Birology: The Man at the Door at Midnight

Who is The Man at the Door at Midnight? What does he want from you? Or maybe the better question is, what would you want from him?

You'll find out soon, as I've just finished the 22 page web comic called 'The Man at the Door at Midnight', done entirely in biro and the Birology style. It's been written by my good friend Christopher Jackson, and it's a fantastic story - spooky, unsettling, and with some properly great moments in it. In fact, I think I'm right in saying the story was partly inspired by this Birology drawing I'd featured last month.

It's been a real pleasure to draw his story and I'm incredibly excited to show it, as I know he is too.

And it's only the first in an ongoing web comic anthology of biro stories we'll be creating together, under the banner title 'The Bleeding Biro'. Chris will be writing them and I'll be biro-ing them. They'll be uncanny tales of grim and ghoulish goings on, set in the past, present, and future, and featured on a dedicated web comic site we're putting together.

But that's a couple of weeks away yet. The above image is of the mysterious Salesman from our first tale 'The Man at the Door at Midnight', and is an idea I had for the cover. It's lit by candle, but instead of being done on paper, it's actually been done on tracing paper (which is a nightmare to draw on in Biro as it keeps rubbing off. Good tip though, spray the finished drawing with hairspray and the ink won't rub off. Also works with preventing pencil from rubbing off tracing paper). Anyway, using tracing paper rather than the normal stuff allows for a stronger light (given off by whatever is in that bottle) to bleed through, but still manages to keep it diffused enough that it doesn't overwhelm the drawing.

Birology: 'Click!'

Birology: The Salesman

Birology: The Mystic

A gloomy circus fairground tent. A mystic fortune teller. A glowing crystal ball. Can he predict which version is your favourite? 

The Mystic, lit by LED light source...

 Lit by candlelight...

 Lit by candlelight and green LED...

Birology: The Astronaut and the Shadows...

This took forever.

At about the same time as I did the Leviathan squid picture I also had the idea for a sort of Steampunk astronaut investigating a spaceship. I liked the idea of someone wearing one of those cumbersome brass diving suits in space, mostly because those diving suits are incredibly cool in their design, and also it's in keeping with the Neo-Victorian feel that Birology pictures tend to have about them.

After a lot of rough sketching of a fella tramping around shadowy, cathedral-sized ship-spaces, I hit on the idea of something more claustrophobic. And because light and dark play such a huge part in Birology pictures I wanted to include shadow as something malevolent rather than just decorative. But not just one shadow; a writhing mass of them.

So here we have it: a tangle of nightmarish shadow creatures dragging a panicked astronaut into the darkness and, presumably, to his death. His only chance of stopping a shadow - his light - is just out of hand's reach...and getting further away. I also tried a version with a green LED source, but it didn't quite get the effect I was going for, even though it does look pretty hellish.

The weird shadow creatures are whatever you want them to be. Nightmares come to life, shadows taking revenge, aliens, 2 dimensional beings pressing themselves onto the fabric of a 3D world... or maybe something else. All I know is, they completely burned out my Biro trying to get that nice thick black darkness look.

I like to think it was worth it.

Birology: The Librarian and his Shadow

'The Librarian and his Shadow'

Plain ol' black Bic Biro on yellow paper. I had an idea for a picture with a man who was so old, that his shadow was a skeleton, as a sort of macabre reminder that his death was not far away. As for setting it in a library? I don't know why. But I do think that libraries are pretty creepy places: all shadows and silence and long canyons of dead trees.

Birology: Biros, Candles, and Lovecraftian Beasts

Last night I had an idea for something vaguely Lovecraftian that I wanted to call 'And I looked, and I beheld the Beast'. I wanted it to look like a guy had gone down into his basement or been walking down a dark alley or pitch black cave with his lantern and just run into a tentacular squid monstrosity. And, eager to experiment with outside light sources, I also knew that I wanted to light it using a candle. So, in the dead of darkness, I quickly sketched this, using just a normal Bic Biro and two felt tips...

The brightness from the man's lamp is created partly from the shading, and partly from a pocket torch I used (placed behind the picture) to enhance the glare that's meant to be coming off the lamp. It adds greater vibrancy to the picture, and really draws the viewer's eye to the centre of the page and the action.

Then today I drew a proper version in Biro...
That's just a Biro-drawn picture, scanned in and without any torches or trickery. I then decided to take a copy of the scan and apply some felt tip. Felt tips are awesome, and used right they can look truly beautiful, but so few people use them. Go on, steal some off your niece or nephew and get practising with them!
That was just a fun aside really; more an experiment than anything else. And a way to pass the time while I waited for it to get dark so I could do the final picture...

In a nice dark room I took the original Biro drawing and placed it in front of a candle (being careful not to set fire to the original drawing! Seriously, if you're going to try creating nightmares in the candlelight, do be careful that you don't burn your art, yourself, or your house down), so that there'd be a light source to enhance the light/dark contrast of the picture. Then I took a picture of it. I used a candle rather than the torch because I wanted the man's lantern to look like an old fashioned lamp rather than anything modern. The candle gives a softer light too - one that works better with the shade contrasts and fits the Lovecraftian image I had in my head. The result is this...
Not too shabby, if you'll allow me to say it myself. The candle gives a lovely natural glow and, further away from the light source, the light's interaction with the Biro gives a lovely bruised colour, creating a rich darkness. I hadn't expected that to happen, but blimey I'm glad it did.

So there you have it: a nightmarish squid in 4 sketches. And all it took was a Biro and a candle.