The blog of David Michael Wright - Freelance Illustrator

Hello, and welcome to my humble blog!

If you too like the drag of Graphite on Paper, can appreciate the flick of a well executed Brushstroke, and like I favour subjects of the Dark and the Monstrous, the Weird and the Wonderful, the Abominable, Diabolical, Fantastic, Dramatic, Adventurous, Ghastly, Nightmarish and Phantasmagorical!

…Or like myself, seek to devour all sources of the Technical, Practical, Methodical and Inspirational!

Then perhaps this blog is for you.

It is (I hope) to become a progressive ongoing account of my endeavours as a Freelance Illustrator specialising in mainly the Fantasy, Sci-Fi, and Horror art genres. As is always the case (except perhaps on Sundays) I will do my very best and veritably strain heart and nerve and sinew to write a faithful accounting of all my latest Discoveries, Resources, Technical Explorations and Inspirations, in addition of course to featuring regular posts of my current Creative Exploits and Works in Progress.

Enjoy!


Monday 23 November 2009

The D.M.W revolutionary all new superdooper thumbnail manikin!




Bit of a fun weekend project : ). I've always disliked using those art shop manikin's that are available to buy as a drawing aids, sure you will have seen them about, yup! those lanky wooden ones that aren't in proper proportion with the long heads and really limited movement (legs glued on at the pelvis!) Aaaaargh! Hate em! It's not that the idea's a bad one, not at all, having a little figurine to work out tricky poses and lighting I think is a great idea, but unfortunately the usual manufactured format that are available frankly (as the Americans would say...) SUCKS!
So I decided to have a crack at building my own out of florists wire and modelling putty over the weekend, I wanted to make my little chap smaller so he'd fit in my pocket, and more bendy, so he'd be good for doing thumbnaily stuff from. So I got all my anatomy books out, plus some measuring dividers, and a few other bits and pieces and got busy. I had to build him in fazes to let some bits dry before continuing on with other parts (so the previous finished bits didn't get squished) so I kept coming back to it quite a lot as the putty takes a few hours to harden up. I think it turned out pretty cool though, I Kept things pretty basic with the musculature (I'm no sculpture) but really tried hard to get the proportions and masses as accurate as I could, I suppose florists wire will no doubt snap eventually with lots of bending, but the extra pose-ability is worth the snap factor, and when it does inevitably break I should hopefully be able to mend it again pretty easy anyhow. I might try building some 'scenes' to set it within in the future too - rocks from the garden maybe or whatever else comes to mind.

... got excited and made a bigger poseable hand as well! (see photo)

Friday 6 November 2009

Earthdawn - Kratas city of Theives






Just been sent through a nice shiny copy of the new Earthdawn - Kratas city of thieves book from Redbrick (published by Mongoose Publishing). It's a great book and I had a lot of fun illustrating some of the interior images for this volume. Earthdawn is a rich, mysterious, ancient, dark, and exciting gameworld, and is wonderful material to illustrate. Here are a couple of my comprehensive sketches and a final...

Thursday 5 November 2009

Gamesfest 4




Travelled from Yorkshire down to Watford near London to attend this years Gamesfest late October.
Had a great day out - drew a few pictures, sold a few prints, ate a few sandwiches, and met some jolly fine folk! Here's a few snaps from the day...