Mr. Fox - Merry Christmas

I would like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.  Thanks so much for stopping by.  I hope you will be able to find a little peace and quiet this holiday season as Mr. Fox has with his air-cottage.

More soon.

Turtle Country

Many years ago, perhaps 15 or so, I made this drawing of a forest nymph and turtle.  It has always been a favourite of mine but for whatever reason I left it alone and waited for the right time to paint it.  But recently during a break I decided to give it a go and at the same time get back in touch with an earlier version of myself.  It was surprisingly easy to adapt to the way I used to draw and think about picture making even though the way this version turned out is probably very different to the version I would have painted back then.

Thanks for stopping by.  More soon.

Flower Nymphe

Another quick one.  Painting now, trying to relax back into the process, it's been a while, a little rusty but so far so good - fingers crossed.

Welcome to December everyone.  More soon.

Pixie

My little excursion back into the animation business appears to be over for the time being.  Three weeks of intense drawing and design have come to a blissful end and now it's time to get back to business.  Today I'm sharing a bit of warm-up work, a wee doodle of a narcissistic Pixie.

What I have to do now is to let go of the animation world and transition back to my own realm of tree-houses, b and b's and map reading foxes. To accomplish this I will be painting for the next week - no pressure just fun.
But today we have a Pixie taking a personal moment on a flower of somewhat dubious origin.

More soon.  Thanks so much for stopping by.

Neighbours

Hey

Yes, I have really been out of the loop lately.  I have been lured back into the animation business and  left with very little time for anything.

What I am sharing with you today are a couple of character line-ups I did for the graphic novel before the animation thing started up.  These are meant to be background characters and also a general exploration as to how the Gwelf characters might look in this particular story.

Thanks again for stopping by.

More soon.

Selkie

The last drawing for the temporarily delayed, but now back on schedule book of Scottish Mythology.  She is standing on a rocky Scottish shore, draped in seal skins and seaweed.

Thanks for stopping by.  More soon.

Ink Pixie

I would have liked to have had more time for Inktober but since that is not possible here is a quick ink doodle of a Pixie.

More soon.

The Raven Witch - Graphic Novel Update

This is the villain of the story as many of you have probably already guessed.  The story is going to be about a violent witch attack in Gwelf.

The Raven witch is a dark and cruel predator.  She often travels with and is aided by bird goblins.  She carries a long wooden hook for grabbing victims and is well armed with edged weapons, throwing spells and sonic pacifiers.  She is absolutely the last thing you would ever want to see if you were unlucky enough to find yourself walking home alone on a lonely road in Gwelf, after dark, in the autumn or winter.  Pray for a quick end.

Gwelf House - Graphic Novel Update

This is going to be the first of a bunch of graphic novel updates, even though it will likely be the last one you see.  I have been speaking with my editor and we are almost there.  He actually liked my most recent version of the story and I think he might have been willing to go with it but I want to take one more pass at it. You can always make a story better and I want to give it one more go.

What I'm showing here is a bit of concept work for where the characters live in Gwelf.  Of course they live in trees but I still have to figure it out, especially if we are going to get inside their tree cottages and see how they work once you pass the front door.

I really want to live in one of these, but for the time being I am going to have to resist the urge.

More soon.

New Drawing Book

Back in the spring I was contacted by UK publishers, Total 3D to participate in a new book they were putting together called Sketching From The Imagination - Fantasy.  I did a wee interview with them, sent in some images, and then tried to forget about it.  Then today project coordinator Melanie Smith sent me these pictures from the new book.  It should be in stores soon.  One other cool thing about this book, my wife Patty is in it too, and boy can she draw!

From what I understand, this book is full of great drawing tips from all kinds of goofy professionals.

Still writing - more soon.

Sketchbook Update

Occasionally a theme will occur to me and I will run with it, in the sketchbook that is, thinking that it may yield some picture or narrative possibilities.  Like what would happen if you took one of your standard faerie tale mushrooms, pulled it out of the ground, stood it on it's head and then put a or some pixie(s) on it.  I needed to find out.  There are a lot more of these but I think three will do for now.

More soon.  Thanks for stopping by.

Fox

Just a quickie Gwelf image.  Another take on Mr. Fox examining his map for interesting walking routes.  Also, writing for the graphic novel is progressing.  Fingers are crossed.

More soon.

Pixie

There was a pixie in the garden this morning but when we went back later, she was gone.

More soon.  Be safe.

Express Yourself

Okay. A bit of recent warm up drawing while I continue to write the graphic novel.  The first outline I sent in was very lean but they were still interested.  I expanded it and they are even more interested.  The editor came back with some notes and ideas.  That's what editors do, they help you tell your story when you're up to your neck in it and can't see the forest for the trees. I'm getting there with the story but there is still more work to do. Anyway, I still try to draw something everyday, even on writing days, like today. Here's a bit of it.

Thanks everyone for continuing to stop by. The graphic novel is chugging along slowly but I sense it will pick up steam once I have the story really nailed down. I hope you all have a peaceful weekend.

More soon.

Hunter and Waif - Graphic Novel Update

As regular followers of this blog will know, I have been writing and designing a graphic novel for the past several months, along with all my usual freelance work - whew! Anyway, the story has been evolving and traveled through several re-wrights and concept changes. The outline I recently submitted to Lombard was accepted (yay) which now means I have to fill in all the blanks and flesh out the full story. Since I cannot share the client work that I've been doing lately I thought I would post some of the designs I did back in early spring when the story was called Hunter and Waif.

The story is no longer called Hunter and Waif and has evolved quite a long way from these early ideas but I still like these characters and would love to be able to find a use for them some day.

Hunter is a rough and tough forester/game warden character and Waif is a wee lost child in need of a rescue. Waif was going to be a bit of a trouble maker and Hunter was going to be too busy and tired to have to deal with her, but being a forest ranger it would have been his job to save her. It would have been a winter survival story.

I have a lot more of this rough work beginning to pile up around here so there is a good chance some more of it is going to end up here.

Thanks for stopping by. More soon.

Return To Gwelf

Okay, let's get caught up, it's been a while.

I've been buried deep in a morass of projects for the past few months writing, rewriting, and grinding away at client work. So the client work is all top secret as usual, blah, blah, blah NDA yadda, yadda, yadda.  But the writing has been really fun and a wee bit scary. A bit of a revelation actually. It's a lot harder to tell a story than I originally thought - big surprise. It turns out that arranging events in an entertaining way with engaging characters and unexpected plot twists - not so easy. But no hero gets stopped by a little challenge. What kind of story would that be?

I eventually came to my senses after having tried several different concepts and decided to set the story in Gwelf, the fantasy world I often blog about here. It is a story about witches and ghosts, haunted B and B's and all the goofy stuff I usually touch on when describing Gwelf. I will be using all of my previous Gwelf posts as background material and also inventing new ideas to build the story with. It is going to be a lot of fun and I can't wait to really take a big bite out of it.

The European publishers who originally approached me about doing this story have the outline now but what they actually think of it is anybodies guess. I however am not waiting for them to green light this project. I have already committed a fair amount of pencil mileage to this idea and want to carry on. I will forge ahead and turn the outline into a script, using every scrap of time I can scrape together between projects and after hours, as I have been up to now. I want to make this story happen.

That's it for the time being. I've been feeling really guilty about not having posted anything recently so I managed to unearth a couple of roughs from last winter and have attached them here.

More soon.

Be safe out there.

Update - Graphic Novel

I wanted to touch base with everyone and let you know that I have not fallen into a pit somewhere but have in fact been quite busy. On top of the usual client work which I am not allowed to share, until one of these days when it is safe to do so and a ton of it will come spilling out, I have been using every scrap of free time to write and design the graphic novel, mentioned in the previous post, and related story pitch.

For those of you who are interested there will be a lot to see on this front very soon as it all seems to be coming together at once. More news to follow. I will sign off now and wish everyone a peaceful Sunday afternoon.

More soon - a lot more.

Thanks again for your time and patience.

Larry

Raven Witch 2

Some alternative concept and design ideas for the Raven Witch graphic novel page I posted last week. I had a lot of ideas for that one page and found it difficult to narrow it down to the choices I made. Here are some of the other things I was considering. It looks now like one way or another this book is going to happen, so there are going to be many more choices that will have to be made.

I liked the idea of putting the Twig Pixies under the mushrooms but eventually decided that it might not be right for the gloomy, haunted forest mood I was after. This page got progressively spookier as I worked on it. It seemed to require an ever darkening mood, or at least I became happier with it as the shadows lengthened.

Thanks for stopping by everyone. More soon.