A New Beginning

I've been a bit lax with my blog lately, so I thought I would post some ramblings... I'm fast approaching completion of the first draft of my new book! Having spent years writing half-finished novels, it is a joy to finally have one of them nearing a conclusion (albeit as an intended first book of six).

Let me explain. I took the somewhat drastic decision last year to cease writing my main novel. I had been been working on it for so many years, that I realised it had become a millstone. It was no longer my 'big chance' and had become an unwieldy blockade to progress. I felt like I was getting nowhere.

I do intend to come back to it one day. It's over one hundred thousand words of thoughts and dreams and ideas that I have no intention of ditching. However, it needed to be put on indefinite hold.

My greatest worry was at having done this before. It's all too easy to start something fresh when you have a great idea, but it is often to the detriment of your half-finished work. 'Should I do it?' I asked myself. My lack of major progress in the past few years made the answer simple but no less daunting. How do you put away such a large amount of work to start on something else from scratch?

As some of you reading this will know, my mother passed away last year. At her funeral I reacquainted myself with an old friend. When we were around eleven or twelve my family moved, but we maintained contact on the phone and through letters (No email back then!). In amongst those letters, we drew and wrote stories of our 'alternate' reality. We intermingled our real lives with a science fiction world of adventure in which we were the heroes.

Having been reminded of this, it somehow all fell into place in my mind. My mother used to encourage me in the writing of those stories. Some became primitive comics, others I wrote by hand with occasional illustrations. It seemed fitting that my literary 'fresh start' should be a children's adventure story using the core of those dreams and fantasies that she encouraged. My hope is that since it clearly appealed to me at that age, it will appeal to modern children as well.

The rough structure flowed out into my notebook; A plan for six novels in a series, a chapter-by-chapter breakdown of the first book, characters and creatures... The vast bulk of ideas emptied out in a mass of scribblings over two days.

Since then, I have been writing like mad. My characters have grown, taken on lives of their own and frequently dictate their own paths regardless of my opinion. The story is there, and the first adventure is nearly complete.

What does the future hold for Christopher Tyson and his companions? Well, actually, I know! Will children enjoy reading these adventures as much as I have enjoyed writing them? Only time will tell...

All work is the © copyright of W.D.Lee and/or the respective companies, individuals or organisations to which the work is related. No infringement is intentional. No reproduction or copying is permitted without express permission.

Digital Art - "Dino-Rider"

Pencil sketch laid on simple digital background

Another of my entries for the Imagine FX magazine forum weekly competition. Unfortunately, I spent a good few hours working on this, only to discover a fault on their website just before the deadline, which meant I couldn't enter. So this painting is just for the portfolio...

Title: "Dinosaur Design"

Brief: "In an alternative world, Dinosaurs and humans have co-existed for millennia. Create a dinosaur with a human mount from any known time period (Roman, Medieval, Modern Day, etc) giving consideration to what it's role in society would be; Military, construction, transport, status symbol, etc."

Mostly completed dinosaur illustration

My thoughts were that many would go for Roman or Medieval riders. Some even did WWII versions. In order to be a little different, I went for a futuristic rider. I thought it would be interesting to imagine them used in modern/future warfare. Rather than go for the more obvious 'Velociraptor' or 'Tyrannosaur' types, I tried to think of a herbivorous dinosaur that was more horse-like, and therefore more likely to be a good mount. I settled on Parasaurolophus, as I rather like their unusual and sweeping heads.

Near completion, but lacking the leg armour

After finding a few reference images, I sketched the dinosaur and rider in pencil first, then scanned them in. I didn't have much time, so I kept the painting fairly rough, and tried to avoid getting caught up in details. Again, to save time, I kept the background to a (hopefully) effective minimum, with the suggestion of some other riders in the background. After painting it in a standard ratio (I was using A5, landscape), I decided to see how it would look with a more epic widescreen look, which I tend to like. As you can see, I chose to use that for the final painting.

Final painting

All work is the © copyright of W.D.Lee and/or the respective companies, individuals or organisations to which the work is related. No infringement is intentional. No reproduction or copying is permitted without express permission.

Digital Art - "Mr Stork"

Rough pen sketch, scanned
then placed over a
textured background

Another of my entries for the Imagine FX magazine forum weekly competition.

Title: "Mr Stork"

Brief: "Produce a full colour, full body, character design for Science Officer/First Officer Mr Stork"

Description/Info: "Following on from challenges #193 and #202 - Mr Stork serves under Captain James Quack as the Starship Interpond's stork like Science Officer/First Officer . Based on the very similarly named Mr Spock from Star Trek, and good friends with Captain Quack, Lieutenant Uhurow and Dr "Bones" Macaw."

Work in progress

It flopped a bit in the competition, due to not being clearly 'Spock-like', but I was personally rather pleased with this one.

I went for more of a retro-scifi Flash Gordon/Buck Rogers look, and it turned out to be a fun, vibrant little character which I started and finished within 4-5 hours. For this version I strengthened a couple of highlights and added a couple of antennae on the little sidekick alien, but it's otherwise the same as the final competition version.

Final Painting

All work is the © copyright of W.D.Lee and/or the respective companies, individuals or organisations to which the work is related. No infringement is intentional. No reproduction or copying is permitted without express permission.

Digital Art - "Dark Days"

One of my entries for the Imagine FX magazine forum monthly competition.

Title: "Blade Runner"

Description: "Ridley Scott has decided to remake Blade Runner with the advantage of today's SFX. He's looking for a Concept Artist who can best envision what this world might look like."

Pen and Marker concept illustration

I spent quite a bit of time on this one, and I'm reasonably happy with the results. Given that the brief described a remake of the film and Ridley Scott is in fact genuinely making a sequel, I originally thought I might do something in a more 'up-beat' style. Perhaps envisaging one of the off-world colonies that were never seen in the original film, but that would share visual similarities. After seeing some of the other entries, however, I realised that people were expecting something more reminiscent of the original film, so I went for the dark and moody atmosphere already established. Perhaps not the best choice in hindsight, but it was fun to do something in a Blade Runner style anyway.

I started with a quick pencil sketch, that I then went over in ink. Once I had erased the pencil, I shaded it with markers, to create my initial concept illustration. When scanned, I then roughly coloured this, as a guide for the larger full piece.

In order to keep the atmosphere without directly copying, I avoided looking at too much reference material from the film. I wanted things to be filtered through my own imperfect memories, that way alterations that creep in hopefully introduce a few unique elements to the otherwise established look and feel. There's a bit of everything in there, for Blade Runner fans. A sushi bar with neon lighting, a cityscape in the background with flames from one of the buildings, an antennae-laden blimp advertising the off-world colonies, a spinner launching or landing, pedestrians with self-illuminating umbrellas, sheets of rain and of course a suspicious looking character in a futuristic trench-coat...

Final Painting

All work is the © copyright of W.D.Lee and/or the respective companies, individuals or organisations to which the work is related. No infringement is intentional. No reproduction or copying is permitted without express permission.

Digital Art - "Batcave"

Initial sketched ideas

My apologies to any readers, as I haven't updated my blog for a long time. On the plus side, there's a few things I can post, so here's the first of what I plan to be three new updates in the next day or so.

This is another of my entries for the Imagine FX magazine forum weekly competition.

Title: "The Bat Cave"

Brief: "Depict the Bat Cave how you think it would look"

Description: "Paint the Bat Cave in a graphic novel style (dark comic style), include control panels, and show an innovate entry/exit."

Early Work In Progress

I wasn't especially pleased with how this one came out, but it was good fun and achieved fairly quickly. You'll notice that for speed, I also re-used my vehicle design from a post or two earlier, as a new version of the Batmobile.

Final painting

All work is the © copyright of W.D.Lee and/or the respective companies, individuals or organisations to which the work is related. No infringement is intentional. No reproduction or copying is permitted without express permission.

Digital Art - "Pink Fluffy Apocalypse"

Yet another of my entries in the Imagine FX magazine forum weekly competition.

Work In Progress images 1 & 2

Title: "The Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse"

Brief: "A long hidden manuscript has been discovered and contrary to legend it seems that a fifth horseman of the apocalypse has been mentioned in the manuscript."

Description: "Although the manuscript mentioned the horseman, no description or association was written. Depict the horseman in his glory and display a banner with the forces he/she represents."

Work In Progress images 3 & 4

I suspected many people would go the dark dramatic route, so I decided to do the opposite, and do something fun and humorous. My description was:

"The five horsemen... Conquest, War, Famine, Death and... The Pink Fluffy Maiden of Doom!!! The worst of them all, she has been airbrushed from history because she is so terrifying that none can know of her existence lest they be plagued by eternal nightmares... The Pink Fluffy maiden of Doom will bring about the final apocalypse (the other four are only her henchmen, sent to pave the way) with an excess of throw pillows, pink drapery, lace detailing and rampaging hordes of merciless puppies and kittens... Fear her... Fear the Pink Fluffy maiden of Doom!!!"

 

She's supposed to be very pink and girly. I didn't have time to put in the extra details I would have liked (and completely forgot the banner mentioned in the brief). I wasn't happy with my first attempt at drawing the horse (as you can see in the first two WIPs). However, I went back and decided to draw it in pencil, rather than trying to do the initial sketch digitally. I was far happier with the results, after sketching it traditionally. Then I photographed it and painted over it digitally.

 

Final Illustration

 

I'm reasonably happy with the horse and rider, but I didn't leave myself much time for details or the background. I think I may come back to it at a later date, drop the "5th Horseman" idea, and turn it into something light and cheerful (perhaps another fairy, to add to the collection of fairy paintings!). It's not one of my better pieces, but it's hopefully good fun.

All work is the © copyright of W.D.Lee and/or the respective companies, individuals or organisations to which the work is related. No infringement is intentional. No reproduction or copying is permitted without express permission.

Digital Art - Concept Car

Here's another of my entries in the Imagine FX magazine forum weekly competition.

1st Work In Progress image

The challenge was to design a new product, essentially of any kind. I left myself with little time (again!) so decided to go for a futuristic concept car that I could create fairly quickly. I started with a few very rough sketches of the top, front and side, then a quick pencil sketch of the vehicle from the angle you see.

2nd Work In Progress image

I then went over this in pen and erased the pencil. the next step was to photograph it (I was too lazy too hook up my scanner), and then use it as the overlaying illustration to colour digitally. the finished illustration was started and finished in around four hours.

This final version has a few minor amends, as I decided to change the logo and title details a little.

Final Illustration

All work is the © copyright of W.D.Lee and/or the respective companies, individuals or organisations to which the work is related. No infringement is intentional. No reproduction or copying is permitted without express permission.