I chanced upon UK-based German illustrator Sandra Dieckmann’s busy illustrations via an interesting money-raising idea on her blog. Sandra is trying to raise £200 to buy a new printer, and to do so, is creating original drawings for those who donate.

I got involved, and was very pleased to have a drawing done by her centred on the Ape on the Moon theme. She did a great job and put in much more work than I’d hoped. The drawing is below, as well as some samples of the rest of her excellent work. This may be the start of a series of Ape on the Moon illustrations sent in by illustrators, so get in touch if you want to contribute an original Ape on the Moon illustration.

Get yourself an original drawing directly from Sandra, by donating here!

© Sandra Dieckmann, 2010

Sydney-based illustrator Christopher Nielsen’s work is brimming with bold images in a fun, vintage style. I asked him some questions about his studio, his work process and his sources of inspiration.

Where are you based?

In a great warehouse studio in Surry Hills, Sydney, Australia. I think it was used to produce uniforms during WWII. I share the space with 4 other awesome illustrators (Nigel Buchanan, Jim Tsinganos, Stuart McLachlan and Lew Keilar) as well as 4 other creatives.

It’s a space where we can get instant inspiration, advice (and criticism), share contacts and hand on jobs to each other.

What’s your work process and the tools you use, especially how do you achieve your grungy/scratchy effects?

I’m the worst drawer in the world so the initial process is the hardest. With editorial work I start out with lots of really bad thumbnails on recycled paper just trying to work with shapes and come up with about 3-5 ideas.

Once they start taking shape I move on to refine the drawings on tracing paper which I can also use to transfer the art to the illustration board once I get a go-ahead on a concept.

I then paint with acrylics on to illustration board, building up lots of layers that I can dig into and scratch away at with just about anything on hand. I want to make the surface look like it has a history and a story to tell. It’s then scanned and I can tweak color and tidy up any marks that I don’t like in Photoshop on my Cintiq Wacom screen.

What inspired you most recently?

I’ve just put together a dummy for a kid’s book that was inspired by my 2 year old son and I’ve been looking at lots of vintage children’s book ephemera. I saw some hand lettering by a guy called ESPO done at Coney Island recently that was really cool.

I saw a talk online by designer Marian Bantjes which inspires me to keep doing what I love doing as opposed to following a trail of money.

As well as all the usual suspects like old medical/health charts, day of the dead imagery, vintage ad characters, battered and beaten hand signage.

© Christopher Nielsen, 2010

What are you working on at the moment?

I just finished up an illustration of Moses handing down “5 things to ask your plan adviser” for PlanSponsor, a female Bigfoot with online customized shoes for Nett Mag, a rum drinking polar bear for The Sydney Morning Herald Good Weekend and 2 Mexican Wrestling cards for an article on credit v debit cards for Money Mag.

I’d spotted illustrator Jack Teagle’s comic book whilst graphic novel-shopping in London recently.

I was struck by the beauty and appeal of such a well designed, drawn and printed book so I thought it would be nice to find out more about the process behind creating such a work, which he had published through a cool printing and publishing company called Nobrow.

Jack gives details of his book: ‘Jeff Job Hunter‘ and the process behind its creation, below.

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Introducing the Book:

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Jeff Job Hunter is about an unemployed man who simply can’t find work. Jeff is on his 13th week of the dole, and has his payments stopped. He has to go on a work placement to receive further benefits. His work placement is to go into the dungeon underneath the job centre to kill a monster to start his payments again.

Jeff Job Hunter is a story based around the trouble I had with signing on, when I was unemployed. I wanted to create a comic which reflected the situation I was in, but add in my sense of humour.

Nobrow approached me after they had spotted my work at the D&AD design awards. They create artists books, comics, narratives, limited prints and showcase the talents of a variety of artists and illustrators.

I had worked with them on their Nobrow: Jungle book, they were pleased with my work, and knew that I drew comics for fun.

They want to give a platform for British comic artists and writers because there isn’t really a platform for comics in the UK like there is in Europe or America. They asked me if I was interested in creating a comic book for them, gave me the specifications and asked me to start writing up a story.

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Planning the Story:

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When I had to sign on, everything seemed pointless. I would search for jobs days on ends, attend interviews well out of my way, where I would have trouble getting to work everyday. The people at the job centre just didn’t seem to care, they always treated me like I was a waste of time and space.

I wanted to try and get some of that into my comic, a poor man going to impossible lengths to get work or to receive payments while receiving indifference from the job centre employees. I had no shortage of ideas for the project because of my experiences, so I started to plan.

I started off with a blank page for each comic page,and started to try and flesh out the idea by drawing a small rough comic. At this point, I didn’t know the style, or really what was going to happen.

I showed Nobrow the comic, they made suggestions and changes and then I started to write up a much more solid story based on the feedback and rough comic. Now I had a script for each page, so I made another plan which was much more developed.

The style was taking shape, and I managed to fit more into the comic. After a few chops and changes, Nobrow were happy with the comic, and I started to work on the final.

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Planning the Visuals:

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Visually I tried to keep to my usual style when I work in pen, I thought this would relax me and get the best work out of me. I wanted to keep it simple, but also be able to build up areas of detail when needed.

When I created the characters I wanted to create a protagonist you could sympathise with.

I designed my characters hunched over, so they looked tired and like they couldn’t be bothered with things.

I usually draw my characters with large eyes, but I thought that I could get more expressive faces by simplifying them to black dots.

With panel layout I kept things quite traditional. I didn’t want to cram too many panels in, so I think at the most I have five or six panels per page.

I use more panels if I need to get crucial timing across, and less panels for easier to read material.

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Rendering the Finished Piece:

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When inking the finals, I planned out the pages and doubled the size to get more detail into them, put in bleeds and panels, and then inked into them. Nobrow have a very unique way of colouring their work, which I had to follow.

I was given three colours to work with, and had to use Photoshop to merge and blend these three layers of colour to get a variety of other tones and colours. Mixing all three gets the dark line I used for outlines.

The process was quite complicated, but the outcome was well worth it.

Text wasn’t too much of an issue, I’m a big fan of hand drawn types, so I hand wrote everything in the book, including the publishing information in the back.

I didn’t need to worry too much about printing, as I sent my files to Nobrow, and they checked everything was in order before the print run.

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Getting Published:

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I’ve worked backwards for this process, instead of approaching a publisher with an idea, they saw that I drew and self published comics, and wanted to give me a chance to create a published work. It was going to be in book form from day one.

© Jack Teagle and Nobrow, 2010

I think from my experience, the best advice I can give is, keep drawing comics, just draw for you own amusement, self publish, post online, get them seen!

The more comics you draw, the better you will get at pacing, timing, telling a story and drawing. People will be able to see you create comics and approach you.

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Buy the book here!

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I was contacted recently by Colombian illustrator Julian De Narvaez and was hugely impressed by his portfolio, some of which I can show to you here.

His work process involves an ink drawing on paper, followed by acrylic and digital colouring. At the moment Julian is working on a series of oil painting illustrations, claiming it is ‘something I’ve always had respect for but not been able to concentrate on before‘.

© Julian De Narvaez, 2010