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Here's a few sketches I doodled recently. I originally posted them on Instagram, but I'm aware of the fact a lot of people don't use it, so thought I'd add them to my main website blog. I kinda like Instagram as a platform for posting sketches. Final works would probably be better off on Tumblr. I share all my Instagram stuff to Tumblr anyway by default, just to cover all the bases although since having had my own domain for probably around 15 years, I still prefer sharing work on my own blog and web site 🙂

I decided to replace the benkrefta.com home page slider images with more recent work and I ended up removing these two pics:

I'd been wanting to create a new series of girl face artworks featuring a monochrome+single accent colour palettes- these are the results. Please with out they turned out. Not sure about the Pikachu one though, but perhaps still an idea worth testing? They gave me an excuse to use Photoshop a little differently that I usually do- to effectively paint digitally using a variety or brushes rather than produce my more typical digital airbrush colour effects with a generic low-flow round brush.

See below for 'Hand print', 'Spidey', 'Hannya', 'Skull', 'Biohazard' and 'Butterfly'.

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 expected. 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 🙂

It had been a while since I drew any fanart. I did the pencil line art for this Death Note pic a few years ago, but only recently got around to inking and colouring it. Time permitting I'd love to draw up artwork for dozens more of my favourite anime 🙂