Alphonse Elric

I went a bit mad for anime a few years back, I don't really watch much now but I can still be persuaded too if something grabs my attention.  One of my favorites was Fullmetal Alchemist and the follow up remake brotherhood, so an illustration of one of the main characters was long overdue.

This is Alphonse Elric who due to some very unfortunate events has no body of his own, leaving his soul trapped in an archaic (and beautifully designed) suit of armour.

Done in pen, ink wash and white gel pen.

Inking Practice

One of my biggest failings in learning to draw has been not finishing work.  This has led to me working with pencil the majority of the time with the occasional inked picture and very rare painted or coloured illustration.  Because of this my abilities with other mediums are not nearly as good as I would like.  My main goal for the future is to rectify this by completing more pictures in ink or paint.  To that end here are a couple of recent inked pics.

Some texture practice.

One of the 30 day challenges that I missed, I had an unfinished sketch which I just couldn't leave behind.  An Irish mythical figure, 'Goibniu the Smith' one of three gods of art.

30 Day Challenge

Every year the good people at Galway pub Scrawl engage in a month long illustration challenge.  Donal the tireless organiser of the whole thing, along with the other talented scrawlers, come up with a drawing brief for each day of the month.  I was introduced to the group by Jay Penn who has been going for some time and they kindly encouraged me to get involved, despite only attending one pub scrawl and living in another country.  This year the challenge was in June and it was my second year at having a go at it.  I had hoped to get a picture done for every day but unfortunately missed the odd one here and there.  If anyone wants to follow the pub scrawlers blog and check out the challenge in its entirety then the link is below.

http://www.galwaypubscrawl.com/

Here is a small selection of some of my illustrations.

Day 1.  Portrait of a family member.  My brother, he wasn't all that happy with me putting this up, being kindle of humble about this sort of thing.  So I hope he can forgive me for doing it again.  Mostly happy with this apart from some heavy handed shading on one eye giving it a glassy look, oops.

Day 5.  Warrior fruit.

Day 9.  Manic Monkey

Day 10.  The blood is the life.  I was a bit off target with this as I think the brief refers to vampires but I went with a picture of the first successful artificial human heart done in red ink.  Missed the brief a bit but I like the result.

 Day 29.  Draw a human/elf/dwarf/halfling.

Day 30.  Anything you like.  I was a little stuck for ideas so went for an illustration of 'The Iron Giant'.  Or as my wife said when she saw it "that looks like a fat iron giant!".

The whole month was great fun, certainly had some ups and downs, drawings that just went well and some which were a struggle from start to finish.  Cant wait to do it all again next year.