Okay, I know it’s been a long break.

I last posted over a year ago now, at first I was too busy to post and then, unfortunately, I was too unwell to post. I chose to stop working about a year ago to look after myself properly. Now I’m trying to healthily make my way back to the drawing board. So, inspired by my talented partner’s new blog, toofolktobecool.blogspot.com, I’ve caught the itch to start posting on this here blog of mine again.

First up the completion of the Scarboy pages, this was my last post. These pages were a commission from a father for his young son, the true Scarboy. I remember being nervous about taking on the responsibility of telling his story but I realised it was also a great opportunity to do something special for a very deserving young man as well.

I committed to doing the preparation as diligently as possible, it was important for me to be able to capture the essence of the real people I was portraying, not so much Photorealism but those identifying marks and mannerisms that would allow me to pose them freely.

It was a blast to design the Scarboy costume from the ground up. I make a cameo in the bottom left panel of page two, that’s me holding up his costume. I couldn’t resist the symbolic gesture of me handing it over to him.

I could recognise for myself that my pencilling was further along than my inking so this was the first sequential project where I resolved to get my pencils as tight as possible to leave me with no confusion when inking. I was free to concentrate on the rendering decisions, whereas in former work I found at the inking stage that I’d left myself with some decisions that should have been made with a pencil.

I used brush and pen to ink the pages. Since the time my drawing moved on from stick figures I’ve had a tendency to see blocks of shadows as entities in their own right, so I enjoyed working the high contrast nature of some of the panels.

I was very happy and remain very happy with the finished pages. I was also, of course, nervous about how they would go down with the Scarboy concerned and I’m happy, and honoured, to say that the four A3 boards are framed and hanging in his room. This artwork is my contribution to acknowledging what a special guy he is and that I’m glad I got the chance to know him and his story better.

On a different note, I’d like to shout a thank you to David O’Leary over at Irish Comic News for posting a link to my previous Scarboy post. Irish Comic News is a great site that shines a spotlight on the many talented Irish creators working today as well as reviews etc. I thoroughly recommend you to check it out, you could go there when you’re finished here maybe, there’s a link at the bottom. David O’Leary was also the first person to review my work, for Formation 7. Again link at the bottom.

http://toofolktobecool.blogspot.ie/
http://www.irishcomicnews.com/tag/gary-gowran/
http://comicrelated.com/news/7706/formation-seven