Dungeons and dragons

My son plays Dungeons and dragons with a close group of friends. Buddies he still sees every friday evening, from his highschool days. He is the DND-master, that means he determines the story. They did a difficult quest, and just lost in the final battle. It happens. He asked me to make a drawing of his group (the Carnelians), and I came up with this. 

Ink drawing, scanned and filled with digital colouring. Really fun to do.

Gregorius and the wobbling waves

On his way to work Gregorius meets some wobbling waves. He realizes he will be 10 minutes late.

Michael Lukyniuk, Jorge Royan

The comic "No right turn" is proceeding steadily. Again a few new panels, the first of chapter 8. As you may remember Desirée and Bob climbed the crane to check out the area, looking for Boris and the samurai girl. The first drawing is made by me, unfortunately a sketchers did not have enough time to make hers, so I jumped in.
The second is an adapted one by e late Jorge Royan. I added the silhouette of Boris into an existing drawing.
And the last drawing is by my good blog friend Michael Lukyniuk, from Ottawa, Canada, and his lovely drawing of the boat being lifted out of the harbour.

Off the Shoulder of Orion.

 

I wanted to draw something today. During Lunchtime I sat staring at a fresh new page of my just openened Moleskine sketchbook.

Made a quick thumbnail on a yellow post-it, and started drawing. My usual lunchtime is half an hour, but today I took a quarter of an hour extra.

Sharkeye & son, Private Investigators

As some of you may know, I am handling a collaborative comic, "No Right Turn".
This is chapter 5. Named after the detective bureau where it all started: Sharkeye and Son.
Storyline and production: myself. Drawings: Intro by me, then Cat Andrew (UK), Lee Kline (Florida), myself, Julie Henze (Dutch) and Jim Scheel (Los Angeles).

Sharkeye and son

I am still working on that collaborative comic: "No right turn". Proceeding slowly, but still proceeding. Chapter 5 is almost finished. Carlos Merlo could not continue with his drawing of the private investigator "Sharkeye", so I stepped in myself.
Sharkeye got beaten up by the cops; they wanted to find Desirée, the Femme Fatale of the comic. And Sharkeye let her and Bob (his son) escape.

A scan of the original sketch.

Big Nelly

Just a doodle. Big Nelly, that would be Rocket Rosie's Space freighter.
As it is taking off from the planet Dandaliona-12. :)

Coloured ink

An now its time for something entirely different. I bought a few bottles of coloured ink, to experiment.
Lately I am inspired by the work of the (outside Italy unknown) illustrator Sergio Toppi, and his use of (coloured) pen and ink drawings. This drawing is loosely based on a drawing of Toppi called "Dicono".
I was trying out several of his techniques, but I still have to work out and train myself on how he treats the ink. Anyway, for a first try I am pretty pleased. Not that I come close to his outstanding work, but it's a start anyway.

Akai Usagi

I wrote and drew a three page comic story about an old man meeting some samurai.
The drawings were drawn in ink in a regular A4 Moleskine, scanned and colored with the program Gimp. I used a touchscreen laptop (a HP360) and a stylos to draw the colored backgrounds. It works very nice and pretty fast.
The word Akai Usagi means: Red Rabbit.
For the printable version: see Issuu: http://issuu.com/norightturn/docs/akai_usagi

BlamBlamBlam

As you may recall I host the Comic department of a Facebook site called "sketching Workshop". It features a kind of drawing puzzle game called "the Sherlock game". 15 artists make a drawing on a chosen theme in their own style. Like a dangerous woman smoking a cigarette.
The visitors must guess the artists name.
Unfortunately I lack the time to participate, but it's a challenging game.

Anyway, the drawings this time were so good, that they came up with the idea to change it into a comic story.
A James Bond story!
I helped making some in between panels, and rewrote the story and all balloon conversations.

It will be issued somewhere next week, but in the meantime: here is the Teaser Alert.

No right turn: The jewel

The final pane for Chapter 3 of our comic "No right turn". The secret revealed: an ancient jewel, which is broken. Leaves the quesion: where is the missing part, and what is the meaning of the jewel.

Starting 2014 with Wes Douglas

First: best wishes for the new year! May it be a creative one!
How about this surprise when opening my facebook account this morning: Wes Douglas (from Illinois,USA) made this fantastic portrait of me. I had no idea. How cool is this.
And so well made.
You already guessed that's a reference to the comic we are all working on: "no right turn".
I think that hat looks really cool, I'll have to buy one.
Thanks Wes!

No Right Turn, Chapter 3: The Run

This Comic Noir that I strated by accident, is turning into something incredible. The book is already 21 pages, containing 17 specifically made drawings, from sketchers all over the world. London, Sweden, Tunesia, Argentina, Boston, Los Angeles, Malaysia, and I probably forgot some.

The fist chapter was "the yellow box", a dangerous woman keeping a yellow box.
The second chapter is "Chinatown". which ended in a samurai sword attack.
And now I started the chapter "the run" with Police car chases.
You can find the assembled and regularly updated comic here:
http://issuu.com/norightturn/docs/no_right_turn01-03

No right turn, a new chapter

The 8th pane of the collaborative comic noir "No Right Turn". A new chapter, a new twist, a new colour.
The last 7 panes were all set in the venetian blinds office in yellow colours. I found it time to change the scene, and leave the cliffhanger of the yellow box to add to the suspense. And I was a little fed up with the colour. So I made this panel to set new rules.
It was based on a 5 year old Urban sketch I made during our New York visit, in Chinatown, Doyers street. http://www.renefijten.blogspot.nl/2009/05/new-york-chinatown.html
I am totally surprised about the outcome of this accidental project,the twists and turns and creativity of the project. What more to come?
For the past panels: I keep the issue publication posted a few days ago up to date.

No Right Turn

I made this drawing of Cienega Boulevard, and it unexpectedly turned into an international collaborative "Comic Noir". I made an Issuu publication of the Comic so far (7 drawings at the moment of this post), with drawings from the Netherlands, London, Boston, Los Angeles, Sweden and so on.
Fascinating, as the story is invented on the way!

"No right turn": Jim + Laura

This is getting somehwere incredible.

The comic noir "No right turn", which started a week ago with my "Cienega boulevard drawing".

All kinds of artists all over the world took up the challenge to draw next panes and invent the storyline as we go.

The bottom drawing is the one posted yesterday from Jim Scheel, Los Angeles.

Obove the chilling twist of plot by Laura F. Vasquez from Boston.

It is a little peculiar to put these drawings in this order, but as this is a blog, the newest drawing is always positioned highest.

So if you want to read the story start at the drawing that started all this:

la cienega

"No Right Turn": my turn

The 3rd pane of the collaborative "Comic Noir" called "No Right Turn".
This one is mine. I made the story twist towards a private eye story in Raymond Chandler tradition.
Sketcher Jim Scheel from Los Angeles is busy making the fourth pane.

"No right turn": Cat Andrew

Here is a post I did NOT make: a fantastic drawing by Cat Andrew, from London I believe.
Here's the story: I posted my Cienega boulevard drawing on a Facebooksite called Sketching Workshop, a sketch exchange site hosted by Jorge Royan.
Cat liked my drawing and remarked that it would be fit for a Comic Noir. So she made this panel.
Someone called it "No right turn" which seemd fitting enough. Isn't this great?
My next pane will be shown here tomorrow. Where will this lead to?

No right turn: La Cienega

I am lagging behind with the Timeline series (on the 15th of each month I choose a picture to redraw).
I already picked the photographs, but I didn't take the time to redraw them yet.
On the 15th of July we were travelling through California, no newspaper, no Internet. So I picked from my own photographs, one that I made one night on La Cienega Boulevard in Los Angeles.
Don't ask me why, but this is my favourite photo of the trip. Just a parked yellow schoolbus in the yellow neonlight. I am seriously considering to turn this into a painting.
New developments around this drawing: it turned into a first page of a comic noir: "No right turn". See the following posts!

A dream (part 3)

The dream part 3 (previous: part 1 and part 2 )
Halfway the road to the prison some space invaders appeared and stole the roasted chickens. But the patrol car called in the flying fish brigade, who took up pursuit. The space invaders had not counted on that and in fear made chewing gum balls to hide the chickens in. Will they be able to escape?