• I have been humming an haa-hing about the Axel Storm website and how I’m going to do it.

    You know I’ve been doing my website for thirteen years now and I find it hard to get myself excited about finding artwork and scanning it and treating it in photoshop and laying it out for a webpage. I’ve been there and done it so many times now. It’s been quite hard to summon up the energy to plan the site and work out what should be in it, especially as I now have my schedule organised with my editor for the next project – next project?! Don’t I get a moment to draw breath?

    Then I had a brilliant idea. Why don’t I do a video website? That’s much more fun to do and I hope a lot more fun to engage with that a load of static or animated illustrations on a webpage. So that’s what I’m going to do.

    Starting right…now!

  • Barnes and Noble have just introduced the nookcolor ebookreader which means that things are beginning to hot up on the ebook front. At the moment, a lot of children’s books for the ereaders are just quick reworkings of paper books. You really do need a colour device for children’s books so this will increase the market place that the ipad has begun creating.

    Something more than a straight copy of a book needs to be devised. This is a different medium that needs a different approach. If the design tools were easier to work with, I’d be having a go. I’d hoped that it would be easy to convert Flash files to work on these devices. It is now possible but with so much converting to be done it doesn’t feel like an organic experience.

    Flash was originally a neat animation program that designers and artists could get to grips with quite easily. Then it grew into the virtual operating system that is today – very unfriendly to artists. I bet someone is working on a wonderful ebook animation program right now that is going to revolutionise the ebook readers.

    It’s a push-pull thing. No market, no tools. Provide the market and the tool makers will pile in until we have so much content, no one will know what to choose any more!

  • lllustration student, Mike Potesta from Savannah USA, has asked me to give some tips on Watercolour.

    That’s a tall order in one video, but Mike had seen my video of how to draw balloon writing and liked my watercolours, so he went out and bought a set himself.

    He has a project to do. He has to design a cd case and has seen a great design on Youtube that he wants to use. He needs the paper to be flat when he’s finished painting so I start with how to stretch the paper. I’ll do some more lessons as I think of things to say about watercolour.

    Why is this on Drawing school? Water colour is closely linked with drawing. The white of the paper acts as a light shining through the thin glaze of paint, which is what happens with pencil too. It’s different to the way you paint with oils or acrylics – more like painting with light than stuff. Enjoy!