Jason Brook's portrait of myself. I look younger and prettier here!

Yesterday I went to FIG’s art fair near Bond Street above Rupert Sanderson. I went for inspiration and to look at different styles and techniques. I knew that original work and limited prints by many artists were on sale, but I had  no idea that I would be meeting and chatting to both David Downton and Jason Brooks!!

Both have carved the visual language used in fashion illustration, definitely for my generation.

I remember seeing Jason’s work long ago, when digital illustration techniques were still uncharted territory. The first thing I noticed about his work was: Damn. He draws some quite attractive ladies. The second thing I thought was: How has he communicated so much with only a few simple lines?

The body language, pretty faces, attitude and personality all in a few lines. To express so much with so little, he really has the skill of discarding all the non-essential elements right down to the essence.

He was drawing a lady at the fair and it looked awesome, so when he finished and looked round and said, does anyone want a go? I leapt for it. It didn’t take all that long and he used a brush pen. After he finished the drawing, he told me it was a pleasure drawing me (!) and I asked him about how have comic books influenced him.

He spoke about how he is working on a sketchbook about Paris to be released sometime soon. I’d love to his style in a comic book.

After the commission I went over to David Downton and said to him, I saw your Cate Blanchett and Julia Roberts pieces and they blew me away.

He then replied that, although you see the one image, at home there are countless unsuccessful attempts. He then used his hands to gesture the size of the pile of paper discarded.

I asked him if he was doing commissions and he said that he didn’t have the self confidence that Jason does and that he finds it hard when people are circling him and asking questions to paint at the same time, which made me chuckle.

But regardless of that, his final pieces have such an inspiring dynamism and a forgotten elegance that it makes all the hard work and unsuccessful attempts worth it.

Using watercolours myself I know that there is a serious skill at controlling or knowing the way the colour in the water spreads when using a brush, which is not something that a computer can mimic, even with the top of the range Wacom tablets.

They were both very pleasant to chat with and very down to earth.

Their contrasting styles are like the flip sides of the same coin, but they’re both modern masters when it comes to the field of fashion illustration.

www.fashionillustrationgallery.com

www.jason-brooks.com

www.daviddownton.com

Coloured by Joel Benjamin!

Click to see in full!

At a GCSE art exhibit at the school I work at, staff were allowed to show their own work, so I decided to put up a comic strip I had drawn  for the “Publish You” anthology of alternative comics as part of Alternative Press.

The strip is a biography of Annie Yang, a woman who was tortured in China for practicing Falun Gong until she managed to get asylum in the UK.

Originally in Black and White, I had an awesome illustrator friend of mine, Joel Benjamin, do the colours to make it stand out amongst the other bright pieces on display.

In his own words,

“Joel Benjamin was born and raised on the east coast of the UK and spent much of his youth reading comics and drawing. In his teenage years he became obsessed with skateboarding and spent much of his time lurking around the streets of his hometown with his skater buddies. After studying fine art at Norwich school of art and design he made the sensible decision to go to Lincoln University to earn a degree in Illustration. Since then he has been working as freelance illustrator, creating illustrations for clients in the UK and US. Joel’s work expresses his love of nature and the great outdoors as well as his enthusiasm for music and human culture.”

Check out his work at http://www.joelbenjamin.co.uk and his blog http://www.teasteam.blogspot.com

This is the 12^th year that Falun Gong practitioners have been persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Falun Gong (or Falun Dafa) is a traditional cultivation practice that improves one’s physical health through meditation exercises and develops one’s spiritual awareness through the principles of the practice, truthfulness, compassion, tolerance.

In 1999, under orders of Jiang Zemin, then Premier of China, the CCP launched a persecution against Falun Gong practitioners after an official report showed that 70–100 million had taken up the practice. As the number exceeded the members of the CCP,  Jiang Zemin targeted Falun Gong for fear that such a large group would  undermine his power. And so began a campaign that tortured, killed and raped ordinary Chinese citizens on the sole account of their beliefs.

Although other peaceful groups are persecuted such as Tibetan monks, Muslims and some Christian groups, Falun Gong is the most targeted because it is the largest. for more information, see http://www.faluninfo.net

Recent portrait

So. Haven’t blogged for a while, because I’ve been busy working. I decided to colour the portrait using Photoshop, using instructions from “The DC Comics Guide to colouring and lettering comics”. A very useful book. Here are a couple of things I’ve been working on:

Practicing foreshortening: MX aka Jack Ferguson from MX2. Here, the character is throwing a right overhand punch whilst using the left hand to guard his face.

My latest portrait commission… I am happy with the way the water-coloured shading turned out. Click for larger image.

If you want to commission me to draw something (for a fee), let me know.

email: mickeylam@hotmail.co.uk

Other news: My red dragon slayer piece was published in a book of poetry available from amazon.com! Go buy a copy!

Product description and link below:

Sir Gawain’s Quest and other poems by Evan Mantyk

Product Description

“Sir Gawain’s Quest” is a retelling of the Arthurian tale “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” as an epic poem. In this version, the gods fluidly intermingle with mortals, true to the ancient Greek genre of epic poems, and the classic story becomes a vehicle for a reflection on the metaphysical nature of human beings, earth, and the universe. The theme of unknown heroics is an extension of the book’s other poems, which boldly expose the inhumanity found in modern China and call for justice against the communist regime that rules the rising international power.

About the Author

Evan Mantyk is a poet and writer living in New York. He writes a national column and edits local news for The Epoch Times, an international newspaper. A poet from an early age, he graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. in English from the University of Michigan. Since he began practicing the meditation discipline Falun Dafa (also known as Falun Gong) at age 17, Evan has sought to raise awareness about the persecution of this peaceful discipline in modern China.

It’s definitely getting used on the inside and possibly on the cover. More details to come later.

The piece will accompany a poem called ‘The red dragon slayer’, which is about a young man who decides to quit the Chinese Communist Party, and in so doing, wounds the CCP represented by a deadly red dragon.

There have been some 80 odd million withdrawals/resignations from the CCP, since the publishing of the “Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party” by the Chinese language edition of The Epoch Times newspaper back in 2004. It makes a very detailed and interesting read. Link below:

http://ninecommentaries.com

The piece took a few days to do. The scanning of the original, which is a little over A2, was frustrating with my little A4 scanner and the production of it was a bit of a challenge, piecing together all the parts of the image and getting it to line up. Anyway, it’s done and I am proud of it.

The dragon was the hardest to draw as there are no real dragons to reference from. I had to look at snakes and crocodiles and combine it with some paintings of Chinese dragons that I researched.

It was watercoloured with Windsor & Newton Cotman watercolours using a ProArte size 0 pure sable brush, the inking was by Faber & Castell artist pen manga set (don’t use them for manga at all, but brilliant pens for inking) and good old reliable Pilot drawing pens.

Here is the Outline version, so you can see the detail without the colours to distract.

Enjoy…

If you want to commission me to draw something (for a fee), let me know.

email: mickeylam@hotmail.co.uk

That’s the last page, hope you’ve enjoyed it. That’s the last of the silly cartoony strips I am doing this summer and will be moving onto more serious stuff.

Have a good weekend!

That cookie shop took ages…

I love to see people’s reactions as they read from the first panel to the…last three, hahaha.

I love London and felt it appropriate to have Bawana and Stawberry sailing through the Thames on a Bawana boat. I purposely missed out using a speech caption, but if there was one, it would say, Freeeeeeedom!!!

Enjoy!