This is the image is the source for the title of this project. Can you guess why it is called the “vulgar” army? Can you, can you?

This is a is a pen & ink and acrylic on ~5?×7? stretched calico canvas. I wanted it to look like a battered post card so I scuffed it with a piece of sandpaper. This is one of those images that I went, “drat, I ruined it” after I added the text. Oh well, I still like it.

More pages extracted from my sketchbook this time of an experimental homemade ink; bistre (the semi-transparent yellow ink). This is made by repeatedly boiling and filtering soot from a chimney from a few hours. I also added a bit of gum arabic (sp?) as an extra binder. The soot in this case was mostly generated by burning eucalyptus timber. I was quite happy with the result, however, I didn’t make enough. Soot is hard to get out of a chimney (and messy).

How to make bistre ink:

For any body trying to make this ink (based on recipie in “Pen and Ink” by Jos Smith):
1) The colour varies depending on what sort of timber is burnt in the fire place.
2) I bulked the amount of soot I was getting from the chimney by pulverising some charcoal from the fire place
3) The recipe from “The Pen and Ink Book” by J. Smith said to mix equal part of soot and water and simmer for an hour, however, I found I was constantly adding water to it to stop it from boiling dry. This may have been because I was only making a small quantity.
4) It is then filtered through coffee filter paper.
5) Repeat step 3 & 4
6) I added a dash of gum arabic to add as an extra binder as I wasn’t sure what would happen due to the extra charcoal I added. It seemed to work.

Due to issues upgrading the site, a lot of posts were lost. Instead of reposting each sketch, one by one, I am just going to throw must of them in here. So, in no particular order:

Needed to do some illustration as it is desperately neglected at the moment as I try to finish up my thesis. The Illustration Friday topic this week provided an excuse. For some reason this is what the topic “Tales and Legends” conjured in my head. Playing with a different style too, compared to my usual stuff. Not sure what the story is: Is the rat stealing the egg? Is the death-skull koi aiding the rat or trying to eat it or steal the egg too? Pretty quick illustration (for me, I am a slow drawer), maybe 30min on the sketch, and 30 min in Photoshop to colour it. Kind of like this style, though I think the method will require a lot more refining.

Pictures based on photos in “Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms” by Paul Stanets. Technical pen (0.1mm) and watercolour pencil (Vandyke Brown, Deep Cadmium and Deep Vermillion).
(Edit 17/09: Added reference info.)

Images (~20×15cm; 8×6in) inspired the book “Un Lun Dun” by China Miéville. The idea of predatory giraffes galloping down alley waving a monkey carcass sort of stuck in my mind. I really like the idea of a twisted wilderness invading the urban. I suspect there may be a few more images along the lines.