THE SHIKKER COLA COWS: Part 1

My foray into publishing came with the book titled THE SHIKKER COLA COWS, written by Andy Small. It was self-published in 2000 by the author.

The illustrations for this were done during my period of drawing everything in painstaking finely-detailed cross-hatching.

 What's more I used a ball-point pen for everything. It was a medium I felt most comfortable, as I hadn't quite mastered the nib and ink. In retrospect, it's not the best idea to use such a fragile medium as biro. For one, it creates problems when it comes to reproduction (which I'll explain later), and secondly, the archival quality of the original artwork is very poor.

This is slightly evident in these pictures I'm posting here, as this is the first time I've scanned them, as they've been buried away for many years. Parts of these pictures have faded to almost nothing, despite being kept in darkness this whole time. And unfortunately the plastic sleeves I'd kept them in at the start must have been acidic, so the very fine lines of biro have bled and turned a purple/blue colour. I'd say in 20 years these pictures will most likely be almost non-existent, preserved only in book form.

I still draw with biro in my sketchbooks, but not finished art for a book.

TO BE CONTINUED...