The new kid on the Blog...

Hey everyone!
It's hard to know where to start, I feel like I've found a diary and have to leave the first few months blank and start in the middle!
I guess that's what I'll do then.. I'll start from where I'm at and what I'm working on now, after all anyone who wants to see any earlier work can view it all on my facebook page!
I will however just in this first post give a sort of re-cap of what projects I'm working on at the moment and post up a few images that have lead to where I am now.

So, what is the project in question?

I am working on developing a visual style for a graphic novel. The story is of my own creation; an idea that as been rattling around in my head since 2006! I hope for the final outcome to be able to produce a few pages of the comic, if not the entire thing!
My comic has a slightly complex storyline, so I won't bore you with the details. In a nutshell it is a story about a conflict between a Native American tribe whose warriors have the ability to turn into wolves to enhance their strength and skill in battle, and English settlers who invade their land. It is set in the late 1700's in Newfoundland, during the time of the British colonization of the Americas.
To develop my own visual language I started by reading a story of a similar genre; Frankenstein. From this starting point I discovered Illustrator Bernie Wrightson, my new hero!
I started by taking some of his illustrations into Photoshop and applying colour to them in a fashion I thought suited the genre and could be then applied to my own imagery. Here I've posted up the original black and white line drawings next to the ones I have added colour to, so you can compare the two.

Now I had a method of colouring down I needed to start drawing!

As a kinda tester I did this image, there was no real preparation for it, just me having a go at drawing British Soldiers, Wolves and colouring them using the method I'd practiced on Writghtson's illustrations. But after doing it it became clear I needed to find a line language for my wolves.

So after extensive research and many pages of drawings I started to produce these:

What I'm working on now is putting these wolves into context, figuring out a line language for landscapes and colour palettes that work with the over all effect I'm trying to achieve. Also I'm starting to get into designing the characters of my comic.

And that pretty much brings you up to speed with everything that is to come!