The Year

 Vol. 36
18th - February - 2012

M&S

    I'm feeling pretty self critical right now to be perfectly honest starting with, as brilliant as promarkers are they are they can leak through 4 sheets of copy paper and ruin your beautiful cover.

It's got to that stage, off the supplements and onto freebie magazines I really don't want to end up drawing gardens but I suspect I may reach that stage at least this magazine is pretty good the face isn't that bad although in my drawing it looks quite smudgy for whatever reason, the problem with a smooth face is picking out the highlights in such a way as . . . you can't see them to well.

   That didn't make much sense did it, once again the more I look the more mistakes I see, the mouth is a bit lopsided I might quit before I start to hate this magazine.

is it a reflection of my mood? why do all the magazines end up looking so drowsy?

meh.

The Year

 Vol. 35
11th - February - 2012

Q

    (I assume it's Quarterly)

    Oh muse Matt Bellamy and his . . . odd? nose the one that seems to make this seem completly odd although I think it's right. this was a pretty good magazine one were I could just focus on the faces without anything complicated in-between well not much at least.

    Apart from the bad chin and the mysterious nose I would have to say this is a pretty good magazine with some interesting hair predominantly on the right although that doesn't mean I drew it. I had a problem with the skin tone and took my all in the subtlety saying way to far so it's all subtlety and the subtle bits are not the subtle any more.

just lots of silly little errors.

. . . detail.

The Year

 Vol. 34
4th - February - 2012

Sky at Night

    This one is really obvious you can clearly see how I got very bored aster the face turns out just doing black when you only have a B pencil is a bit tricky, apparently I am really good at 'craggy old faces' and this magazine is pretty good but as usual the more I look at this the more I pick out mistakes.

    shading all round could have been darker the shape on the right side is wrong, I think the shadow behind the text and the black background would have really helped this one, if only I had a fill function. I am told this is one of the ones that is better than I say it is but I will leave others to be the judge.

You can see how I struggled with the hair, once again I think having a background in would have made it easier to deal with the problem being defining the hairline. I think it's easier to see on a backlit screen.

obligatory . . .

The Year

 Vol. 33
28th - January - 2012

Scouting

    First off this guy has a horrible beard, all people with neck beards are annoying (present company excluded) anyway they shouldn't be on magazines because the beard does horrible things to the shape of faces making them horibly difficult to draw. Excuses aside this was a really difficult magazine to draw for whatever reason.

    My mum is the leader of a cub troop or the deputy leader? I don't really know anything about it but a perk of the job being a free subscription to Scouting. . . oh joy as a result it was bound to happen as I don't think there are 52 magazines with decent enough covers.

    I have noticed I have a problem, you may have seen it developing over the previous weeks as soon as I have finished the face I instantly get bored and it's getting worse, on the upside I am getting better at quickly doing backgrounds and clothes, but I suspect I will have to get used to it.

Look at those wide eyes, literally wide apart this guy just looks really ugly.

Yeah, not the best magazine.

The Year

 Vol. 32
21st - January - 2012

Christian Aid News

    all praise magazine supplements for they have the greatest covers, this one probably has a decent cover because it's not trying  to sell anything in particular. That aside, it's a decent cover it does something a bit different, it's a bit posturised which is what I always do as part of my painting process. the cabbage looks very good kind of like an awesome screen print the only kind of printing I really like.

    this magazine was not difficult it didn't feel it but as usual I had a problem with the colour the lighter tones just turned into one and it's difficult to see the difference between them, I think once I get the tonal colour matching right I will be well on the way to getting colour colour matching sorted.

    For the clothes and cabbage (I think it's cabbage) I employed the squint technique and got the rough general idea of were things go and then kinda try and get the general gist of it, I'm going to see how many times I can say genral in a sentance.

    You can kind of see the difference between the two lighter tones, that's bugging me so much I wish I could change it now, I didn't want the other tones to be to close and therefore I failed with the other tones.

The Year

 Vol. 31
14th - January - 2012

The Lady

    I don't know who Dustin Hoffman is, I have been assured people who read magazines such as; The Lady. Know exactly who he is that was a weird use of punctuation oh well. My mums friend bought me this magazine as I am not a lady as you may have guessed.

    Last magazine I talked about hating perfect faces, I hate Dustin Hoffmans eyes, especially the lack of white in this eyes apart from that tiny bit specifically on the right of his left eye. The point being his face constantly looks unbalanced. My contrast mission didn't go well this was a more frustrating magazine.

THE EYES.

THE FACE IN GENERAL.

The Year

 Vol. 30
7th - January - 2012

Easy Living

If you look back through the weeks I have done very few women, this has a reason in fact several, 1. huge amounts of text, 2. They usually have many many different photos, 3. they have the perfect look or as I call it the Barbie look, if you look at men on magazines they have imperfect faces that are much more interesting. A friend of mine once said the best life drawing he ever did was of a wrinkly old man.

    If that's put an image in your head then look at this magazine this was not the most fun and I don't know why, it wasn't to exciting on top of that I seem to have forgotten; mission contrast. It's one of those times where I'm not sure what to say.

Not much to talk about on this one it's nothing special though a lot better than halfway through.

This is the first time in a long time there have been decent easy to do lips but as the rest of this magazine is it's not anything special. 

The Year

 Vol. 29
31st - December - 2012

TV & Satellite

    I wish there were more magazines like Radiotimes and TV & Satellite just with a big face on the front these are my favourite to draw, unfortunately there are limited TV magazines in the UK  I only thought there was one until I saw this one It was a good find.

    This one was very difficult in terms of one side of the face, the right side of the face for some reason I couldn't quite get the correct tone my excuse is the colour  threw me off. I don;'t know why but this magazine doesn't look just right. My pencil strokes may be a bit obvious in this magazine.

    I can't complain but it's not my favourite.

I was struggaling with the hair learning some decent hair techniques might be my next mission.

The eyes kinda look good, not mega millimetre accurate but the impression is good.  

The Year

 Vol. 28
24th - December - 2012

Loaded

    Loaded yeah a gentleman's magazine without much gentleman to it, I just couldn't turn down the amazing cover and upon further inspection it's full of great faces mainly of Gazza and a bit of gentlemen's literature as well as a gentlemen's calender yes. It's not as bad as I make it sound.

    Week two of mission contrast not the best like last week I got the contrast but something else wrong on top this time instead of misplacing the dark bits I made them way to small as if I turned the brightness up  but other than that it's a good and finished magazine I'm quite pleased with the outcome it was almost perfect, maybe not perfect. 

I decided not to shade the title because I thought it would blend. . . also writing boring.

An I the only one who thinks. . . scary eyes?

The Year

 Vol. 27

17th - December - 2012

National Geographic

    New mission; contrast time. I was given this and another magazine both tree magazines there is probably a good anecdote about that but I can't remember. These were in part for my dad who likes trees for some unintelligible reason my only fear is that it affects me at some point and I start to love trees pants and all that stuff.

    This magazine was the start of mission contrast and it was not the easiest start I tried a 'new' technique and you don't need to look closely to see its not exactly accurate I put down a base pattern on the trunk before shading all over it and apart from minor details that it. of course there are some minor details missing. 

    Overall not my best magazine but a decent effort I think. My main aim was contrast and I have done OK on that  for once my dark shades are actually dark but the overall tone is not a good matchup by any means.

Another difficulty was the branch over the trunk which blended in superbly, unfortunately superb isn't necessarily a good thing.

And detail.

The Year

Vol. 26

10th - December - 2012

Radiotimes

    Epiphany may have come to the end with this revisited magazines, Radiotimes bring the best covers, the end of my detail epiphany has started a new epiphany for contrast, I have some strange disorder where I constantly fail to add enough contrast by the time I realise I am scared to return thinking I'll over darken or expand shade.

    But anyway if I full through the contrast epiphany soon I cant thin of any epiphany worthy subjects and I may be on the final stretch on the never ending journey to a perfect magazine, there's a paradox for you. It made me really happy basicly.

Not finished but at this point this may have overtaken Wallace and Gromit in my favourites I even like the hair the best of which is on the left side of the face.

Just yay.

The Year

Vol. 25

3rd - December - 2012

the Dandy

    Nostalgia sooooooo much Nostalgia this is my childhood and it's coming to an end, well a portion of my childhood luckily I grew out of this just as they modernised and accidentally made all the characters cute by which I mean  the larger the head compared to the body the cuter (Vsauce explains)

    anyway waffling aside although this isn't a particularly challenging magazine it took quite a while because it was quite confusing this meant the banners were not put in, at least I didn't start it and not finish it.

The black on the magazine is actually red but its very shiny.

Korky the cat ; )

The Year

Vol. 24

26th - November - 2012

delicious

    First and foremost I must apologise I lost the original cover, I think I left it in the photocopier at school by the 

time I realised they were off the shelves, the black and white will have to do.

   If I had to describe this magazine I would have to say. . . elegant? It seems to have a lot of finesse in it if you catch my drift? This time I didn't finish it because I didn't have time  I was enjoying it but I wasn't rushing it just being careful and taking it slow, quality over quantity.

You can see me messing around with contrast in the background that's because a black and white photocopy has an annoying habit of messing with red.

I really liked the contrast between the left and right side of the ummmm Caramelised clementine & pomegranate pavlova that isn't easy to see in the photos only the scans.

The Year

Vol. 23

19th - November - 2012

New Scientist 

Epiphany week five YAY success after last weeks failure, this time I took it slower gradually moving from a human to a monkey and hopefully at some point I will move off am human, as I go I am leaning more and more towards faces. 

    I really loved this magazine usually I mark out the entire thing then gradually add tone and in this case thickness and weight to the lines, in this one I finished all the lines before shading and it gave a really nice effect in black and white I was hoping to do something like this in printing at school but as I was set work I ended up with a half arsed try with a bit of the style incorporated into a mono-print.

    I put in that tiny bit about the bee for my mum who incidentally is a bee-keeper .

    I enjoyed doing this I have been saving the New Scientist for those weeks when I have very little time, although there is no rule against doing it again I wan't to try as many different magazines as possible.

    As great as it is I still am struggling to get the right contrast in the face.

The Year

Vol. 22

12th - November - 2012

Focus

    Epiphany week four; a crisis of confidence, I'm really bored of drawing faces so I am treating this like a mid-life crisis, unfortunately only good cover magazines have people so here is a mammoth. This was honestly a terrible cover I didn't like it before I was drawing it now I like it even less this clearly impacted on the quality of the drawing, eg I didn't finish it.

    I don't even know what to say about this magazine, the mammoth was difficult technically to make things worse the mammoth was almost completely black in the photocopy, this deterred me from the mammoth but the background was fiddly boring and uninteresting to do. I had time to do more but I wasn't enjoying it at all.

    There was a lot of trial and error trying to get a likeness of the mammoths fur, I kinda got there eventually, the right effect but not a perfect match.

    My favourite part is beneath the legs in the pool.

Drum Roll =D

The Year

Vol. 21

5th - November - 2012

Vanity Fair

    This week's was amazing operation realism has made a huge breakthrough this week, although I need to avert my eyes as the more I see it the more I pick out flaws. This is one of my best but I still prefer Vol. 4 and still don't know what it is I like about it that puts it so far above the rest, never the less this week was great.

    I had a lot of fun doing this one due in no small part to the nose, I can't tell you how pleased I am with this one, especially after the recent magazines. Although it is a well done magazine technically there are still problems, the 'background image' fades into shadow incorrectly on the left of bond kind of reducing the elegance of the whole thing. some of the shading isn't quite right etc etc. I blame the reduced use of a light-box or alternately I was more concerned with the face than the background, any time transferred from the background to the face is well spent.

    I chose this magazine because I saw the new bond movie, there are mixed opinions about this particular motion picture there is the school of thought that it was awesome! Then the small minority that loath it for some strange reason. I loved it and wanted to see it again. especially the part when **** ******* **** *** *** ***** ****** because that is my favourite of its type and it looks awesome ********** **** * ******** ** *** *** *** *******. I don't want to give any spoilers.

I had a really big smudge proble on this one I had started darkening the top segment and the bit of paper I used was useless and everything was the colour of Bond's chin I also didn't pick out any highlights on the figure in the background.

Observe the well crafted nose.

The Year

Vol. 20

29nd - October - 2012

The New Yorker

    This is the second part of america and the reason I have two American magazines and two Mitt magazines, what's special about this one? I stayed in the new yorker . . . hotel, and thats why I chose the magazine, it was on a whim.

    This week I tried to return to doing subtle work the stuff I always walk about but have recently forgot about myself and I'm happy to say operation realism has got off to a good start and I am hiding the pencil strokes, what would have taken me half a day I spread out over the week because for once I had time thanks to the holidays. I am at school again so as I type this so that time has ended but hopfully I can be a little more productive and active this half of the term.

I have recently acquired some super dark Koh-I-Noor pencils that really help to get a great contrast, I also didn't close the book till I took the photo so that it stayed dark giving me an excuse why the others aren't as dark.

Obligitory detail.