Birology: 'Click!'

Birology: The Salesman

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.

Birology: The ZombiPied Piper of Hamlin (a work in progress)

Like Life and runaway golf carts, conversations can take odd turns. This happened to me on Facebook the other day, as a conversation with a friend about how truly awful Celebrity Big Brother is quickly took a left turn into zombie rats (yes, it is one of the weirder conversations I've had this week). And then from zombie rats we moved on to how you'd get rid of them. With a Zombified Pied Piper ('ZombiPied Piper' for short) of course! Before too long I'd blundered into creating a story...

Think about it: our fear of vermin, coupled with our morbid fascination with zombies, and Black Death parallels aplenty. Zombie rats take over Hamlin, biting folk and spreading their necrosis, until a mysterious undead figure shambles into town and promises to get rid of them...for a price.

I'm sure you can imagine what might happen next. If you can then stop! Don't ruin the ending for yourself - I haven't even thought it up yet.

So on the back of this great idea is an idea-sketch in Biro, and it's actually done on the front of a blank envelope (hey, sometimes you gotta work with what you've got. My time in the Combined Cadet Force taught me that. Or maybe it was MacGyver...)

The Piper bears close resemblance to the Ghost of Writing Future (featured last month - and last year if you're really being pedantic, seeing as it was 2011), not because all I can draw is hooded skeletons, but rather because this is just a sketch; a placeholder. I had the idea that the Piper should be Grim Reaper-like in appearance, and this was just the first (admittedly cliche) image that sprang to mind. He'll likely change as I give it more thought. What I want to keep though is the idea of he and the rats being inseparable: of them melding and spawning from his black cloak and of the uncertainty where the Piper ends and the vermin begin. I think it's a pretty cool idea for an image.

I also like the way Biro sketching looks: it makes pictures look like rough wood carvings - just the sort of period feel I'm going for.

No doubt I'll be plaguing you with more of this kind of stuff as I think more about it. Don't worry if you're not a fan of rats or undead flautists though. There'll be all sorts of other stuff coming. No idea what sort of stuff yet. It all depends on the kind of conversations I have.

Birology: Harvey 'Two-Face' Dent

Birology: Silents Night, Holy Night...

Birology: The Silence

Done on the train just now, snapped and edited and uploaded with my iPhone (First time I've ever done that - ain't technology marvellous?), a picture of a Silent (Doctor Who's terrifying foes from Season 6). Another picture done in Biro. As I said in my previous ghost post, it's my favourite medium, which is why anything I now do in Biro gets its own special title: Birology.