It’s been really sad times.

There’s no nice way of saying this, but I lost my little brother on the 1st May. It is by far the hardest thing I’ve had to deal with for a very long time. In fact, I don’t think I’m ‘Dealing’ with it very well at all. It’s mid-July now and I still feel like he’s still there ready to take a phone call at any minute. But he’s gone. He was only 49. He was a great bloke and growing up, was a great kid, we grew up very close. His funeral was special, lots of family and friends came to say goodbye. RIP Nat xxx

Drawing to keep my mind occupied…

Sort of following on from my Hannah Barbera character poster/series, I decided to ‘Zombify’ the Flintstones, which went well, I think, you can be the judge of that….

Then came June*… Re-drawing some old art from 1995 to 1998

(*and the first couple of weeks of July)

Going Through Old Sketchpads

Like you do.
Well, I’m sorting out a couple of cupboards and I had about 6 big boxes full of old sketchpads, a huge pile of loose drawings, doodles and finished art and a load of poetry notepads. Whilst sorting these out, I came across a pile of Warner Bros Looney Tunes characters that I drew back in 1996 and 1998 and decided to re-draw them digitally.
They’ve been fun to revisit, re-draw and colour digitally, but I’m not sure whether they deserve their own page or not.

Anyhow, here they all are:

Bugs Bunny redraw 2026 — Bugs Bunny 1995 / 2026

That’s All Folks! …. or is it?

NO! Of course it isn’t!
I’ve also been redrawing some of my drawings too, Nana (Nar-nah) and his fruity friends…

What else you been drawing Dean?

Well, Scooby Doo and Fangface, thank you for asking! In the style of Mandelas, they are striking in both black and white AND coloured…

So, that’s about all I’ve been drawing over the couple of months or so. I’ve just been trying to keep my mind from thinking too much and getting too low about my brother, I miss him SO much. Here’s to you little bro, xxx

WOOHOO! My Hanna Barbera ‘Trading Cards’ are now finished!

It’s been a HUGE project, with tons of research, tons of analysing, recording and noting, with so many characters!
What started out as just a bit of ‘Fan-Fun’, has become such an EPIC project that I’m STILL working on bits of it to make it as perfect as I can, mainly out of respect for William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, but also for others to enjoy.

I tink that’s how and why the ‘trading cards’ idea came to be. I’d seen others create card-like copies of Hanna Barbera characters whilst drawing all the characters for my poster and thought it would be a shame to have all these drawings just sitting on my hard drive, when they could be out there, on the internet for everyone to enjoy and remember, or learn about!

So I rustled up a simple but stylish design, featuring a different colour scheme per decade of first release, then after each character features on their own individual card, a ‘Group’ card follows, featuring all of the characters from that cartoon together on that ‘Group’ card. Every card has the year of first release, the name of the character and the title of the cartoon series that the character originated from. I’m in the process of adding all 1532 cards to Pinterest – 1532 Hanna Barbera Characters so be sure to pop there to see them appear! Here’s a sneak preview of some of them;

Heard of ‘Red Bus Russ’?

I drew a portrait of him during a bit of down-time

And it was really well-received! Woo and Yay!

Whilst checking and re-checking my Hanna Barbera piece, before it goes to print, I fancied something different, so started doodling different stuff, whilst doing so, I finished a portrait of an awesome content creator that I follow. His content is mainly about how awesome it is to be a Brit. (He’s not a Brit, but he found love with a Brit and has moved to the UK and his content is a funny look at the differences he finds between the US of A and the UK. He’s been great for me during tough times, to see the funny side of life. Here’s a link to his page on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/RedBusRussVlogs

and here’s the portrait;

It’s not one of my most detailed pieces, but I’m happy with it and it was great fun to draw (even despite that much beard-hair!)

Anyhoo, I emailed it over to Russ and was delighted to get a lovely reply –

“Hi Dean,
Thank you so much for the art, I absolutely love it! I wonder if I could have permission to use it on my social media accounts and post about it with credit to you?”

I absolutely love getting positive feedback on my art, so this has made my day and hopefully it might bring some much needed new folks over to follow me on my socials!

Personal Hanna-Barbera Mission Complete*

*Well, almost complete. 99% there, I’ve just got to get the poster or canvas printed and it’ll be 100% finished.
I’m excited though I’ve been digitally drawing like a machine for 7 months, over 6 months on my Hanna Barbera project! If you like cartoons, you’ll definitely see one of your favourite Hanna Barbera cartoons in it! Click on the link below or visit my projects section to see how it all went:

https://pickledpizzaart.wordpress.com/projects/projects-pickle-draws-hanna-barbera

And as soon as it’s printed, I’ll get a photo of me with it, and post it here (and on that page!)

OOOOoooOOOooh!

It’s Halloween … again?

Well Hello again,

It’s been another weird year, most of which saw me throw a small, sulky hissy-fit, giving up on all drawing, partially because hours and hours (weeks, actually) of designing, re-working and drawing two sets of cards for Upper Deck on behalf of Marvel saw all the designs shipped off to California, for both sets of cards being decided to not even be sold. Which means, because of a contract and legal reasons, I am unable to show ANY of the designs anywhere. This is the biggest frustration of them all really, all that excitement but nothing to prove the hard work.
This wouldn’t have been enough to stop me drawing though, that came later, as less and less enthusiasm for my art became a bit of a problem for me to deal with. Mainly mentally, which is something I’ve always struggled with, but this time, after dealing with Ocean’s scoliosis, then heart problems, and Vikki’s breast cancer, which has been especially hard to deal with for the past 2 years (she’s still receiving aftercare treatment) add to that having my own disability issues etc etc I guess my brain just shut down and I couldn’t see the point in working hard for little or no rewards anymore, even getting new followers seems impossible, hey-ho.

But I’m drawing again! Woo-hoo!

Back in August, as the end of the school summer hols, I started feeling a bit better about things, so I fired up the laptop and my drawing screen (XP-Pen 16) and started drawing some old classics, starting with Spongebob Squarepants, for no particuar reason, but rather than the slog of recording me drawing it all, editing it into a video etc, I just enjoyed drawing each character individually, drawing a new background, then saving them all as transparent PNGs, I culd make a video at a later date, showing each character individually, so more ‘post-work’ than ‘me creating the work’, just to take some of the thinking out of it, so I could enjoy the process a bit more.
I’ve drawn quite a few since then, posting them mainly on Facebook, but adding a few to Instagram and Tik-Tok when I’ve had the time or the energy.

I’ll be adding them all to my recents gallery soon, but this week has been taken up with the dentist, spending several days bed-bound, and trying to finish colouring books to hand out to all the trick-or-treaters for Halloween night.

They’ve been well received so far, so it’s all been worth it, Happy Halloween everyone!

October been and gone?

Well, I said I’d be busy, so art might take a back seat for a while and I was kind of right. I have be very busy, but I’ve also managed to be productive too!
As some of you may know, my daughter, Ocean, has been rightfully taking up the larger portion of our time, she has had her operation, (Posterior fusion and correction for Scoliosis), and it was a resounding success. It’s been tough. Incredibly, vomit-inducingly tough at times, but she is recovering well and her wound is healing nicely. A remarkable pece of major surgery by Mr.Lucas, her surgeon and the rest of the team, we are SO grateful. We’re also so proud of how Ocean’s coped and how much work she’s putting in to build herself to as normal as possible, (within allowed limits, it’s 18 mths before the spine fuses completely), she’s been a star and funny with it too. (You can follow her blog and progress here )

Doodling for charity.

So time has been swallowed up by trying being good parents and nurses, but there has been a lot of time between waiting for her 9hr op, waiting for a cab, sitting with her while she rested, and staying in the RMHC Evelina on my own allowed me to doodle and sketch and post-op, we’ve taken it in turns to keep her company, so again, some drawing time to be had there too.
During Ocean’s stay in hospital, I drew a few doodles for the lovely staff at the RMHC, for their art table, for kids to colour in. They went down well, so I was asked to draw a few halloween drawings, which I did. Once returning home, I utilised down-time, or late nights to draw some cleaner, digital halloween-based drawings, (check them out in the slideshow below)

Add funny faces to the ghosts!
Colour – in sheet 1
Colour – in sheet 2
‘How to draw a simple ghost’ sheet
‘Add some funny faces to the pumpkins’ sheet
‘Happy Halloween’ colour – in sheet

When you find yourself enjoying your own activity sheet…

The ‘Add some funny faces to the pumpkins’ sheet was calling out to me, so i gave a few a go, then got a bit carried away, drawing 4 (or 5 in one case) different expressions for each of the 6 pumpkins. I created an outline of each, a plain colour of each AND a shaded/highlighted of each too! (That’s 75 in total, but 25 finished shaded pumpkins).

I don’t know at this stage whether these, or the activity sheets warrant their own page, but we’ll see where it takes me. But here are the pumpkins, as a slideshow…

big eyes
slightly moody, but cheeky too.
cute
goofy but happy
feeling rough
huge eyes
grrrr
GRRR
meiow
winker
nervous pumpkin
cyclops pumpkin
wonky eyes
traditional carved
happy pumpkin
toothy
argh!
big teeth keith
toofy-goofy-big-tongue
button-eyed-joe
eye-popping
life with bite pt 1
Life with Bite 2
Life with Bite 3 – Cute
Life with bite pt4. Cool.

I don’t know if they will ever amount to anything, I thought perhaps stickers, but again, I don’t know.

Also.. Mandalorians. Well, Star Wars in general really.

Quick and Dirty. That’s not how I like to be described, nor my art, usually, but sometimes, it’s nice to knock something out that has a satisfying result, but with less faff and fumbling.
Ive been using my daughter’s Disney to catch up on some of the Star Wars franchise that has evaded me. I’ve seen a huge majority of it, but I’m filling the gaps. Early october, I watched all of ‘The Mandalorian’. (I’ve moved on to other series, like Ahsoka, Fett, Kenobi, Clone wars etc, since then, but some of the visuals of The Mandalorian captivated me enough to draw them).
I’d personally like a poster of ‘Paz Vizsla’, perhaps I might sort that in the future. But you might have another favourite, see which you like in the slideshow bellow…

Grogu / Din Djarin
Grogu
Paz Vizsla
The Armorer

As I said, quick and dirty. Well, as you can tell, I’d hit my stride and put a bit more effort with The Armorer and Paz Vizsla, so they are bit less q&d, but you get the gist.
I’m not sure if I’ll do any more like this, but who knows?

A friend in need…

Is a friend indeed.
As you know, I don’t make any money from most of my art, yet. But (see above) sometimes it’s nice to do something to help out a bit. I’ve been sharing the link to Ocean’s GoFundMe page and asking if others can share it too, (please feel free to share too, we’re still hoping to hit the target to donate any excess to both the Evelina Children’s Hospital and RMHC). Some have shared already and some generous and lovely people have donated, which is lovely and is going towards Ocean’s recovery and essentials. Anything she doesn’t need will be donated to the charities mentioned above.

Understandably, not everyone can donate, some people are struggling enough right now, sacrificing all sorts to keep afloat. But an old pal of over 20 years has had some REALLY shite luck recently, losing both of his very beloved cats, then a whole heap of bad luck after this, which I won’t go into, but bad-bad. I really wanted to help him, he really wanted to help us, so after a long chat, he shared Ocean’s charity page and in return, I drew a cartoon-style double portrait of his cats..

I drew them in the style of ‘The Two Cherubs’ by Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino (Raphael), to depict them as angels, watching over their Dad. I also tried to capture certain details and colours unique to both kitties. I was pleased with the result, Jim was pleased with the result, happy days!

So what’s next?

That’s a good question, but one I partly can’t answer, because I have things lined up that I can’t talk about until they are approved/go on sale or can’t show because they are personal and require permission from the commissioner before I can show them here or on social media.

However, I should imagine there might be a few doodles in between the serious stuff, but lots of other stuff to blog about too, so I won’t be going quiet any time soon.

Have a great halloween, or light festival, whatever your preference is, either way, have fun and don’t get too scared!

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Exciting times to mask some very hard times.

Well hasn’t 2023 been a really testing year? Our family has seen some really tough times, as many are currently. But apart from some recent dire financial problems, and some serious self-adjustment-exploration/discovery, it’s also topped off by some harder times still to come. Hospital visits and a serious operation for my daughter, amongst several other things are making mundane worries hard to cope with. I don’t like airing all my personal life on the Internet, but I prefer to disclose a little, so you get a picture of why things are the way things are!

It’s also been a low and longer-than-usual dark patch, so my usual passion towards art has been thin on the ground (plus trouble with my wrist/thumb/shoulder, (still awaiting results) but my brain hasn’t stopped coming up with ideas on how to take my artwork upwards.

Keeping the smiles!

Amongst the stuff I mentioned, there has been some better news. I’ve been doing a lot of practical practising, anatomy, proportion, perspective, new techniques etc. It is SO important to keep practising this stuff, however boring, it’s the foundation of everything, and you can never stop learning new things. I’ve also been taking a break from social media, freeing up time and lowering stress levels! This is a double-edged sword though, I’ve had more time to draw, but no-one is getting to see any of it! But if you’re in a low patch, you often think no-one cares anyway, which isn’t usually the case.

Also, I’ve had to be super strong for the sake of my children, especially my youngest daughter, who has the op I mentioned earlier coming very soon. She’s incredibly brave, I’m SO proud of her anyway, but I can’t express how proud. So if she can keep filling my life with smiles, then the least I can do, is to be the best Dad I can be. She’s really supportive of my art, so loves seeing and contributing to what I’m working on, so that helps drive me forward too.

New Ideas and New Commissions!

I do have a couple of commissions in the pipeline, but the sort that won’t have W-I-Ps, but I’ll post the finished work, (if the clients allow, of course, the customer is always right!)

Whilst these are in the planning stages, or during down time, I’ve spent some time working on some more design ideas, originally as sticker ideas, but the sky is the limit really, t-shirts, badges, cups, underpants even.

As you can see in the pic below, it started with me doodling a mad-looking rabbit, then a tortoise. I then had an idea that I could doodle many ideas exploding out from a central scroll or centrepiece, featuring both outline drawings, plain coloured versions and fully shaded versions, as a sort of ‘flash’ sheet. If you didn’t already know, a flash sheet is most commonly seen in the waiting rooms of nearly every tattooist in the world, full of countless beautiful designs, of all sizes, but ready to go, a bit like clip-art before clip-art was a thing.

Once my Flash Sheet is full, I can pick ideas, and work on them, up the size, resolution and quality, then save them and post them, the best of the best can then be turned into badges, stickers, t-shirts, even beach towels, perhaps. It’s still in the idea stages but I’m happy so far. I even have ideas for themed flash sheets as time goes on!

I’m working digitally, using software called Sketchbook on a graphics tablet on a laptop, it’s a very time-saving medium, and corrections and adjustments are simpler. It’s great for the environment too, I’ve been getting through a lot of sketchbooks and pencils, this is costly, causes storage issues and isn’t very kind to trees, (I don’t always buy recycled paper!) I’ve not given up the sketchbook, but when you can rough sketch on your phone, paint on your laptop and post to socials almost anywhere, it does mean you can travel a bit lighter.
Back to the point. As I said, I’m happy with the project so far, here’s a few pics outlining where I am to date:

This is the very first layout, with the first four ideas. Each design showing 3 stages ‘exploding’ from the centre. At ths stage, I thought of adding little ideas to fill in gaps, which could feature as smaller designs or collections, perhaps insects, symbols etc. No space wasted and tons of designs for the future!

Several days later, I’d filled the workspace nicely, but as I filled in the last few gaps, I began to wonder if the outline and plain designs were just a little wasted. They weren’t ‘exploding out from the centre, so I figured, if I removed them, I could fit more designs into the work area.

Flash Sheet 001.
This is the finished ideas sheet, crammed full of designs. I have no idea exactly how many, but I’m counting as I re-draw each one!
(if you look closely, you’ll see loose scribblings here and there, these didn’t quite make it, but may in the future)

Here’s an example of the next stage of this project. Originally just ‘fill-in designs’, these fruit designs, once re-drawn, make nice designs in their own right. The eagle-eyed of you may have noticed that the original grapes had faces, but the fruit didn’t. To rectify this discrepancy, I drew two versions….

So now, there’s fruit, with and without cartoon faces!

And outline versions.

Some designs won’t warrant 3 pages of different versions, for example…

Here’s ‘Cactus Prickly’ 2 sheets, one with outline and plain, the other with plain and shaded. All bases covered on two sheets for the future.

I’ll be adding a whole new section to this website for this project, so keep an eye out for that and I’ll post all the designs on my social media pages, plus timelapse videos of some of the designs on YouTube and TikTok! Here’s one of the designs I’ve added to YouTube:

Timelapse video of The Cactus design (no sound)

So here’s to the future. Whatever rollercoaster it may be, I can only do my best.

I don’t know what is round the corner, but I know it won’t be easy and probably won’t get easier. But there’s people out there far worse off than me, and my thoughts are always with them.
So I’ll keep making people smile with my daft doodles, I know some do, and if I make others happy, I’m happy too.

Keep on keeping on x

(Also, please pop over to my social media and do what you need to do to follow me and keep up to date with what’s new, plus this project’s progress, links below x)

A Sad Time Indeed.

It’s been looming for a while, but sadly, time is at a very close end for my favourite 0.5mm light blue mechanical pencil leads.

A photo of my last ever 0.5mm lead. It's being cradled by a doodle I drew using the afore mentioned leads. — R.I.P. my beauty.

I’ve used them for years, originally buying 10 packs of 10, but alas, I can’t find anywhere in the UK that still stock them. So, I’m desperately trying to test alternatives for erasabilty, if that’s a word, but the right grade too, bot too hard, like a 2H for example. Some reviews and research have had me scratching my head, and it’s looking like a change from 0.5 to 0.7mm might have to happen. This might benefit me, as sometimes I can be heavy-handed, so leads snapp frequently, 0.7 would help this, but it would mean shelving my favourite Parker 0.5mm mechanical pencil, which my wonderful, late father used as his technical drawing best, then gave it to me as a young man. I’ll still use it, so not all doom and gloom.

In Other News…

An A4 ratio coloured picture of many many cartoon faces, pulling different faces and expressions. Each one represents a thought or emotion that bombards my brain every hour of every day. — Dean’s Brain Cells

Dean’s Brain Cells is a simple, but deep piece, an A4 ratio picture of many many cartoon faces, pulling different faces and expressions. Each one represents a thought or emotion that bombards my brain every hour of every day.

The picture above is the 3rd in a trial of 3 versions. One is simple ink in considered depths, the 2nd is crosshatched in various shades of grey and the 3rd is a coloured version (see above) To see all three versions, just click on the pic above to head to my Facebook page and go to photos, look for an album called 2023.

I’ve also started doodling doctors, but I doubt much will come of it. We’ll see. Anyway, have a wonderful weekend, much love x