Pencil sketch / life drawing

Recently I've been made aware of how important it is to draw from real life. A lot of my artist friends when I ask them for any advice about what I should do for better results, always tell me how important having a sketchbook and drawing what's in front of me is.

I'm getting very used to copying pictures from magazines or books, not tracing them but copying them from sight but I wanted to start building up my life drawing portfolio. I haven't been able to go to any Life Drawing classes so I roped my boyfriend Sam into being my model! He wasn't going to get naked in this cold weather so I drew him reading fully clothed instead! It took me about an hour to do.

I'm going to keep practising so you may see a few more similar sketches like this...

Princess And The Bird

This is just a rough idea I had for a fairytale story...I'm currently working on a few drawings in the series. This is the first. It really needs more work but I liked the atmosphere...I'm still not 100% sure what I'm doing in Photoshop! It's fun though!

The Olive Man - Mini Comic

I've just finished illustrating my first mini comic. It was written by Sarah Peploe and is a loving pastiche of Raymond Briggs 'The Snowman'. It's a Christmassy tale called 'The Olive Man' and she wanted it done in the same sort of Briggsian style! It was kind of daunting even though it was only 5 pages, I had to draw 5 panels per page. Thanks to Sarah's excellent story telling and direction though it was made a lot easier. I think she plans to sell copies of it, so I'll post more info when I get it. For now here's the front cover and just one of the pages as an example...