The Critter Shed - Feature

Critter Shed are are an independent printing press company and have been helping artists to get their work in print, and out into the world for a while now. They collaborate with lots of artists to create self published comics and other printed products.

I've been following Critter Shed for a while, so when they recently posted about a new comic they were taking submissions for called 'Portraits of a Nightmare' where they basically wanted submissions that represented the title, I couldn't resist submitted.

I was quite busy with some client work at the time, so wanted to do something that would represent me well, but something not too complicated that I would have to spend a ton of time on. So I had a quick flick back through my sketchbooks and found this (then recent) zombie sketch I'd done, as I'm sure most people know, I love zombies and they're obviously creepy so I decided to develop this piece into the final illustration.

The final illustration was required to be black and white, my first thought was to just do the black line work and maybe try and shade it with some smaller lines or try and half tone some areas, however I knew that I could create something more dynamic. So instead of using black and white I decided to go with grayscale so I could create more depth in the piece.

Here's a couple of photos of the comic itself, the cover was illustrated by Joanna Thomas who did an awesome job, and I think that the back on yellow works really well! There's also a photo of my illustration in the book along with the digital version, there's lots of other awesome artists in there too so make sure you head over to Critter Shed's website and check those out! If you'd like to buy the comic you can do so here.

Thanks for reading, and if you'd like to view some of the process of this piece, you can do so in my first vlog below, new one coming to my Youtube channel next week!