From the Desk of George Rex
A blog for my silly thinkings, ponderings, musing and other miscellaneous “-ings”.
A illustration of a friendly mouse wearing colourful knitted clothes a satchel, glasses and red boots.
Please enjoy this little sketchbook mouse I enjoyed drawing whilst in the middle of some intense book work a few months ago. I love using my sketchbook to create characters without thinking too hard about them. I generally don’t pencil anything (like with this drawing) and find colouring and layering with copic markers incredibly meditative.
Looking forward to more sketchbook time soon I hope!
Orange background, hand drawn image of a comics page surrounded by pens and pencils. An ink pot is spilling over with the words “Inky Fingers Comic Gang” in the ink.
Inky Fingers Comic Gang is a series of monthly workshops held in various locations throughout the greater Adelaide suburbs. The sessions aim to be a place where young people (ages 8–14) who like drawing characters and making comics can learn artistic tips and tricks from local comics artist George Rex (that’s me!), as well as meet other like-minded folks.
All sessions are held on Mondays, 4-5pm. All materials supplied.
Locations:
⭐️ First Monday of the month - Glandore Community Centre
⭐️ Second Monday of the month - Campbelltown Library
⭐️ Third Monday of the month - Mt Barker Library
⭐️ Fourth Monday of the month - Noarlunga Library
Find out more about the sessions, how to book in and access info here.
A sticker of cartoon jar of strawberry jam blowing a mean saxophone. The Jam Jar is wearing green shoes and has a pronounced butt. The sticker is propped up against a shelf of books.
New sticker alert 3! I’ll be at @zinawarriorprintfest tomorrow (12 Oct, 11-4pm, @mod_museum) hocking my comics, badges and ✨new stickers✨. Thanks as always to @radstickers for turning my sticker dreams into sticker realities.
This is my last event for the year before I hunker down and smash out the last stage of my book, so come say 👋 (and I can even show you a little preview of chapter 1 of Oh Brother)!
A sticker of a cute pink, one eyed, fluffy monster with six arms and cool green boots holding a yellow blanket over themselves. The sticker is sitting on a background of a orange woollen blanket.
New sticker alert 2! I’ll be at @zinawarriorprintfest tomorrow (12 Oct, 11-4pm, @mod_museum) hocking my comics, badges and ✨new stickers✨. Thanks as always to @radstickers for turning my sticker dreams into sticker realities.
This is my last event for the year before I hunker down and smash out the last stage of my book, so come say 👋 (and I can even show you a little preview of chapter 1 of Oh Brother)!
A sticker of a running cartoon anthropomorphic bat in glasses, stripy shirt, cargo pants and a backpack, on top of bark chips.
New sticker alert! I’ll be at @zinawarriorprintfest tomorrow (12 Oct, 11-4pm, @mod_museum) hocking my comics, badges and ✨new stickers✨. Thanks as always to @radstickers for turning my sticker dreams into sticker realities.
This is my last event for the year before I hunker down and smash out the last stage of my book, so come say 👋 (and I can even show you a little preview of chapter 1 of Oh Brother)!
An orange starfish shaped monster with one eye is looking out at the night sky through an old telescope. They are wearing blue overalls and a pink shirt and look very worried.
And this is final friend, in our trio of monster pals, Trish. Trish is a worry wort and they are constantly worrying about their and their friend’s futures (and sometimes look to the stars for help). Their worry comes from a place of love, because they always want the best for their friends and they are very good at planning things. But Trish’s worry can also stop them from doing things they love (or at least making it far less enjoyable). I can’t *imagine* where I got the inspiration for Trish.
A blue monster with a triangle head, 3 eyes, 3 noses and 3 mouths. She is wearing a pink button up shirt tucked into yellow pants with a belt. She looks distressed by all the mess around her. She has three arms and three spiky tails holding cleaning equipment.
Hello Friends! This is Agatha. Agatha likes things to be just so. She very much believes in “a place for everything and everything in its place.” Agatha can sometimes get very stressed when things are messy and her friends don’t put things away where they should go but she also loves making things for friends. (Those who know me might see some resemblance between me at Agatha).
Agatha is another monster in Edith’s universe.
A happy pink fluffy monster sitting in their bedroom under a tent made of patchwork blankets. The monster has big earmuffs on and rubbing a blanket on their face. They are surrounded by lots of lights and warm colours.
I know a lot of you already know Edith (who is the star of their very own eponymous mini-comic that you can read at my online clubhouse a.k.a website). Edith’s character is inspired by some of my own sensory needs (loves blankets and the quiet) and doesn’t always cope when they can’t get these things.
Edith came about as part of a monster workshop I ran a few years ago now (along with a few other monster pals I’ll be sharing here soon). I fell in love with them straight away and they’ve never left me. I keep doodling Edith in my sketchbooks and coming up with new stories for them (I’m hoping to eventually make a longer comic with Edith and their pals at some point).
A cartoon illustration of a round grey spider knitting a web and wearing a pink tank top and shorts with a star and a heart patch sewn on. They are wearing red pointy glasses and red sneakers.
Here is my newest addition to my collection of George Rex ‘Cool Creatures’ Stickers. I’ll have the sticker version of this spider (along with all my other vinyl stickers) with me at the @papercutscomicsfestival market day next Sunday (in one week!).
Can’t make it to the festival? You can grab one from my online shop here.
A cartoon character holding up the peace sign with their fingers, leaning back on one bent leg and straightening out the other leg.
Following on from my previous posts about designing my characters and then practicing drawing their emotions, I had one final task: to practice drawing these characters in different poses!
My natural instinct is to draw all my characters in pretty much the same, boring, stock standard pose (standing straight with arms either hanging by their sides or in their pockets if I’m not feeling up to drawing hands). But after years of hanging out with animators, and seeing their excellently expressive and dynamically engaging character designs, something has finally started to rub off on me. I really wanted to be able to show more of the characters’ feelings through their body language (and not just their faces). So when I was practicing the new character designs for this rendition of Oh Brother, I tried my hand at pushing the poses of 5 main characters, starting with myself.
It was really hard for me to start pushing poses (as a naturally stiff pose drawer) but I loved seeing my characters become more loose and energetic the more I pushed the poses. I particularly enjoyed using this exaggerated body language to show the different personalities of the characters. My character’s poses are generally smaller and tighter as I’m a generally anxious and nervous human. In contrast, Callie’s poses (the friend character) are big and wide and open, because she is excited about lots of things and generally more open and welcoming.
Pushing poses with my brother’s character had two extra drawing challenges: 1) He is constantly moving (whether it’s his arms or his legs, small movements and big movements, he never truly stops moving), and 2) He mostly went around barefoot when we were kids. I’ve done lots of playing around with ways to get across all of Rob’s different energies in the still image format of comics. And I’ve done my best to draw feet, which to me are like hands but much, much harder to draw (side note: I have never drawn so many feet in MY LIFE as I have with this book; I’d like to say that I’m getting better but…).
I think my absolute favourite pose, of all the characters, is the one of my Dad wearing safety goggles and holding a drill in one hand and a hammer in the other. He just looks so silly (which is a side I don’t think people expect when they first meet him) but also focused and business-like (which I think is more a personality trait that people do associate with him).
A resource that a friend recommended to me that was super useful was Sherm Cohen’s SpongeBob Drawing tips. It was a good visual reminder about just how far you can push a pose.
As this was new to me and my perfectionism can get in the way of doing new things, I found that it was useful to follow these loose steps when trying to draw pushing poses:
Pick a character.
Decide on a pose.
Pencil it, without worrying if I was pushing the pose “correctly”, just draw like I would normally draw.
Then I’d pencil it again but I would actively think about how I could pull or stretch certain parts of the pose. Can I make an arm higher or a leg longer? Should the body be straight up or can I bend in more?
Finally, the fun part: ink and colour!
Practicing all these poses really highlighted to me that when I exaggerate body language, the characters somehow look more real and the emotions I want to convey to the reader are easier for them to understand. This is what I love about comics! I can show in a drawing how I feel much more clearly than when I use words to try and describe how I feel.
I’ve already started to see the difference in my characters’ poses (both for this graphic novel and other shorter comics & character illustrations). So I will keep practicing this and hopefully it will slowly start feeling more natural to me and I’ll be able to cut out step 3.