octoattack!


I doodled the pencil version of this image in the corner of a sketchbook page one day last February. It wasn't a particularly good drawing, and it was about as large as a box of tic-tacs, but sometime in September I was thumbing through the same book and decided it might make a nice coloured piece.

I did it entirely inkscape, using a style that doesn't have any stroke (as opposed to black or coloured outlines for the shapes, or keeping a vectorised version of the pencils or inks). I love the style when it's used well, especially by people like Arthur De Pins. This one is, of course, a highly simplified version of his style. I think I have some ways to go before I'm anywhere as good.

(My first attempt at this style was back in March with the even more simplistic Holi image.) 

I had thought of maybe putting the character into a background, but that wasn't working as well as I expected, so I'm just going to post it and move on to other stuff, hopefully revisiting the style often. It takes some time, but the results are worth it, I think.

Here's a wallpaper (1600×1200) 

dr. irving cosmocolli

Dr. Irv's cruciferous cosmic cranium pulverises his enemies with purple power blasts. He used to wear yellow tights before his transformation too — it was the uniform at his med school.

(1600×1200 wallpaper)

the spud

I figured that if I was going to spend time inventing a group of superheroes based on Spyder's suggestion of veggie influences, I might as well colour them up and give each his own post. This is Spud, who, in addition to being a lame potato-based ripoff of the Thing, also has purple nipples, and these are important.

Go on, tell me why.


(close-up wallpaper version, 1600×1200)

domo arigato, mr roboto

My first attempt at something orthographic. Drew the graph lines myself, so they are a bit askew. I had attempted a cityscape in a pitch to a client for their Season's Greetings card, and you can see a few lines of that off to the left of this picture. No, they didn't go for it, but I blame that squarely (no pun intended) on my crappy ortho/brush pen art skills. Maybe if I'd pitched the robot instead…

On an unrelated note: I don't draw enough robots. Also: no, I've never actually heard the song that inspired this title.

the brand new you, v4.5623

Welcome to the new allVishal.

In case you didn't notice, you've been redirected to the new host of this site at publiksquare.com. No ads, woohoo! The lightbox script on the work page functions properly now. Also, there's a crappy picture of me up on the about page. I figured all these years of hiding my beauty from the world didn't even result in one crazed stalker, so the embargo on photos of me has now been lifted. May not end up posting personal photos on the blog, however, but who knows. There are all those nekkid pics…

I've also moved the CMS up to the latest version — I'm not sure if Phantom Emoticon is still around. If he isn't then I'll miss the guy a little. Blogging will continue as before, do tell me if anything isn't working right, and glad to see you.

Oh, and the new address for the site is allvishal.publiksquare.com — kindly update your links.

anime girl


Come on, nobody really needs an excuse to draw a hot anime girl, do they?

Despite being coloured, this is under Sketch Machine because:

1) It really was a sketch, at least until I scanned it in and decided to see how quickly I could get a coloured* version I would be satisfied with (Answer: 2 hrs, but only because I was listening to some slow piano music. Once I put on Jet’s Get Born it sped up).

2) Late in the colouring I realised that I had done the bonehead mistake of drawing her thumbs on the outside and had to fix that as best I could.

3) It’s crappy enough.

*Coloured in inkscape. My tablet isn’t working, and vector is much easier with a mouse.

In case you want my crap cluttering your desktop, here’s a wallpaper (1600×1200, sorry widescreen laptop people):

dracunerd vs wolfthing


Not based on any topic. Just a product of free-drawing (though I must admit that at the stick figure stage it was a warm-up for a Kong Vs Gojira sketch that might have ended up under Kaiju Monster Apocalypse — I still want to do that one).

I used the fat brush pen for most of it because I have little experience with that. It’s quite hard to control on this paper, but the style works for something rough like this. Smaller details like much of the textural linework on dracunerd were done with the small brush pen, and it adds a a nice lino/woodcut look to it, I think.

And yes, the flower was added in as an afterthought after all the inking was done.

rabid rabbits


(This is, of course, shamelessly ripped off from that issue of NEXTWAVE with the widdle fuzzy bears of death)

the three-eyed god of soda can pull tabs

when unusual chickens attack!

garvan the lapine


Sketched up Garvan the Lapine, a character Dan is writing about this month. I didn’t do any pre-sketches — this exercise is meant to be done ‘cold’ — so it’s ended up looking hideous. Blaaaaarh, still can’t handle line weights. Oh well, practice practice.

PS I need more fuel. Have a couple of ideas for the other two options Spyder gave me, but those will run out soon. Comment away, and let your imagination run wild.

under the bed