About the "artist"
Des was born a long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away. (Well, OK, England). I got into comics at a very young age, right at the beginning of the Silver Age. (Yep, it WAS that long ago).DC was pretty much the only publisher actually shipping to these shores back then, and even that was very sporadic, so I had to trek after school all over the towns near me to try to find issues. Ahh, dedication. Holiday times were always good, as my parents usually bought me several of the Giant size annuals to keep me quiet. And that was my first ever drawing "lesson", in a Flash annual. Carmine Infantino's article "How I Draw the Flash", to be precise. And ever since, I've been doodling these little superhero pictures. One of these days, I'll scan some of my early stuff and put a page up so everyone can have a laugh.
I've never had any formal art education (as is obvious :), and what I do manage to achieve is primarily through hard work, rather than any actual talent. But it's fun. And it covers the consumables expenses.
I'm often asked what media I use, so here's as good a place as any to go through it. I have dabbled with digital colouring, but (a) I'm useless at it and (b) I just don't find it as fulfilling as hands-on, old-fashioned manual colouring. Sometimes use it for backgrounds, though. On certain pictures I'll use water-colours, or an airbrush, and I do like playing with different media, but most of the pictures here are done with the following.
I usually work on white card, rather than paper, typically around 160gsm - it's much tougher and takes colour better I find. For non-skin sections of the picture, I most often use artist's markers; the Japanese brand Tombo is my favourite. They have both nibs and brushes (one at each end), last for ever, have over a hundred shades and blend extremely well. I can't get the subtle skin-tones I prefer with these though, so the flesh sections (of which there are usually many<g>) are done with oil pencils. The US brand Karismacolor is simply outstanding. Being oil-based, they are very tactile to use and blend incredibly well. And they cover the ground superbly. Typically, I'll only use four, or at most, five shades, but can get a very wide range of tones by mixing.
So that's me, and my doodles, in a nutshell. In months to come, I'll probably expand this section little by little as more questions are frequently asked.