Colour rough

Chalk pastel rough for a painting that is haunting me, its not going to look like this but sometimes you got to put something on paper to begin.

Lazy Sunday Sketchbook Action #2

Man of Steel

I like Superman, he's the original and greatest of all Superheroes. I read a lot of classic Superman when I was a kid. I'm not sure that I have ever managed to draw him to my satisfaction though. He shouldn't be too ripped, but he should be massive ( like Curt Swan used to draw him ), he should never look like he's straining that much either. Too many artists draw him looking like his toenails are being pulled out with pliers. There's a magnificent grace to Superman because a truly great Superman story is rarely about physical duress, it's about morality and ideas. It's not about extreme violence ( unless absolutely necessary ), it's about finding out what right and then doing it.

Kids reading

Aaargghh! Full time freelance is completely screwing with my weekday settings - managed to forget it was Friday again yesterday! Anyway, one of the projects i've been working on is for the new Gallery/library/Museum opening in Kirkcaldy soon. Part of the job involved a collage illustration for the opening weeks events, this element was for one of the kids reading events in the library. Tried my bamboo and pen again but it looked like it had been drawn by a two year old (really need to find time to practice with it) so ended up drawing it with my trusty mouse in illustrator. I'll probably post up a few other elements next week if i give myself enough time to resize and jpeg them.

The Halifax Bruising Banditas logo design

 And now for something a little bit different...

I was asked by Liz Markey of the Halifax Bruising Banditas to design a new team logo for them [incorporating the original brand logo] for their new bout strips. We decided on a masked derby player in the style of my Roller Grrrls project and making it fun. The target was a late addition in the day as we needed a background and it kinda made sense and made for a great design element. The fist tattoo is another nod to the original logo design and works very well in the context of our character.

Overall I am delighted to be part of the team bout design process. Taut Clothing did an amazing job finishing off the tops and Sue Perman is seen here modelling the finished design.  The group shot also shows how Bad-Ass the girls look when they are bouting together!

More God Machine

Another image from The Onyx Path's God Machine.  © The Onyx Path 2013

Jonday... Sometimes...

... there's just nothing to say about an image.  It is, as they say, what it is:

Lazy Sunday sketchbook action.

Prison Ship Antares

It's early days for this project , but here's a panel. More later.

Alien xenomorph sketch

Han Solo

God Machine

An illo for New World of Darkness book, The God Machine.  © The Onyx Path 2013

Light Study #1

Something a bit different from me for a change, a digital painting of a fairly normal view. In fact this is one part of a view from my bedroom window that I've looked out over for the last thirteen years. I've often sat on my bed in the morning and looked out over the distant housing estate and slowly become entranced by the shapes and colours that make up the visual. Even the most humdrum scene can hold its own kind of beauty I suppose. I wanted to do a study of these blocks and keep it fairly simple. Around 80% of the painting was created in Adobe Illustrator and then brought into Photoshop to add some texturing and highlighting. Even though it's a straightforward looking scene I'm pretty happy with it, especially the illusion the shapes play on your eye when it is seen at a much smaller size hopefully making you think it's a photograph more than a painting, with your brain filling in the extra detailing. I hope anyway.

You may or may not have noticed that I've stuck a copyright line on this work, something that you will probably be seeing a lot more of in times to come. A recent legislation, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act, has effectively taken the rights of the person who created a piece of work and handed it over to the public domain. Effectively anything that has appeared on the internet, including your own family snaps on Facebook, could be open for the financial gain of others. Plenty of other people can explain this legislation better than I can, please click on the links for further reading, but the bare bones of it is that anyone can in the future see a picture you posted at any time and having attempted to find the creator of the picture and failed can then use the item in any way they deem fit, including selling the image on as their own. This might seem a difficult thing to prove right away, take the painting I've posted above, it's hardly been on the net, my name is plastered on it but who is to say in thirty years time when I've forgotten all about it that someone just doesn't discover it for the first time, copies the file, replaces the data embedded onto it, crops of my copyright line and sells it for their own use? Anything I create belongs to me and in the future my family. The ownership and rights of the works anyone creates should stay in their hands. Please go sign the petition below if you'd like to see the stop of legalised theft of copyrighted works.

At the moment my copyright line is fairly small and really such a slight deterrence to those who would wish to steal my work. Do we want to get to the position where a whole image is ruined by a massive watermark placed over it? Do we want to go down the route where websites like Scotch Corner don't exist because anyone can steal our work?

http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/49422

http://thebppa.wordpress.com/2013/04/16/the-copyright-fight-david-bailey-weighs-in/

Tim Perkins - http://wizards-keep.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/stop-legalised-theft-of-copyrighted.html

'Breakers Yard'

Personal work, not quite finished!

School of the Damned preview page

Preview page from School of the Damned #5 on sale soon.

Incendiary.US. Sketch+colour

Steampunk!

Another Victoriana pic - a steampunky lady doing steampunky things in a steampunky place with a pepper-box pistol.  Corset ahoy!

Guest Post - Dan Berry!

1) What was your first published work?
My first work that was properly published was a few pages in Blank Slate's Nelson book. Before that I'd self-published for a while and had a few strips in anthologies and the such.

2) Who or what inspires you?
Oof, that's a difficult question to answer. Who? I've just re-read Brian Eno's 'A Year With Swollen Appendices' which is a kind of diary he kept for a year. I'm always busy but that book makes me feel sluggish and unmotivated. He really packed those days full of lots of really interesting stuff. Ask me again tomorrow and I'd probably give you a different answer!

3) What would be your dream job to illustrate?
I don't know. I only really work on things I really want to work on, so I guess they are all dream jobs maybe?

4) Tell us a bit about the illustration(s) you've sent?
First is the cover to my new book, The Suitcase, out soon from Blank Slate Books. I'm really proud of it. It's a darkly comic series of connected stories set in the suburbs. It's about a dead dog.

Next is a page from a strip I did for the latest issue of OffLife. It's about how I sometimes have the urge to throw my keys and wallet away and how I'd end up going feral. It was a lot of fun to draw.

Lastly this one is from an animated music video I made for Jim Guthrie's new album. I only had a couple of weeks to pull this all together and I'm really pleased with how it came out. It's a great song too.

5) What can we expect to see from you next (what are you working on)?
I've got some more shorter strips in the works and I've just started working on a longer project that I can't say too much about yet. It's a lot of fun though, and I'm getting to draw some really cool stuff.

6) If you hadn't become an artist what do you think you'd have ended up doing?
I really don't know. I'd probably still be working in a petrol station.

7) Where can we see more of your work (web links)?
You can see more of my work at thingsbydan.co.uk and you can have a look at the podcast I run at makeitthentelleverybody.com in which I talk to other artists about how they do what they do.

Jonday - rocks

Wow! Rocks!

Also: Interviewed: http://obskures.de/2013/the-one-ring-dust-devils-an-interview-with-cubicle-7-art-director-and-artist-jon-hodgson/

'Waldo' box art.

Illustration for a new Industria Mechanika model kit release. Details here

Watchout Boy She'll Chew You UUUP

On old Dante page today 'cos I've spent the last 2 weeks working on stuff that I can't post. But hey, Lulu Romanoff ladies and gents, lest ye forget!

Abe Sapian (of Hellboy fame) sketch

Monster designs.

Victoriana 2

Another illustration for the up and coming RPG, 3rd editionVictoriana.  This shows a dwarf engineer lady and a Fox-man magician.  The game is a fantasy shift on our own world, with Victorian society also inhabited by fantasy creatures, magic and some clockwork/steam-power technology.  © Cubicle 7

Guest Post - Paul Moore!

1) What was your first published work?
I did some strips for some small press comics based in Glasgow in the mid ninties, I can't quite remember which one was the first I think it might have been a comic called 'So what?' I drew a cautionary drugs tale and another tale with a supernatural detective called Frank N Stein, I got a review at the time comparing my work to Steve Dillon's, I was quite chuffed with that, but I didn't follow it up, I went to Uni and got a 'proper' job soon after.

2) Who or what inspires you?

I remember being inspired to draw comics when reading the Marvel UK Hulk weekly and seeing British artists like Gibbons, Bolton, Lloyd, Dillon and US artists John Buscema (who has to be my most fondly remembered artist), Kirby and Kane. Then there was the classic 2000ad artists McMahon, Bolland, Colin Wilson and Cam Kennedy's Rogue Trooper was a particular favourite of mine, later Yowell, Bisley, Fabry and Hickleton. I remember being inspired by Mazzuchelli and his amazing Born Again and Batman work. Masamune Shirow, Katsushira Otomo along with John Romita jr and Al Williamson's Daredevil run (so stylish). Somewhere along the way I discovered Frank Bellamy, John M Burns, Alex Toth and Moebius. Recently I've found the names of some of the Spanish artists who were never credited on old British strips Palacios, Breccia and De La Fuente, currently I love the work of Alfonso Font and Goran Parlov, oh and John Paul Leon.
In fine art I love the figure artists in the Impressionists Degas and Manet, the Expressionists Klimt and particularly Schiele and I love the sculpture of Rodan.

3) What would be your dream job to illustrate?
First off I'd be happy if someone simply offered to pay me! But seriously if I was offered my dream job drawing comics, I would obviously love to draw the industry big hitters Batman, Spiderman, Daredevil and the others. Ive always loved the SCI-FI genre, so any of the 2000ad classic characters would be a dream, particularly Rogue Trooper, Dredd or Johnny Alpha. There was a series called Warheads from Marvel UK drawn by Gary Erskine that I thought had an unrealised potential I thought it was a great concept - a team using worm holes to steal technology for a corrupt/occult Conglomerate… fantastic, I'd love to do something like that. I do love the iconography of the old west, so a Western like the Blueberry series, would definitely be a dream project or maybe a Firefly style combination of SCI-FI and Western genres, actually one project Im currently working on may turnout quite close to his Concept, 
I would also love to work in concept art for games, movies and TV, I love creating worlds and characters but I don't really have enough knowledge of what the work involves to be too picky.

4) Tell us a bit about the illustration(s) you've sent?
1&2- I've mostly been working digitally in Black and white, Ive been drawing a Star wars themed series based on the Planet Tatooine, here we have big bad Boba Fett (and Sarlaac) and Han Solo
3- Satana, an example of digital pencils.
4- Seline from the Underworld series, I had alot of fun drawing this lovely lady in black leather.
5- Aeon Flux, a favourite animated character (black leather again)
6- I drew Judge Dredd just to see if I could, I was pleasantly surprised I didn't mess it up.
7- Matty Roth from a series I liked DMZ.
8- With Moon Knight, I was trying for a classic hero on on gargoyle look.
9- My favourite recent comic series Scalped and an attempt to include a background, something I don't do enough of.
10- Green Arrow, coloured by my web pal Biram Ba.
11- Banshee a favourite drawing of mine.
12- Madelyne Pryor, sexy woman in a basque and a cape do I need another reason?
13- Strontium Dog another of my favourite 2000ad characters in real pencils this time.
14- Jonah Hex I told you, I love Westerns, this is a tonal study to be finished sometime later.
15- An inked up comic page for Surprising comics.
16- A superhero strip for Red Leaf comics.

5) What can we expect to see from you next (what are you working on)?
I've done a few strips for Red Leaf comics they are offering me another strip for a character called Avalon across between Captain Britain and Iron Man which should be published later this Year. I've been working with Brad McLoughlin on a Horror based in the Old West and most recently I've been working with Corey Fryia and Doug Garbark on a SCI-FI Concept, it's at very early stage but it should be good…

6) If you hadn't become an artist what do you think you'd have ended up doing? 
I'd probably continue to do what I do now, working in IT, currently for the NHS in Glasgow, that may end up happening lol.

7) Where can we see more of your work (web links)? 
I regularly update my Deviantart page, all my stuff goes on there eventually http://paul-moore.deviantart.com  I think Deviant Art is a great site, all artists should sign up there.
You can get me on twitter as @pmoore121
I have a blog site http://paulmooregallery.blogspot.co.uk
And I regularly post on the Outcasts Forum http://outcaststudios.com/forums they have a great daily sketch challenge that can provide a nice inspiration for warm up sketches and a nice community too.

Jonday - Victoriana 3rd Edition

Something from a forthcoming book I'm ADing.  Victoriana from Cubicle 7. Illustration by me, graphics by Paul Bourne: