Tuesday 11 December 2018

I Sell Merch On Teespring In My Death Metal Art Online Store

I sell merch now on teespring in my Death Metal Art online store here - Death Metal Art

And any new artwork that I work on will be uploaded to that site on t-shirts and other merch, so check it out, there might be something you might like.

Any ideas for a a specific design you might want?, then drop us a comment and tell me and I'd be happy to create a piece of art on merch that you'd want to purchase.

Below is an example of a Wolf Spirit art design I created in black and white, just gel ink pens.

Wolf Spirit t-shirts here - https://teespring.com/get-wolf-spirit

Wednesday 14 November 2018

How To Draw A Walking Dead Zombie Skull

How to draw a walking dead zombie skull. A drawing video of a walking dead style zombie skull and the process of creating it.

Watch the video here - Drawing a walking dead zombie skull 


How To Draw A Melted Zombie Skull

How to draw a melted zombie skull design. Sketching and the inking process of creating a melting zombies skull head through light and dark contrasts with black ink. Try drawing this yourself and remember that with practice you can draw this stuff from your imagination the more you draw.

Watch the video - Drawing a Melted Zombie Skull




Thursday 25 October 2018

Black Ink Zombie Drawings


Highly detailed zombie horror illustrations inspired by the walking dead probably

Over the course of a few months, even a few years I'd say I have been trying to perfect my art style by drawing and repeating the same themes over and over again which has resulted in me drawing a few illustrations that I am happy with and these zombie head drawings are currently 2 that I am really happy with.

Been attempting to use only cheap materials lately, with really inexpensive gel ink pens and drawing ink, which sort of isn't good for the archival quality of original artwork, but the raw art will live on in digital form forever after scanning as a digital file, so it works out.

The overly detailed way in which I ink and get carried away is just a joy for me, because I can add in as much inked details as I want and not worry about it later, especially as they are my own drawings and not commissions for anyone as in the past I've been told to tone down the detail a bit, which is a bit depressing as I love details on an illustration.

black ink zombie drawings
My drawing board needs a good clean, but this drawing distracts from that.


The above piece is another highly intricate inked horror illustration that I really enjoyed sketching and inking from start to finish. It's quite similar to a Hellraiser horror skull I drew awhile back. Often created with a mixture of sharpie and fine line pigma micron ink pens or gel pens with Sakura Gelly Roll white pens for the drips.

The thing is with these types of drawings I think they are going to be what I'm known for drawing the most and even tough I want to draw other stuff away from horror, I'll always return to this genre and be inspired by it.

How To Draw A Death Star From Star Wars

How to draw a death star from the popular original star wars movies. the following photos are just a guide, but you can watch the video and see how I draw it too here How To Draw The Death Star

howtodrawadeathstar
Paper and a circle template at the ready to draw

learn to draw the death star
Draw a circle for the death star structure and a couple of smaller circles for the noticeable feature and also a curved line across the mid section and start to pencil in loose panels again curving to the spherical shape.

death star drawing
I used warm grey acrylic drawing ink watered down to create the moon like luminance again following the pencilled lines for the panels as it is a man made structure.

draw a death star
I painted a dark black band of acrylic black ink around the whole death star to make the whole thing stand out.

draw the death star
With a fine line ink pen I started to ink the panel lines giving a suggestion of some technical detail.

how to draw a death star
This bit was optional to turn this into the death star structure from The Return of the Jedi to one that is being rebuilt after it was destroyed in a New Hope - I used a fine point sharpie to ink criss cross lines which simulate fine threads of structured technical elements.


Again, here's the video if you want to watch through and see how I drew this popular Star Wars visual icon.


Monday 3 September 2018

The Journey To Become A Full Time Artist: 7 Things To Know

Journey To Become A Full Time Artist

I'm not quite there yet myself I know, But my journey has begun to become a full time and so with that in mind, I am always planning and thinking and trying to DO more than think about my plan of action.

An Artist needs income of course to live, like any other job, it has to feed itself or you'll end up failing like I have along the way. You have to be good at marketing as well as being good at creating your art often, you need to have a course of action that you run through, a way of promoting what you do that your customers can find and hopefully buy your new artworks.

If you don't have a plan at the start, that's ok, you can just start working and work out how you can be full time along the journey.

Here are some things to think about.

1. Decide where you want to focus in art

This is most important, because if you can have a specific idea of where you see your art and who could be interested in buying it, then you are off to a good start. For me I have always liked to draw fantasy and horror art because it involves me using my imagination and temporarily escaping from reality for a bit, which is always nice to have a bit of escapism when creating new works of art.

Of course when you start to go niche in an art genre then you get to explore the avenue of fan art that relates to that niche which can also be a lucrative way of making side income. So for example I love horror movies, so what I am beginning to do is try to get into the sketch card market for that particular are and sketch some original art for my favourite horror movies and because I was a child of the 80's, then classic 80's movies too, such as Ghostbusters, The Goonies, Howard The Duck etc.

Of course the sketch card thing came about on my own journey as I did work for Topps, MNS Cards and some other properties, but it's worth keeping in mind the many ways you can earn from your own art such as art prints and original artworks.

2. Create a main place were people can find you and your artwork

Of course, a website would be the preferred way of people finding you and your work, but you could also have a combination of social media presences to capture future fans and customers of your art for sale. I use a combination of Facebook Pages, Instagram and YouTube channels to promote my own artwork and that usually involves work in progress shots or the final artwork that I have scanned.

I have a website, but that links to all of my other social media and the main places online to buy my art on print on demand sites such as zazzle and cafepress. And it's equally important to offer a way of offering commissions too whether you use a freelancing site like Fiverr or just use paypal and send an invoice for art made.

3. Search for technical ways to do stuff and things you need to advance your art career

What I mean by this is, if you need to create a kickstarter or you need to figure out how to create your own book whether that's using a print on demand service such as createspace or lulu, it is a really good idea to research how you would do that and find anything out that you are really not sure about. I know it sounds like an obvious thing, but you will come up against technical obstacles and other things that will stop you or waste some time before you are able to proceed with your idea.

One of the things I am looking into right now is to create my own colouring book, now I am researching the print on demand route first, but really for that, the only thing I am not sure about is how to format the artwork for the book and if the paper will be any good for people to colour on it. So I might decide to use a publisher and work out a contract of being paid if the POD path isn't the right option.

So what I'd do is google some questions that you have about a project, just to see if other people have come up with the same problems and quite possibly they might have and explain possible solutions.

A lot of the most common things could be how to size your work or digitally enhance illustrations and drawings using photoshop which you might have to do, so just make use of other artists and designers knowledge out there.

4. Always remember the journey isn't always clear for some!

Being an Artist of any sort is always fraught with pitfalls, mainly having the income to make art a full time thing, so if you need to work a part time job or several, then it is always common to do so. I right now don't, but in a couple of years down the line I know I may have to if I can't earn a full time income as an artist.

So often the dull job just for the money can also prevent you from starting on your art career, I get that, been there done that and still in some ways living it. That's why some sort of plan has to surface for you to get somewhere as a creative.

I am attempting to do 5am early morning starts to really start the day off and work on important stuff whilst everyone else in the house is still asleep, it's hard to get into that mind set, but I really want to get the early wake ups instilled in my brain to build up some sort of routine

5. Draw and create any time that you can

I do this often, any OTHER spare time that you have must be dedicated to actually creating the art that you want to create. and the more you make the more you can see an improvement in your technique and style of art that you produce.

Not all sketches, drawings and stuff in your sketchbooks or journals will be good enough for sale and there will be unfinished pieces, but every new work that is made you will learn from and go into your artist memory bank for further use.

6. Learn to market yourself and your artwork

Not all Artists are good at marketing themselves or getting noticed as an Artist and for some they may need some outside help either now or in the future in the form of a business partner who knows how to market artwork.

But for those who can't afford to employ someone, they have to go it alone and figure it out themselves and I suppose this goes back to your social media sites, if you look at each one and work out what works on each individual site then you may be in a better position to market your creations and get the word out. So for example you may have created a series of videos on YouTube that seem to have done well and got a load of views and likes meaning that the videos have been viewed and received quite well, so it would make sense to do more of them types of videos ongoing wouldn't it?

Not all marketing online is going to bring new customers however and that has to be acknowledged as fact, so mixing it up with offline promotions adds extra fuel to your marketing and this is something I am aiming to work on more.

The way that proper professional business entrepreneurs explain things now about having your own business is that you have to tell your story and let that be at the forefront of your offerings whether that is a service like illustration or digital art or just wanting to sell art you've already made. People want to know who they are going to be buying from and they want to relate to the person, so if you make yourself accessible and transparent and trust worthy and honest, then you can gain customers trust. Just always be you and never something you are not.

7. Don't be afraid to change direction

If something isn't working or you find no enjoyment in what you are doing then move on, the whole idea of you becoming an Artist is to gain a high level of enjoyment from what you do or else what's the point?

Early on I found that I wasn't cut out to draw realistic portraits or huge landscapes in actual real life details as that wasn't within me, the passion really was to try and interpret the things in my head and be able to draw the stuff that I was really interested in. Of course some element of life drawing has to come into it unfortunately to learn how to draw those things but I just found drawing from life boring.

But art has a way of drawing you in and attempting to draw the stuff that bores you could also push you to learn, so never listen to one Artists way of doing things, do you, each Artists journey is different so don't be afraid to do things different, if you have an idea to go into a graveyard and draw what you see, then do that, if you have an idea to do Portraits of people and zombify the art them, then do that, there are multiple paths to take.

So whatever you do, your journey should be your own and you should enjoy the process of being on your own path.

Further Help and Advice 7 Tips To Become A Full Time Artist

Sunday 15 July 2018

All The Topps Sketch Cards I've Done So Far

All the Topps sketch cards that I have done so far. Some I like, some I don't, but all of them was and still is a learning curve trying to draw a smaller drawing to a deadline and sometimes the paper stock makes it difficult, but it's still fun to draw some pretty cool cards for such properties as The Walking Dead, Star Wars and Stranger Things (Not released yet, but I'll show them when I'm allowed).

I'm working on more sets from Topps (as well as other sketch card sets) and I'll update this post when I'm allowed to post the scans.

The Last Jedi Part 2 Card Set 2018






 Walking Dead Evolutions Card Set 2017








The Walking Dead Road To Alexandria Card Set 2018









Star Wars Solo A Star Wars Story 2018




Star Wars Rise of Skywalker 2019




How To Draw Death Eater Mark

How to draw The Death Eater Mark from Harry potter. A rough drawing video tutorial in which you can follow along and draw this yourself. There is an art to drawing logos and this is not a professional logo drawing video, just a means to get you started.


How To Draw The Incredibles Logo

How to draw The Incredibles logo. A little rough around the edges, but a starting point to learn to draw this very popular logo with the 2nd movie out more than a decade since the first one.


How to draw Spider Man Homecoming Logo

How to draw spiderman homecoming logo. Drawing the newer spider emblem for marvels homecoming spiderman movie. Here we look at drawing the symbol of the Marvel movie hero from the movie of the same name.