Friday, December 21, 2007

Have a very sponsored Christmas!


Well, we're in the last days of 2007, we hope you've had a good year. 2007 was great for Cool Surface, the work came in thick and fast, we got loads of new clients, Sarah joined the art team full time, we completely refitted our office, got a Cintiq, and in between the intensive workload, still managed to find the time to get married!

With the 1st of our five books for Kingfisher/Macmillan out in the next few months, art in an Ilex Press anthology and lots more magazine work, we're already looking forward to what the Cool Surface team will be bringing you in 2008!

Hope you all get what you want for Christmas, we'll see you back here in the New Year!
Have fun,
David

Thursday, November 29, 2007

Testing the Cintiq...


Apologies for not posting much recently, Sarah and I have almost finished our first book for Kingfisher/Macmillan, so that's taking up most of our time. I finally invested in a Cintiq the other day, I was really hoping that I could improve my workflow by pencilling straight into Photoshop, but was concerned that it may take some practice. I needn't have worried, drawing on it is a dream! This was my first test sketch which I thought I'd share with you...

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Walkies! A Digital Arts tutorial...


The latest issue of Digital Arts is out and features a tutorial on how I made this image, plus how to lay art out for your own badges! Take a look at the background for all of the monkey themed jokes...

Saturday, October 06, 2007

Mushroom madness!

Computer Arts Projects recently gave away some limited edition toy mushrooms from Tado and asked people to come up some interesting photographs of them. Here's what Sarah and I came up with! Enjoy!

SPECIAL REPORT! You may have thought mushrooms are a rather uninteresting and benign species, but we have proof from Cool Surface.com photojournalists David and Sarah Cousens, that mushrooms are at the centre of a number of shocking events. We urge you to proceed with caution, dear reader, as some of these images are disturbing!


Mushroom spotted with former WWE Women's champion Trish Stratus!
















Iron Man's true secret Identity revealed!



The Punisher's war on drugs continues! Magic no mor
e!


And we have a further troubling report there may be a Mushroom militia on the rise and terrorising innocent Triceratops! "They're not in the trees, they ARE the trees!"





Be careful out there!
_________________

Friday, September 28, 2007

Love to post...


Something quick I knocked up for Love to Post.co.uk. Markers on Postcard.

Wednesday, September 05, 2007

Computer Arts-Top 10 fun things to draw!


This illustration can be found accompanying the "2nd Opinion" column in Computer Arts (issue #140 on sale now). The article was called "the top 10 fun things to draw" which were:
1. Robots
2. Monkeys
3. Female Figures
4. Skulls/Skeletons
5. Monsters/mutants
6. the paranormal (eg aliens, angels demons)
7. Surrealism
8. Dogs
9. Human heads/faces
10. Birds
My favourite part was where they called me a "long-time friend of Computer Arts"! Cheers guys!

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

The Djinn


This is one of my submissions for the upcoming book from Ilex press called "Erotic Fantasy Art" by the excellent artists Jonny Duddle and Aly Fell. This is "The Djinn"...

Friday, August 10, 2007

Digital Arts tutorial


Apologies for not updating for a while, I had loads of work to do before getting married to the lovely Sarah and jetting off on honeymoon!

Speaking of jetting off ...(you've missed my seamless segue's haven't you?) this is my latest piece of work to appear as a tutorial in Digital Arts magazine, out in shops as we speak, so go pick up a copy! You can also view the tutorial on their website here!

Have fun,
David

Friday, June 01, 2007

Advanced Photoshop Competition Winner!


This image just won a public voting competition for Advanced Photoshop magazine! Expect to see it printed in issue 33...Thanks to everyone who voted for me!

Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Computer Arts Competition Winner!


Computer Arts recently held a competition to design their cover, perhaps you can guess who won by the oh-so-subtle header to this post?

Monday, May 21, 2007

Buffy


Another typical Saturday night in Swindon...

I managed to edit the blog template to have the gallery permanently embedded in the right hand frame. The things I do for you...

Tuesday, May 01, 2007

Thunderbolt George!


Thunderbolt George here is my entry to Computer Arts "design your own original game character" competition. As far as I know, there has never been a game featuring a flying rat in an old pilot's jacket, so that's pretty original right?

PS, do you like the new gallery viewer I've added to the blog?

Monday, April 30, 2007

Mechanic girl coloured!


I've been meaning to post this image for a while now, but kept making small changes to it. I've finally decided to call it a day on the image so can finally post it here, hope you all like it.

Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Looks a tad cold...


Something more painterly...odds are at least one person is going to get sea sick!

Thursday, March 22, 2007

I don't know what she fixes...


Thought I'd share a warm-up sketch of a quasi-futuristic mechanic with you seeing as I won't be able to show you what I'm working on until October!!! (How many of you thought of Austin Powers when they read "quasi-futuristic"?) Comments,as always, are welcome.

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Imagine FX comic art

ImagineFX magazine ran a competition recently to draw the editor in a comic style (there's going to be a special on comic art soon) so this was my very comic themed entry.

Wednesday, March 07, 2007

Swin City "comic" poster

The guys at Swin City liked the images I did of them so much that they wanted a comic themed poster using the artwork, so here it is. You'll recognise the girl in the box as the character I designed for the shop a while back. She's actually been made into a 5" standup model!

Tuesday, March 06, 2007

koroks!

For those of you that don't know (shame on you!), a Korok is a little guy from the excellent "Zelda: The Wind Waker" game that my fiance loves, so I drew one for her birthday.

Friday, February 23, 2007

back to our regularly scheduled programming...part 2

Blogger is playing funny tricks on me today, apparently it has it's own ideas about where everything belongs, so if the format to this post looks a little bizarre, you know who to blame.


Commission for Swin City Comics - Coloured in Photoshop.


Monday, February 12, 2007

back to our regularly scheduled programming...


For those of you who love pencils, here are some commissioned character sketches for the people that own/run the Swin City comic shop. For anyone who draws regularly in pencil, I cannot recommend blue col-erase pencils enough. They're just wonderful.

Friday, February 09, 2007

A little variation...

Two pieces that are a bit different from what you are used to here. First off is the new Frequency Magazine launch issue cover, featuring my lovely fiance. It's a bit more graphic design inspired than my usual work, but it's still got some of my lines and an attractive woman in it, so maybe it's not that different after all!


Secondly, I've been trying out some custom brushes in Photoshop recommended to me by my good friend Tom Scholes. It looks like living in the countryside is starting to influence me!

Monday, January 15, 2007

Now appearing in Digit magazine...

Digit magazine (IDG Publishing) now joins the likes of Computer Arts: Projects, ImagineFX and Advanced Photoshop by including my work this month. Go take a look.

Monday, January 01, 2007

New Year Sketches

Happy New Year! Hope that you're not suffering too badly if you were out last night. I haven't updated any sketches here for a while, so thought I'd share these with you. Hope you like 'em!