I have uploaded the printing file of Semmie the Forest Gnome to the printer last Sunday evening and ordered my first advance copy. I can’t believe it is done, that in a few days, after all this time, after it consumed every spare hour I had I can really hold it in my hands.

Preliminary work on Semmie 2 is also progressing, below is a study of the Grey Heron a bird very common to the Netherlands and found along many canals and water filled ditches, that is the reason it is going to play a very big part in the next story.

Click on the image for the full version, have fun!

Preliminary work for Semmie 2

Work on Semmie 2 is moving along with a steady pass, one of the most important locations in the story is by the waterside near a mill. That’s why this week I visited some polder mills in the region to make a few photos. The illustration above is the direct result of this visit, for those of you who aren’t quite familiar with the workings of a polder mill, the hatch you see here blocks the entrance of a tunnel that transports the water to the mill’s paddle wheel. This paddle wheel will then lift the water for 1 or 1,5 meters.

In the mean time the work on the printing document for Semmie 1 is still going on, my Graphic Designer still has to take a critical look at it all before it can be send to the printer, so I will keep you posted!

Today a very late update (sorry for that ). I am still very busy on Hop’s book and I will not be able to make my self-imposed deadline of Friday night February 25th 2011 23:59 hours. Which indisputably means that Hop’s book will not be at my house all printed and bound on Saturday March 5th, that’s the day of the convention where AtelierLuus.nl will launch her new spring kits.

The good news is that I am almost ready and I only need a weekend of hard labor before I can send the print file to the printer. The director of Atelierluus and I agreed that there will be a dummy of the book at the convention for people to look at and that everybody who buys all three kits will receive a in the mail as soon as they are available.

I managed to squeeze some time in to my schedule to whip up a sketch of a big angry chicken. This was supposed to be an illustration in the book but was eventually replaced by another.

Have fun!

Now that book 1 of Semmie the Forest Gnome is done I’m going to need a few weeks to do a lot of preliminary work for book 2 before I can start uploading new pages. Until then I will be posting a new sketch or illustration each week, and maybe even a piece of guest-art by another comic maker/illustrator.

This is the first of a number of sketches I made / am going to make for the story that will accompany the new spring-kit from Atelier Luus. Actually this is the second story I make about one of the designs of Luus®, the first one was Semmie the Forest Gnome. Surprised? I’ll explain, Luus is my wife and when a large part of your house is filled with these rascals:

Then the only thing you can do is make up stories! You should pay AtelierLuus.nl a visit some time and wonder at the amazing designs there and if you are handy with a needle and thread you could order a kit and make your own Semmie! Isn’t that great!

Here this week’s sketch, have fun!

Only among 19th century explorers it is known that the best way to cross very rugged terrain like forests, mountains or city centers is on the back of a Himalayan Monastery bear. This bear helps his rider to not only climb over rock formations or make a path trough dens bush, it also manages to find water and shelter any time. There is even talk about Himalayan Monastery bears making fire within 30 seconds by only using two twigs.

As versatile as a Swiss pocket knife the Himalayan Monastery bear only has 1 point of weakness, navigation. He truly never has any clue where he is, therefore it is of the utmost importance that the rider of a Himalayan Monastery bear always knows exactly where they are.

Sometimes this one small task appears to be more difficult than it seems…

The first thing my wife said when she saw this sketch was: “Oooh that looks like a horse head on the body of a pig!”. My reply was: “-sigh- Yes dear you are probably right…”. She is right offcourse, but in my defense this is also a sketch made in very limited time so I can forgive myself for it. I will collect some refence material about horses though than I’ll probably do better next time.

If you agree with my wife (or not) or have any other comment or critique you like to leave behind you can click on the rightside of this website on “comments” and enter whatever it is you want to say.

I now defeninetly feel sorry foor that poor horse! I have no idea where it needs to bring that cart overloaded with bags of flour, but I suspect it is going to take a while before they reach there finall destination. I’m afraid he has to put in a lot more hard labor for the moment.

The next sketch will be made when I find the time to do so. Since it is still mistery even to me when that will be I can only say: “Keep checking back!”.

Have fun!

(click for full-size)

I always try to use any lost minute to make as much sketches as possible, the idea for  this one just came out of nowhere.

It is an advantage to sketch in a limited timeframe because I don’t have any time to think about what I will be drawing. When I start to think it can take hours before I draw the first line but when I have to start immediately the most interesting scene’ s appear.

This sketch just happened like that, I have no idea why this medieval figure came out of my pencil or why it is thinking if it can load all those sacks of flour on to the cart all at once. Thing is that this could be a scene from a story where you immediately find yourself asking questions like who is this figure, where those sacks of flour need to go or if that poor horse needs to pull that cart all by himself. A good drawing always has a story to tell.

This might be a good idea for a next project. I already feel a bit sorry for the horse though .

(click for full-size)

A promise is a promise and therefore I made an illustration for Joyce because she has to wait such a long time before she can read the latest page of Semmie the Forest gnome. Joyce I hope you like it!

Sketches 6-Commando

I made this weeks Guest-art for the amazing webcomic  6-Commando from my fellow comic maker’Mathieu Moyen. Somehow I put a lot more effort into it than I originally had planned, but I have to say it was all worth it. I thought it would be a nice idea to show the entire process from sketch to illustration. I had the idea to depict one of the main characters, being Colonel Haulley as a very tormented man. This because he is in charge of a mission that at this point in the story is not moving along as planned.

These are the first sketches where I try to get the posture of the figure to look right. You can see that I also try to give a detailed expression to the figure which at this point is something I should not do because it distracts from what I should do which is getting the composition right (Hey I should keep something to improve ).

Here I try to get the face of the figure (an African-American man) to look right which wasn’t easy because somehow all the faces I drew looked more like a Caucasian man. You can see I gave the figure a different pose so I could better show the facial expression.

To get the face look right I used these photo’s from iStockphoto as a reference.

The final illustration looks like this. Don’t forget to view it in his natural habitat at 6-Commando, and read this amazing comic from page 1 because this is without a doubt one of the best web comics of this moment.

I started making a few sketches for the next story of Semmie the Forest gnome. A lot of new characters, objects and landscapes will be introduced here and I thought it would be a good idea to start designing these new characters.

The most important new characters in book 2 will be a pilot gnome and a sparrow so I started on those first. I also made a few sketches of an airplane but I need to make quite some technical drawings of it before it will look flight worthy.