Skull with sunglasses tshirt

And now ... the skull that wears sunglasses - Ray Ban sunglasses I might add.

Skull wearing Union Jack Sunglasses by Zombie Santa

Yes I am indeed Zombie Santa.

Skull drawings

There's something satisfying about drawing skulls. It's also a very useful exercise to draw the skull that will assist when drawing faces and portraits. Understanding the underlying structure is important when drawing any anatomy.
I used ink and brush mainly to execute this, with some pen to firm up the details in a couple of places.

Gold Skulls Apple iPhone case by Sinclair's Design Studio

Run Like You Jumped Bail Sports TShirt

Some times you need a bit of motivation to go running ...

Run Like You Jumped Bail by Sinclair's Design Studio

Customizable sport and fitness tshirt

The final inked design in a tshirt available from zazzle.com

Ladies Customizable Slogan Sport and Fitness by Sinclair's Design Studio

Running girl pencils inked

I inked this in the traditional way, with a No.4 Daler and Rowney synthetic haired brush and scanned it in. I had noticed that there were some minor improvements that I could make. I made the lower front leg a bit longer, and the tilted the rear leg a couple of degrees to give a more dynamic look.

Another running girl pencil sketch

I'm getting a bit obsessed with drawing the ideal profile or silouhette of a running girl ....

I think she's more jogging than running this time ...

Adding the Official Tweet button to Blogspot (Blogger)

The Tweet button is now a necessity if you want to connect with the social network. There is a post on jeffbullas.com that shows the relative merits of shares to Facebook versus Twitter shares.
So I wanted this button but a quick browse of Google I found an outdated button from tweetmeme who themselves recommend the Twitter button. To be absolutely honest I found it odd to generate the required text. Anyway this is what you need to do

1. Go to your dashboard and under Design click Edit HTML
2. Click the Expand Widget Templates
3. Search for <div class='post-header-line-1'/>
4. Under this insert the following code

<div style='float:right;padding:4px;'>
<a class='twitter-share-button' data-lang='en' expr:data-url='data:post.url' href='https://twitter.com/share'>Tweet</a>
<script>!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs");</script>
</div>

The most important part is the expr:data-url='data:post.url' especially the expr:data. I have noted some snippets leave this out and I don't know how they work as the xml processor engine won't produce a value without the expr: in front of the data-url. Also without data-url all you'll get is the main blog URL and you really want the specific URL of the post. Well, I think so anyway.

6. Save your template and view the blog. You should see the tweet button appear as if by magic.

There are other attributes that are listed on the Twitter Developer page that may be of some use but I haven't looked that closely at it.

I admit this is a quick hack and that the javascript is something but without it all I get is a "Tweet" link. I'm going to try other snippets that I find and see if it is absolutely necessary. Sorry I lost the page that I originally got the code from.

My design gets some heart

An new version of my sport tshirt design with the girl running from an extreme perspective angle. This time the background is a heart shape.

Ladies Customisable Slogan Sport TShirt by Sinclair's Design Studio

Ladies Customisable Slogan Sport TShirt by Sinclair's Design Studio

Hulk smash puny doodle!

The Hulk is one of my all time favourite comic characters. Wouldn't it be great to turn into a raging engine of destruction when you're angry and just smash everything that's annoying you? No? Well, maybe that's just me and my unresolved anger issues.
Drew this without any pencils, just straight to paper using a fine tipped pen - it's a doodle after all. Probably should have been concentrating on that training course I was in but somehow I doubt that logging a call in a web based help desk system is going to totally bamboozle me. It's not as if I've never heard of the f**king internet is it? Sorry, that's my anger speaking again.

Running girl extreme perspective design

I "road tested" my drawing in front of a couple of friends and they pointed out what I suspected - the figure was wrong mainly around the angle of the foot and the thigh area. So I modified it and luckily didn't have to carry out any heavy structural alterations!



That'll teach me to publish before getting an opinion ...

Pencil portrait of Angelina Jolie

What is it about scrap paper that you can often produce your best work, yet when you sit down in front of a drawing board with "proper" paper and tools it all goes to hell? Anyway, someone's getting some free advertising today!
I'm quite pleased with this drawing of Angelina Jolie, I think it's recognisable.

Running and Fitness TShirt

A little variation on the design. You can still customize it but you'll have to add your own text if you want ;-)

Ladies running and sport TShirt by Sinx Designs

Customizable Fitness Tshirt

I inked the drawing from the previous post in the traditional way - brush, dip pen and hunched over back :-). When I scanned it in I felt the girl's outline was a bit rough and inconsistent in places so I cleaned it up a bit, imported into Inkscape and used the extremely useful Trace function to "smooth it out" before exporting back out and into PS.
* Edit : I have made a slight alteration - I hope improvement - on the design as I felt it had some issues around the perspective *

Ladies Customisable Slogan Sport TShirt by Sinclair's Design Studio

Ladies Customisable Slogan Sport TShirt by Sinclair's Design Studio

Running Girl Work in progress

I have decided for this design to go "oldschool" as they say. I used Photoshop to get the girl's figure right (it's great to resize and rotate parts of a sketch), printed it off then traced it onto card. Once the figure was traced I added the buildings which I had sketched out in the simplest terms in Photoshop. I've tried to use an extreme angle here to make the image as dynamic as possible.
Here are the almost completed pencils which I'm going to ink in the traditional style.

Colin Farrell Caricature

Here's my attempt at Irish actor Colin Farrell. For me he's one of those hit and miss type actors - probably been in more stinkers than hits but the films he's been good, like In Bruges, he's been very, very good and at least he has character.
Caricaturing is a skill that is hit and miss for me too unfortunately, it's about exaggerating a certain set of features that make a face unique but without going so far that it becomes unrecognisable. I'm not there yet.

Craic Dealer TShirts, Key Chains and Buttons

Some of my Craic Dealer range all gathered together ... for your "convenience" ;-)

I Love tshirts blog features Craic Dealer Tee

Mind Design Grafx has been kind enough to feature my tshirts again. Take a look at his really cool tshirts blog I Love TShirts