Jon Cairns

Wilfrith and Grwn - Roughs - Pages 22-23

Moving forward I plan not to be blurring non-sexual nudity in the SFW tier. Please let me know if that’s weird or you don’t like it so I can figure something else out.

Anyhow, inside the semi-ruined complex, we have a caldarium. I started getting into the design with the arches and vaul...

Map Test 5c

Hey guys! It’s my birthday today, so I figured I’d give you something different to celebrate. Here’s Map Test 5c.

It’s from April 29th, 2021. At that point in time, it was a year into the lockdowns and the pandemic, I was slowly moving forward with my graphic novel and feel...

Wilfrith and the Golem Stonemason - 29

Looking back at these pages, I was completely out of control with my ambition for the lighting. Steam, rim lighting, two bright windows. Wild, Jon. I remember at this point of the comic, though, I had completely been bitten by the lighting bug and couldn’t not do it this way.

2024-03-22 10:00:13 +0000 UTC View Post

Wilfrith and Grwn - Roughs - Pages 20-21

Breaking this sequence into three pages really helped to separate the ideas on the pages out a little more clearly. Again focusing on the value compositions over the rougher drawings—but you can kind of see me returning to rougher figure gestures.

2024-03-21 10:00:05 +0000 UTC View Post

Wilfrith and Grwn - Roughs - Pages 18-19

I took a little gap here between page 18 and 19 because of life stuff, so you can see a bit of a seam between my process whims before and after. Rougher, structure based drawings on page 18, and more value-minded compositions on page 19. I think it works for the types of pages they’re meant to ...

Wilfrith and the Golem Stonemason - 28 (Censored)

After this page, it gets a little too hot and heavy to mosaic without just blurring the whole thing to keep it borderline safe for work, but I still wanted to share some of the things I did here.

...

Wilfrith and the Golem Stonemason - 28

I was so proud of how Kapel’s precum sap came out in these pages. It was my first time trying to render it, and it came together really quickly and effortlessly. Trying to recapture that lightning in later pages really became a huge hurdle.

2024-03-15 10:00:02 +0000 UTC View Post

Wilfrith and Grwn - Roughs - Pages 16-17

I love doing pages where the gutter isn’t just a cut from moment to moment in a single interaction, but can be recontextualized like this to be a perspective shift back and forth across the gutter of what is really just two panels of a back-and-forth interaction. The composition of the...

Wilfrith and Grwn - Roughs - Pages 14-15 (Censored)

In the script, I had this as an elaborate transformation sequence on page 14, but when I started drawing it, the impact of just Grwn standing naked over him fit the spirit of the scene so much better I had to cut the transformation. I was really wringing my hands over cutting it, since so many pe...

Wilfrith and Grwn - Roughs - Pages 14-15

I didn’t expect to draw so much of naked Grwn when I wrote this scene. Like, on one hand, obviously. But when you’re writing (or at least when I’m writing), I don’t really hold all of the images in my head simultaneously. The concept enters imaginary thoughtspace, so I’ll write...

Wilfrith and the Golem Stonemason - 27 (Censored)

The SFW pages will drop off a bit after this point, but I’ll be back when it’s a little less explicit. I wanted to save a few details here for you guys though because there are some hands and figures I really liked here.

2024-03-08 10:15:00 +0000 UTC View Post

Wilfrith and the Golem Stonemason - 27

I thought I was really going to struggle with this page when I sat down to start, and then it all just came together effortlessly. I think this is about the point of the story where I finally had a solid grasp of how to draw the characters. Naturally, it’s the last scene. But that’s just how ...

Wilfrith and Grwn - Roughs - Pages 12-13 (Censored)

Here the battle between the wolves ends pretty quickly and conclusively.

(Pages 12-13, censored digital roughs from Wilfrith and Grwn)

I had some more fun with the facial expression...

Wilfrith and Grwn - Roughs - Pages 12-13

The idea for these two pages was to continue the demonstration of the hierarchical gap between our two guys.

(Pages 12-13, digital roughs from Wilfrith and Grwn)

I wanted to segue f...

Wilfrith and Grwn - Roughs - Pages 10-11

Oh how these pages gave me grief! Animals never seem to get any easier for me, and yet I keep forefronting them in my stories.

(Pages 10-11, digital roughs from Wilfrith and Grwn)

I...

Wilfrith and the Golem Stonemason - 26

Oh this one’s actually kind of funny for me. Not for what’s on the page, but my roundabout process. I dropped a render of my bathroom 3D model into the first panel to give myself a canvas for designing the steam with the explicit intention of not inking the entire bathroom. But then you can s...

Wilfrith and Grwn - Roughs - Pages 8-9

This rough is maybe a little too rough if you’re not inside my brain. It’s largely “finished” in the sense that the compositions are down in ways that drawing will lead clarity to. But also maybe I can explain it and you can actually see what’s going on here.

2024-02-29 10:00:02 +0000 UTC View Post

Wilfrith and Grwn - Roughs - Pages 6-7

Our flashback starts with (fingers crossed) some illumination that I put a lot of design effort into. I only gave a general ideal here in this stage, but I figured it made more sense to design with a greater sense of what’s going to be on the page.

2024-02-27 10:00:02 +0000 UTC View Post

Wilfrith and the Golem Stonemason - 25

This page had a lot of very challenges. Wordless communication between five characters is a strong ask for a single page, so I had to balance a lot of factors here. Starting with the roughs I was trying to keep an eye on the scale of the figures. Wilfrith needs to feel very much concretely smalle...

Erraunt yit Forvard - Caged, Rough

Another piece of Wilfrith promo art I’ve been working on. I can’t really call this “pencils” since there’s still a lot that remains in roughs form, but my digital process is so nebulous and patchwork anyhow that parts look like finished inks while others look like simple gestures.

Wilfrith and Grwn - Roughs: Pages 4-5 (Censored)

Wilfrith taking a whiff from the scrap of fur. As a werewolf, his memories are very scent-focused.

(Page 4-5, censored digital roughs from Wilfrith and Grwn)

With these compositions...

Wilfrith and Grwn - Roughs: Pages 4-5

I wanted to start Wilfrith and Grwn's erotic content early in the story, and then punctuate it throughout. So by page four, we already see some nudity while Wilfrith is building the scene in his mind.

2024-02-22 10:00:02 +0000 UTC View Post

Wilfrith and Grwn - Roughs: Pages 2-3

I’ll excerpt my script here to set the scene for these atmospheric pages:

“It’s clear from how fully Wilfrith has embedded himself that he’s been waiting for a while and has become completely bored. He’s in a lean season, with his beard extra unkempt.Various objects are s...

2024-02-20 10:00:06 +0000 UTC View Post

Wilfrith Over the Years

I accidentally published something early just now instead of scheduling it, so if you can’t find it now it’s because it’s been rescheduled. In that post’s place, though, I thought I’d share some positively ancient Wilfrith art that I drew over the shockingly many years...

Wilfrith and the Golem Stonemason - 24

This page was a culmination of wanting to design a huge medieval bath, and to ramp up the mystery a little with some silent pages of Kapel making his moves.

(Page 24, digital roughs...