Frances McKay Illustration

Sean's sunny summer special

Hello everyone, so Summer is here (kindof) and it’s time to put away the hot water bottles and switch down the central heating (well pehaps keep them on standby). But spare a thought for the polar bears, they must be freezing. I’ve never been there but apparently north of above Sheffield, it gets really cold.

A Girl Called Dog

 
This is a working version of a cover for a new book for Random House, plus a rough for one of the interior pages.

The story features a destitute young girl – downtrodden, beaten, neglected, but surely destined for greater things – and further convinces me I’m carving my little niche in depicting such pathos-inducing characters. I rejoice that there’s always plenty of room for more pathos in this game.

Biro

 
To follow in the vein of Temujin's and Allen's previous blogs, here's one of my roughs. This one is about four years old and whilst my method has changed the result is the same.

My roughs are always drawn in biro, a hang up from when roughs had to be faxed to a client and pencil wouldn't show up. I'd draw lots of elements separately, enlarge or reduce them on a photocopier, cut them out, move them round the page, tape them down, clean up with correction fluid and draw over the top until the page couldn't take any more. Then I'd photocopy the page and continue or fax it off.

Now I can do most if this in Photoshop but occasionally I still jigsaw it around by hand for the fun of it before scanning it, cleaning it up and emailing it off. Which inevitably leaves me scrubbing the correction fluid off my arm and pealing off one of the disregarded, taped, elements of the drawing stuck to the sole of my shoe.

As for the biro, the black Bic Cristal Medium Biro is the only one I use. The others have no talent at all! 

The Bic's Amazon reviews are a chuckle.

Cheery biro,

Elena Gomez

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To enlarge the illustration click on the image.

Roughing it

A little intimidated by Tem’s beautiful rough, I wanted to talk some more about roughs. I recently had a request from a third year illustration student for external feedback on a college project; not a bad idea I thought for students about to go into the world of work. His rough drawings didn’t really hit the mark (his coloured work looked pretty good) and it made me think again about the purpose of roughs in publishing; what impact roughs have on a project; what publishers and authors expect to see; how different illustrators make rough artwork.
I replied that I think there’s a knack to roughs; an illustrator doesn’t want to spend forever on them because there are deadlines to meet etc. but you have to show that you’re up to the job. You have to show your intentions with a bit of flair and assure the publisher that you’ve grasped the brief, understood the story, considered characterisation and so on; roughs need to have an energy that promises that the project is taking off.

I love roughs; I’m still enthralled by the way that a pencil line (I would always use pencil; my colour roughs are a disaster) can describe form and character, mood etc. and the best day is one where I have only to draw.

The main example is for a story about a Miller who finds a fairy cape that makes his dreams come true, published by Eaglemoss Magazine.

I work on marker pad or layout paper, and make very rough drawings; refining these by overlaying and redrawing on the semi-transparent paper. I often act out the person I’m drawing or pull the face I want to see. The finished (presentable) rough usually comes very quickly, just two or three stages, occasionally more, and sometimes it happens in one go as in the smaller example. I redraw, sometimes with a light box, for the finished work. I find it’s best to leave something to do in the finished artwork because this takes on the energy from the rough.

I’d love to hear other peoples’ thoughts and experiences on this and whether you get “That’s a rough?” or “Blimey, that’s rough.”

Alan Marks

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Putting Pen to Paper

This drawing is a recent rough for a Walker Books project. I have been neglecting my drawing recently, as I currently have quite a lot of other stuff on, but I can't describe how exciting it was to start putting pen to paper again. Though I like to produce quite detailed drawings, I feel I've now got rather quick at making them. I’m hoping to find the time to work on a book of my own, in a similar style (indeed, the only one I use).

Temujin Doran

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