Marmaduke Duck and the Marmalade Jam

May I introduce you to Marmaduke, jam-making duck extraordinaire? These are some of the roughs and character studies for one of the (many!) books I'm working on at the moment. It's written by Juliette McIver, and I think it's one of the craziest, funniest rhyming texts I've read. It'll be published by Scholastic next year. I'll post more bits and pieces as I get further along with it.

Very very sketchy

I thought it might be fun to post some more early sketches, in the really rough stages. They may be grubby and scribbly, and covered in coffee  stains and fingerprints, or full of hideous anatomical mistakes, but there's a kind of energy about first sketches that so often gets killed in the finals. I'm working hard on trying to keep that energy going through all the stages of a picture, but I'm not quite there yet...

Anyway - here's 2 kids in silly hats feeding stolen cake to a bunch of gulls...

Things that go "Blub".

Ages ago I did some animal mascots for a swim school, and I've just spotted their debut appearance on the swim school newsletter!  It's kind of cool to see them strutting their finny stuff finally. (Although I wouldn't have squished them all together like that - jeez - what about a little personal space for our fishy friends?)

Fearless...wasn't.

My first finished colored Fearless, with the weight of the world on his doggy shoulders.  Poor little guy. I'm trying a different technique for these - light acrylic washes underneath, with colored pencil and whathaveyou on top.  Layer-oppen-layer-oppen-layer.  (Those of you who didn't grow up with adverts for Sarah Lea flaky pastries won't have a clue what that's all about... oh well.) I like the way it works so far - it dries at the speed of light compared to oils, so I can finish a picture in one sitting, and it lets me get in much more detail.  I loved doing the texture of his muzzle in this one.  Don't you just want to grab those jowls and give them a good squeeze?  Or is that just me? Ahem... probably revealing too much about myself there.  I'm just off to do something perfectly normal now, like ... um ... taxes.  Arranging the spice rack.  Pairing socks.

Fearless, by Colin Thompson

Over the last few weeks, I've been getting to know one of the world's most misunderstood canines - Fearless. Face like a cement mixer, heart of marshmallow.  Colin Thompson's new book is a character study of this hapless bulldgog, who blunders through life, meaning well, loving everyone to bits, but more Clueless than Fearless. He's based on Colin's bulldog Wallace (now deceased),and is a brilliant character.  I haven't had much to do with bulldogs - in fact I've never had the pleasure of meeting one before. The closest I've gotten is growing up with a boxer called Pickles (one testicle, half a brain, liked the taste of milkmen).

So for the initial sketches of Fearless, I've just been working off googled images of bulldog ugly mugs.  Here's some of what I came up with to start with:

Because Fearless is bulldog through and through, and because I want to do him justice, I thought I better get to know some of his relatives.  It turns out that there's a bulldog breeder living just round the corner from us - luck! - who was kind enough to let me come round today and do a photoshoot with their dogs.  They have SEVEN.  Just... wow!  And lucky for me, they were gloriously bulldoggy and so photogenic.  Bailey, the camera loves you. Okay, work it for me, baby!  Shake these jowls!  Chew that stinky ball!  Yes!!!

I took almost 300 bulldog glamour shots in just over half an hour.  They're amazing creatures - they're like walking bricks with a smile on one end. My thanks to Wanda and Vince at Wonderbull for their generosity in letting me invade their back yard today.