a looser messier style than I normally aim for, but it came out okay.



04 March:

Dan Summers asked me for something: Frightfully Mechanised

While this is my choice of suggestion, it was not the only option. Two other suggestions were offered:
REAL ultimate power
What the world needs right now

I decided to provide an insight into how this website works:

This came out pretty well in my opinion, although like all of these images, there's no limit to when you can stop.



03 March:

Steph Leddington would like to see: A new type of ninja

Because Duckbunny was so fast off the mark with my original joke idea, I went for the second one that sprung to mind...

Many thanks to the great Tim Vine for the joke.



02 March:

Jon Ward told me of a dream he had:
I dreamt of.... Tyrannofish: Front mostly Tyrannosaurus rex head, itsy-bitsy teeny flippers, and a back tail. The whole thing was mostly reds, but with small wavy black vertical stripes. They looked quite vicious, but I think they were cute.

While this is my choice of suggestion, it was not the only option, he also sent a small ditty:

Plush Cthulhu, Plush Cthulhu
Riding on the dashboard of my car
I'm afraid he'll have to go
Messing with my soul, you know?
Plush Cthulhu, he won't get you far!

Most of the other images came through before I drew mine, and given the lack of a plushie Cthulhu, I decided to draw a plushie Tyrannofish.

This is a fairly clear indication that I should never use colour pencils. There's a black and white version of it here. If you want to colour it.



01 March:

Luke Corteen suggested that we deal in Luciferous Logolepsy.
Yeah, I needed to google it.

The phrase means something along the lines of "illuminating a love of obscure words" - Here are two obscure words for you.
A "Feasing" is the part of a piece of string or rope that's frayed at the end. (plural: Feasings)
A "Swailing" is a small drop or dribble of wax that has fallen from a candle.
Oh, and a "smut" is what's left of a candle once it's burned out.


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