The Forty Second Doodle

Around commissions and building websites, I managed to do my King and Queen of Hearts card design. Only two to go now!

As a 'red' suit, obviously I wanted the red to be stronger than in the original Clubs design. I wanted to capture that same gritty, edgy look and texture that the original picture had (thumbnail above), only with the red as the dominant feature. I was dead pleased with how it came out, I like how intense and almost blood-like the red looks in the final piece. I was especially happy with the queen here, I wanted to have her looking quite young and pretty, but with a darkness in her eyes that suggests there is more going on here. Ok, maybe no one else notices that stuff, but I do!

Now I just need to do Diamonds and Spades!

The Fortieth Doodle

If this makes no sense to you, please refer thine eyes to doodle number Thirty Seven. 

I recently took a commission to draw out a card style king and queen tattoo, which I then turned into an illustration too. I actually had so much fun with it, I thought 'Oh buggar, I want to do all four suits now. Damn.' (I mainly thought damn because things are so mad busy at the minute, and I'm just giving myself even more work to do! I am a tit.)

So here's the line drawings of all four suites, spades, diamonds, clubs and hearts. They are obviously all quite similar, yet I strived to make sure each face had it's own characterisation, each outfit had it's own quirks. I look at loads of examples of old card designs, and sort of amalgamated all the aspects I liked into my drawings. 

I cannot wait to get a chance to finish them all off. As a set, they are going to look SICK.

The Thirty Seventh Doodle...well, sort of

So this is pretty funky. Seeing one of your doodles being tattooed on to someone. It still delights me when someone sees something I have done, and they think 'Yeh, that's awesome, I'm gonna get that inked on to me for the rest of my life'. 

Hardcore. No pressure then.

So this was my line drawing that was commissioned. The dude wanted a card style king and queen, but he didn't want the suit or an outline, which I agreed with, makes it seem a bit too stiff like that. He brought me a few examples but they were pretty shoddy, so I did some doodles and here was my result.

I have to admit I was so chuffed when I saw the final thing, it's very hard to know how your work will translate onto someone's skin! Though obviously this very careful line work is generally not my thing, so here it is again as a full on illustration in my very distinctive style-

A really good project I had a  lot of fun with!