I just finished attending London Film and Comic Con. That's now 10 of 10 UK comic conventions over the last 10 months. A great experience, which I hope to write more about in the near future.  Chatted with loads of great people over the course and was great to meet so many artists all doing their own thing and making the effort to put themselves out there :)

I manged to get a few new pieces printed for the con including the Masked Girl series and tried out a new display constructed of black panels with a black table cloth and an A3 display book in the middle which seemed to go down well.

Currently, my plans are to slow it down- attending two or three cons a year unless I decide to create more con-friendly artwork, i.e. fan art to make it financially worth my while.

I spent the weekend adding two new projects to Benkrefta.com's Projects page.

The Artist's Guide to Drawing Manga, which is my new tutorial book due out in two or three weeks time, as well as my G7 Leaders character art - promotional illustration I worked on for Save the Children. Like all the projects on the site, they're more or less quick overviews or case studies of some of the client work I've completed over my artistic career which I hope visitors will find interesting :)

Both of these took way longer than I'd anticipated. Some days consisting of 16+ hour stretches at the computer to get things done before deadline or sleeping over at the studio, so it's a relief to have them all done and dusted. Here's one of the G7 illustrations I produced and given a black and white manga screen-tone overlay:

London's MCM Comic Con seemed huge this year, with apparently 133,000 tickets sold. It was my 9th time exhibiting, managing to sell out of a few postcard sized prints, which I don't intend to reprint and cleared out my stock of Digital Manga books. I'm still proud of Digital Manga as an all-in-one manual for character artists, so glad to see them sell and hopefully help out some aspiring Photoshop creatives.

I'd love to create some new artwork for the next con or cons I attend, but time is so limited right now with other projects. I'm booked up for the London Film and Comic Con at the end of July and if I can't get any new art done before, perhaps at least my latest book, 'The Artist's Guide to Drawing Manga' will be out and available to sell by then:)

I shall be attending along with dozens, if not 100s of other artists at what looks to be the UK's biggest comic convention yet. I've got a comic village table from Friday 27th of May until Sunday 28th, so anyone who'd like to drop by and say hello, buy a signed print or book is more than welcome. We can discuss potential commissions- this is something I'm happy to do after the con, as I like to put in more time, effort and a better level of finish than is achievable while I'm there throughout the day.

This will be the 9th Con attended in the last 12 months. It was this time last year when I first started making inquiries to set myself up with a table. I've had some good times at the comic cons I've been to and love being in an environment where I get to unleash my inner geek, although I just have one other convention at the London Film and Comic Con in July booked for this year and then I expect I'll only be making appearances at the London MCMs (providing I can get hold of a table booking in time, since they seem to go in under an hour of being announced!) and perhaps a few local cons here in the South East of England.

I was in Gillingham, Kent for a local convention- The 'Medway Comic and Screen Festival'. Only being 10 minutes away makes a change from the long 5 hour drives I'm used to. Not a bad little event for a one day show, selling my usual array of prints and books, while having a little extra table space this time around. I'll be at my next con in London end of May :)

Just got back after attending another weekend convention! The 7th event on my circuit for the year. Liverpool's MCM Comic Con is the furthest north I've travelled and possibly last time I'll be heading up that far out for a long while. As always, great to meet lots of cool con goers, catch up with old friends and fellow artists alike :)

I have created a book!

My Photoshop tutorial book Digital Manga is currently available in the Shop.

It primarily covers Photoshop CS6 and CC, although most if it can be applied to earlier versions such as CS5 and CS4. I'd imagine a large chink of it could technically be applied and translated to other software such as Paint Tool Sai or Clip Studio Paint.

It details every little trick I've learned and implemented over the last dozen years of producing digital artwork by demonstrating a practical use on character art.

It's something I'm proud of and hope it can be as useful to aspiring digital artists and my other how-to-draw books have been for manga enthusiasts.

"Why Photoshop? It's such expensive software compared to alternatives"

Beginners might opt for cheaper software as their digital tool to start, and I wouldn't blame them. Something like Sai is great! I like it for inking and I've seen incredible results achieved with it.

Although alternative software tends to have limits, and it's hard to argue a case against Photoshop's power and versatility.

It's a tool students will eventually need to get to grips with once they go to Uni and Adobe programs are set up on their university or college computers. Then after graduating, you'll find most in-house film, animation and game studios are still favouring PS for 2D art creation.

If you want to be a professional and aren't taking advantage of PS's blending modes, Plug-ins and brushes, you could be doing your artwork a disservice or making things harder on yourself in the long run.

Also, once you get to grips with PS, learning other software in the Adobe family becomes a little easier. Illustrator, InDesign or even Dreamweaver share a similar interface and are designed to be cross-compatible. Learning PS for my manga art later allowed me to get employed as a full time web and graphic designer for several years. Other art or comic design software wont easily allow that kind of transition.

Why should I buy your book and not a different digital art guide or just find online tutorials?

1. I have a lot of faith in my book, Photoshop skills and breadth of knowledge. I'm experienced and confident with what I'm talking about. I've been using Photoshop since Version 4 back in the late 90s and experienced close to a dozen versions of the software. Don't take my word for it- check out my portfolio. The colour work is smooth, clean, detailed and expertly rendered. I'm teaching readers how to achieve a similar deep, vibrant and professional look to their artwork.

2. The book covers the latest version of Photoshop- books published several years ago may cover out of date software. I've tried to make Digital Manga backwards and forwards (as much as is possible) compatible.

3. Digital Manga's tutorials covers a lot, and in-depth. The aim is to bring a novice up to a similar level to myself as quickly as possible. Art still takes a ton of time and practice to get better, but if I can bring a reader's colouring and rendering skills up a notch or two for a reasonable price, I'd like to think that's worth it.

4. Online tutorials can be a bit hit and miss. Before writing Digital Manga, I spent a long time researching what's already online. While there is some excellent stuff out there, it can be hard to find everything a beginner might need. There's also a lot of confusing, poorly written instruction to contend with. Where as I'm able to draw upon my years of teaching experience from tthe previous how-to book's I've had published in order to deliver detailed, yet concise information.

5. Online tutorials are scattered across the web in various locations while Digital Manga houses 160 pages of info in one place. - That info has consistency. It's written by the same author, so you know you wont be getting confused by trying to follow different terminology or a different way of doing things from a variety of different teachers. With digital art, there are multiple ways to achieve the same result so I'd say be consistent and get the basics down before exploring other methods.

6. Even if you read a lot of tutorials and have other art books, there's always room for another. One should never stop learning. And I'd be very surprised if a reader didn't learn at least one new, useful technique from the book.

7. Line art and assets contained in the book can be downloaded for readers to practice on and follow the rendering tutorials Step-by-Step.

8. I want you to become better! I'm happy to offer assistance with any aspect covered in the book, so feel free to email me if you're having difficulty with something and I'll do my best to assist.

And if you've read it, let me know what you think in the comments below.

Another weekend, another convention! This time at the Film and Comic Con at Olympia in London. Now that the weekend has come to an end, I'm starting to run low on some of my stock. Only 2 or 3 prints left for certain designs and I'm down to my last 8 Digital Manga books which I hope will last for Liverpool's MCM con in a few weeks time. I'll be back at the LF&CC at Olympia in July this year.

The 5th comic convention on my circuit at London's Excel centre has come to an end. I'm still enjoying the cons, and will be attending Olympia in a few days for another- The London Comic and Film Festival. The London Super Comic Con was definitely more artist orientated, with a preference for the western scene over anime, manga or film. I got to check out some work by some other amazing foreign artists who don't attend many/any other UK cons and now I'm totally eager to commission some original pieces by one or two of them as soon as I can budget for it. So much good art. If anyone has a spare million lying around anywhere, feel free to send it my way!

The 4th comic convention on my circuit in Telford, West Midlands has come to an end. I enjoyed it- met some great people and received some awesome comments about my work. Means a lot. Dealing with insomnia during a busy weekend event doesn't help matters, but I'm glad everything went smoothly.

Right now I'm in the middle of checking and amending proofs for my latest book, 'The Artist's Guide to Drawing Manga'.  It's looking nice, and hopefully will be available for sale in the coming month or two once it goes to print.