June prints - back to monochromatic drawing

After my struggles in May, I thought that there would be no prints released this month. However a few days away in Cornwall and a reconnection with drawing saw me complete three drawings in as many days and all of them I felt warranted being released as prints.

I have always loved double meanings, playing with words, puns and double entrendre but always felt conscious of using it in my drawings. However my niece suggested that I put some of my awful ‘dad jokes’ to some use and ‘Grindr’ was one of them. It also reflects, as I discuss further in the next piece, my recent interest in reading graphic novels. Not sure what I will land on in the future, but there are so many ways that illustrators and artists incorporate text with image rather than just the simple big bubble I remember from childhood comics with KerPow and WHAM.

Dog Detective is a total new avenue for me to explore. I’ve been trying to figure out a way of introducing narrative into my work so have been reading some graphic novels for inspiration of how they do it. My friend Mark in Cornwall lent me City of Glass by Paul Auster and Night Fisher by R. Kikuo Johnson. I don’t think either book completely hit the spot for me but I did pick up a huge amount technically and the use of black and white resonated with me. Mark also lent me some of the Sandman graphic novels but the colour and intensity was visually overwhelming so I didn’t get much further than a flick through.

Above: sketches from my sketchbook helped me tackle this panel drawing. I really struggled with the confidence in my ability to draw these three drawings and somehow doing them in a sketchbook helped take the pressure off. Weird how the head works against you sometimes / most of the time. I’m sure it’s a protective feature but maybe we could up the threshold a little :-)

Last but by no means least is ‘Aeropress’. I originally drew this back in November 2020 but have never done anything with it. There were a couple of bits I wanted to address so I pulled a screenshot of it into Procreate and have played around with the composition a bit and like the slightly confusing visual dance it makes your eyes do.

Above is a Procreate timelapse of the making of this monochromatic line drawing of a person using an Aeropress to make coffee.

So that’s a summary of the print releases for this month and I hope that this new found productivity continues and I can share more with you in July.

To see all of my prints, please visit my online print store.