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New Book Project Update

I'm still currently working on my latest 'How-To' guide book due for publication in 2016. Here's a little preview of some of the characters budding artists will be drawing from the book.
The working title for the project- 'The artist's guide to drawing manga'. With so many how-to-draw manga books out already it makes the hardest part just trying to come up with a title which hasn't already been used!

A Solo challenge

In previous books I'd get some assistance- a few images contributed by other artists, help with parts of the text, or I might at least commission an artist to digitally ink a couple of the images to save me some time. I wanted this one to be 100% my own stuff, for better or worse! Since I'd used my my previous back-catalogue of artwork on Digital Manga, I'm having to create all new stuff within an 8 month deadline while having other projects on the go. A challenge, but already have 89 pages down, with 39 to go 🙂

I've now finished my 3 day comic con stint. Was great having people stop by at my table and take an interest in my work and hope to attend more in the future 🙂

Had an idea about drawing a robot holding a dying woman in her arms, so sketched out a quick doodle:

A few days later I was thinking about 'Quake 3 arena' - many hours of fun had playing that one on the Sega Dreamcast with friends, or solo when I was in my teens. Wanted to try sketching something up without starting with a line art like I usually do so did this:

Exciting times

It's now official. I'll be attending MCM Comic Con in London on 23-25 of October. It's the first time having a table in the Comic Village and I'm looking forward to it 🙂

I'll be selling original art prints and copies of my book Digital Manga. If it goes well, my plan will be to attend others and will use this blog to report how it went and perhaps give a few tips to other artists interested in exploring the UK Comic Con scene.

A big deal for me

I've seen or heard of many artist I know attend and sell at comic cons over the years. In my early 20s, some of my online artist buddies would ask when I'd be attending so they could meet in person. I never mentioned that due to crazy amounts of social anxiety and doubts about my own ability when I was younger, I felt I could never join in and be a part of it. It took me several years to get to a point where I felt more confident in myself and my art. So, to just show up and have a table at one of these things is a pretty big deal for me. 

Whether it goes well or not, it'll be chalked up as an achievement either way.

For future reference, here's my ad for local art tuition in Kent:

One to One Tuition using Adobe Photoshop to create and colour character artwork by experienced anime and manga style artist and author Ben Krefta.

Ideal for art university students, anyone interested in digital art, video game art, manga, comics and traditional media illustrators. Students are expected to have a minimum basic understanding of computers and Photoshop. Students will also need to have their own computer or laptop with software and a graphic tablet. To practice techniques in their own time.

Location: At his private art studio in the centre of Chatham, Kent (or can travel to student at an additional pence per mile rate).

Cost: Lessons are £60 per 3 hour session. There are 3 sessions to complete the 9 hours worth of demonstrations. Students are expected to take notes during these demos.

For further information, please contact Ben Krefta. You can Google him, to see further examples of his artwork, or visit benkrefta.com

Here's a little walk-through of me discussing the artwork currently on my website, as of 2015/2016. I'll no doubt update the gallery with newer pieces over the years and take down older artworks. It'll be interesting to see which pieces stay and which get removed over time.

Thought I'd share a little gallery of photos I'd previously taken and posted on Instagram. I usually just post art on Instagram, but sometimes you just come across something interesting and want to capture or document it.

Creepy Tunnel

Butterfly

Flower

Orchid

Crane at Rochester

Harris Hawk

Thistle

Waves Edit

Isle of Grain

Isle of Grain

I’m forever repairing laptops!

Bluebells at High Halstow

Swap

Family of Swans

Rochester Castle

Duck Jump

Did you know I tattoo?

Tui the Cat

Tui the Cat

Designing something a bit different

Most designs you find at local retailers are boring, ordinary, common or look cheap and tacky- especially this recent craze for rectangle prints on the fronts of t-shirts which look like an uninspiring ink-jet transfer paper job. A design on shirts, any other clothing, or even tattoos on skin need to be placed properly. A top-heavy shirt with a design covering just the shoulders and chest or an a-symmetric piece of artwork can look great, but most companies just churn out the same, basic, small to medium sized square or round design slapped in the centre with no consideration to flow, composition or just trying to do something a bit different.

Recently I designed a full-print shirt with one of my doodle-mech designs after stumbling upon a UK company who can process full-coverage 'dye sublimation' shirts at small quantities. Check out www.sublab.co.uk for more info. I designed the shirt to fit the provided template, then sent it back as a PSD Photoshop file. Wanted a dark purple tee with contrasting orange for a while, so here's my opportunity to get one 🙂

All-Over Shirt printing

There was no mention of shirt dimensions other than chest size on site at the time, so did a little research for "American apparel t-shirt" to get a fairly good idea of the size I'd need. Being 6'1" male, with a 40" chest and 35" waist, I went for a medium and it fit pretty well. Some sizes hinted at a large being more appropriate for me. Although I prefer a slightly tighter fit, so wonder if a 'small' (described as a 34-36" chest size) would have looked better on my frame? I wondered if it would be possible to find and supply your own shirts for printing to guarantee a better fit? If spending over £30 for a t-shirt, you'd hope for it to fit well as well as look good.

The design came out very nicely with colours nearly as vibrant as my RGB computer screen. Tonal contrast was lacking a touch in certain areas, which is worth taking into consideration when designing my next shirt. There wasn't enough contrast with the subtle greys on the inside neck logo, so would also look to make that darker for next time. Very fine lines don't show up so well- keeping things a little bigger and bolder is the way to go.

The biggest problem was the inevitable white creases around the seams and armpit areas. Patches, nooks and crannies where the print doesn't reach. I knew there would be a strong possibility of this happening and they looked pretty bad if the arms were raised. I manually filled these areas with a black Sharpie, which over time fades out to a grey tone. Took some effort but now looks A LOT better than it did upon arrival, and probably not noticeable unless pointed out. I'm hoping it'll hold up in the wash. I may need to try other permanent ink or fabric markers if not.

The Result

I like the idea of selling full front and back print shirt designs, but with my mark-up on top, I'm not sure people would be willing to pay £40-£50 for a single t-shirt? It may not be everyone's cup of tea, so for now I'll continue to create my own custom shirts from time to time for personal use and leave it at that. Many thanks to Sublab for providing the opportunity to try this. The shirt looks awesome!

Apologies for the poor photo quality of on my phone, but you get the idea 🙂

My old art website

Organic Metal- moved to a new server today. I then needed to spend days updating the entire site since a lot of the code originally written in 2000 was so out of date.

Organic Metal is nearly 15 years old now, with it's latest web design being around 10 years old as of 2015. Web design and tech moved along at crazy speeds over recent years, and yet I still like it. I'm proud to have created, at the time, one of the best looking art portfolio websites on the entire internet.

My Fame short lived

The internet has changed- people want relevant content and quicker. Most people aren't looking to read through 100s of pages of content on a single person. Especially now that nearly everyone who draws, paints and designs has some kind of web presence, be it on their own personalized sites, or, more commonly, through social media platforms.

I'm still planning to keep it up and running in the background for now as a testament to the 100s of hours and many months I'd spent creating then tinkering with it. It's a forgotten project which belongs in a museum. Although, sadly, like all pages on the internet, it'll no doubt eventually die and be removed.

I've created a new web portfolio - https://www.benkrefta.com [You're looking at it] - something a little cleaner and simpler to replace my previous Organic Metal website. Let me know what you think

It's built on WordPress making it easier for me to update, as well as easier for visitors to navigate and interact with. It is also responsive- meaning the layout becomes simplified to fit tablets and mobile phones.

I totted it up - putting the site together took me about 130 hours! (So Far)