Another Housekeeping post

Can I tell you a secret? There's artwork in my portfolio from 20 years ago. Characters I'd drawn in 2004!

My gallery deserved another tidy. I still like a lot of my older artwork, despite the fact that it might not quite represent my current capabilities. So, should I remove older artworks to make room for something new? Or re-work older images in an attempt to level them up a notch? I began making a few minor improvements to an older character art. An hour later, I realised it would probably be better to simply redraw it from scratch. And in that case, I might as well just start something entirely new instead!

Originally, I'd considered removing a dozen images from the site, but in the end, I just reworked the Orange Masked Girl below, adding extra splatter effects to make it a little more interesting. It's more full-on Chicano graffiti style now. This was originally one of six masked girls I created 10 years ago, in 2016. Time flies.

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Frieren

I also uploaded a new artwork I'd created of Frieren. 

Frieren is an immortal elf from the anime / manga series "Frieren: Beyond Journey's End." A Dungeons and Dragons style JRPG tale. She travels through various lands, accompanied by her companions, in search of bettering her magical abilities, such as casting spells that turn the ground into a field of flowers. Through her encounters with others and the challenges she faces, Frieren's character explores themes of resilience, companionship, and the passage of time. Her journey serves as a reflection on the nature of immortality and the complexities of existence.

Frieren Step by Step

Here's a stage-by-stage process of how she came together. Sketch - > Cleaned, Ink lines - > Flat Tones and Shadow - Rendering and Background. 

The final stage was to adjust colours and swap out the background for something a little more harmonious.

Lastly, a couple of close up shots...

The Frieren anime series shot up to the number 1 spot in the all-time best ever anime charts. It was good. Good enough for me to rate it a solid 7 out of 10, and to create fan art too. Although it's not quite able to compete with other anime I'd seen recently such as Dr Stone, Made in Abyss and Heavenly Delusion. I'm now feeling the need to create something less pretty and a little more bad-ass! Do you have any favourite characters from anime, games or films? An idea which might look cool? If you have any suggestions, let me know :)

I'm doing another tidy-up of my gallery

It's never an easy task deciding which artworks stay and which ones leave the gallery. There's usually at least one thing I still like about every image I've created.

When I was younger, I guess it's fair to say I had a small degree of aptitude when it came to art creation, but I've never been a naturally gifted genius. Creating each piece meant relying on a lot of grit, determination and trial and error over time to get artwork to a level where I was happy with the result. And therefore, removing any image from the gallery, effectively letting it die, always feels like a difficult job.

But with each passing year, my art gets a tiny bit better. I can see minor inconsistencies or errors with early work which bug me. And I ask myself, why am I presenting this as a representation of my capabilities?

Bye Bye Witch

Firstly- I created this anime witch art in September 2003 - 20 years ago! I'm amazed it stood the test of time, while many other artworks of that era had since been removed from my galleries. The face could use some tweaking and the background needs some work. There's a few other bits I'd alter to bring it up a notch. Having said that, I still like 85% of it. I'm going to keep it available for sale as a print, at least for now.

Goodbye to Cigar Girl

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Cigar Girl - a Chicano / tattoo themed character I made up in 2009. 14 years ago. At the time I wanted to become a tattoo artist. As an exercise, I'd check portfolios from local tattoo shops and try to re-create their tattoos while attempting to improve them [see photo]. In the end, I went to the shop this tattoo came from, showed them my portfolio and and asked for an apprenticeship. They liked my work, but didn't give me an apprenticeship. I ended up teaching myself to tattoo. A job I held part-time for around 12 years.

See ya Skull and Snake

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Skull and Snake – Again, this was a case of taking someone else’s art and attempting to improve it. The amazing thing about this one was the fact the original was created and drawn by an A-Level Art teacher [see egg-snake image]. Over the decades I’ve also attempted to land a job an an Art Tutor in a school or Lecturer at an art university. Other than a few short spells of 1-1 teaching and a one-off 2 hour Uni lecture whilst freelancing, I never managed to land a full or even part-time position. To be honest, I never understood how egg-snake man made it and I couldn't? For now I will have to impart my teachings through my How to Draw Manga book. This Skull and Snake artwork will, for the time being, stay available to buy as a print.

Goodbye to: Neon Pink Streak Portrait and Sci-Fi Sunset

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Neon Steak Portrait  - It was an experiment, using some digital textured media brushes. Normally my work is all smooth and airbrushed, so wanted to try out creating something more raw, textured and graffiti-like. It was quick to produce compared to typical art I make. It's a bit sketchy and think it shows. It was fun trying out a different style. Buy the A3 Print here.

Sci-Fi Sunset - Similarly, using textured brushes, I wanted to create something a little more painterly than my usual smooth, rendered blends. I like the colour scheme, so perhaps I can use the orange and purple again some day in a different, new and more polished artwork? Buy the A3 Print here.

Hello to: Geisha, War Memorial, Junko, DnD Girl, Zoro and Guts

I'm replacing the above artwork with 4 new pieces created within the last 12 months. I'd like to, at some point, present a closer look at each of these with their own blog post. For now, they've been uploaded into the gallery as stand-alone images. That now makes 45 portfolio pieces. Let me know what you think of these.

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From time to time I like to tidy up my portfolio

Never an easy task to decide which works stay and which ones go. There's usually at least one thing I like about every image I create. Or one thing that demonstrates a different skill or technique I'm capable of. Originally my portfolio on this site was only ever going to be around a dozen pieces, but my gallery layout allows for more without looking over the top, so decided to populate it with some extra works.

Bye Bye Ninja Girl

I've decided to remove this ninja girl commission I did back in 2013. I don't hate it, but the anatomy and colour use some improvement. It's a little basic compared to some of the more recent stuff I've been doing. I'll miss the bold red background and the flower boarder. Maybe I'll use those elements in a new piece some time?

Hello Harley

I'm replacing ninja girl with the Harley Quin Fan art I did this year in Markers and Ink. I've since sold the original to a customer in France.

Also a more monochromatic Skull/Wolf/Girl image I created for chrome/mirror prints (which can be ordered in the Shop) This one was created in Photoshop CC with my Wacom Cintiq tablet. That now makes 31 portfolio pieces.

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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:

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.

During the start of the year I was asked to give 1-1 tuition to a talented 11 year old girl interested in bettering her anime and manga drawing skills. Although being more used to older students working solely with digital media, it worked out well. The tuition consisted of setting small projects, demonstrating, drawing together or sometimes just overseeing with the lessons shifting more towards digital as the weeks went on. Here's a compilation of some of the sketches I'd worked on during our process:
Drawing heads, discussing shading, coloured pencils, inking.

Hands, time limit life drawing from manikins, chibi!

Constructing figures, Posemaniacs time limit reference drawing and adaptation.

Time limit Backgrounds using reference.

Photoshop original character drawing using Intuos Pen & Touch. Student used Intuos Pro & a Cintiq 22HD. Who's Jimmy Jonh?