Saturday, October 31, 2009

Repeat Offender Post - Kev Levell!

He's back! Guest contributor Kev Levell is back with a follow up piece to his first guest post.

I am grateful to the talented chaps hereabouts for once again letting me bathe in the warmth of their company.

My offering this time is the Joker (as if you needed telling) and I intended it as a companion piece to the Harley Quinn I did in July.

My Joker is a sum of many influences that owes as much to Jack Nicholson, The Killing Joke and The Dark Knight Returns, as it does to Heath Ledger for his iconic depiction in the last screen outing...

...I hope you like it.

Friday, October 30, 2009

International man of Misery


As it's halloween i felt obligated to do a Mike Myers image for this week's doodle, a guy who totally pulled off an amazing change of careers - not many peeps could go from psychotic slasher to super spy Austin Powers, but he managed to do just that.

Anyhoo, nonsense aside. I thought i'd give artrage another shot for this one and try to make it a bit more painterly than normal. Reasonably happy with it as an experiment and beginning to get more comfortable with artrage (albeit i still ended up tweaking and adjusting in photoshop at the end). I'll probably use it again for a few more 'horror' images as it seems to work for me in that genre as it allows me to be a bit rougher than with 'smooth comic pencils'.

Thursday, October 29, 2009

Lords of Misrule - Redux and competition.



Back in 1992 I was fortunate enough to continue working with my Knights of Pendragon colleagues on a couple more projects at Kevin Eastman's new company Tundra. The first, Hypersonic, would eventually come out some seven years later through Dark Horse Comics but Lords of Misrule (written by Dan Abnett and John Tomlinson) managed a limited run at Tundra and remains a favourite work of mine still. There was some regret at the time of publishing that the original colour did not capture the dark brooding menace of this urban horror story. I resigned myself to including the black and white artwork in my portfolio and touring with the cherry pages at conventions.



Seventeen years later, Dave Elliot (now with Radical Comics) brought together the later Dark Horse series by Peter Snejbjerg and my original graphic novel for the first time. Dave allowed me to resize and open up the artwork for the release in a kinda redux fashion. Black borders were also added and the new painted colour by French artist Jean is particularly appropriate for this urban horror tale.



I have included some pages here. This also helps provide my prize for next month's competition. A signed copy of the new hardcover will be given to the winner. A hefty volume with additional extras not found in the original series. A sketch will also be included of the Jack Goodfellow character as an inlay to the edition. A genuine one-off.

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

I am the God of Hellfire!


And I bring you...
(C) AEG 2009, Legend of The Five Rings card art

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

October Competition - Last Few Days!

Once again you only have until the end of this Saturday to get your comments in on the competition post before the inhabitants of Scotch Corner decide who the winner is. So if you don't want to miss out click here and leave your comment!

For a few sketches more.

For A Few Dollars More,illustration,Graeme Neil Reid

Following on from my 'A Fistful of Dollars' post a couple weeks back here's Colonel Mortimer (Lee Van Cleef) and Monco/Joe/Blondie/The Man With No Name (Clint Eastwood) from 'For A Few Dollars More' Sergio Leone's second western and one hell of a film. While I was working on Sunday (yup I know its a day of rest for some) I watched the film twice (I get obsessive like that) and couldn't resist taking time out to do these quick brush pen sketches and then I also couldn't resist adding some grey tone and a hint of colour.

Monday, October 26, 2009

Jon Day - Victoriana India

Whoops! A false start to Jonday as my finger slips on the trigger.

Here's a recent cover - Jewel of Empire for Victoriana by Cubicle 7 Entertainment.
Image Hosted by ImageShack.us
(C)2009 Cubicle 7 Entertainment Ltd

Something of an experiment in stronger colours.

Sunday, October 25, 2009

Sunday Guest Post - James Corcoran!

Here's a great contribution from James Corcoran whose blogsite I highly recommend, he has a great natural style and often draws characters from UK comics and TV and he posts quite regularly too!

James Corcoran was born in Scotland and has spent the last nine years living in London, he is an amateur doodler with a fondness for worlds that never quite existed. This image was done in Pentel brush pen and tinkered with in Photoshop. It features characters from a short story called "Last Night a Monster Saved My Life" currently appearing on http://james-corcoran.blogspot.com and is inspired by old British comics and JG Ballard novels. New pages appear when he can escape from his real life long enough to post them.

Thanks James, and remember that anybody can take part in Scotch Corner and become a guest contributor (yes, we mean you reading this!) so click here and take part!

Friday, October 23, 2009

More of the same




On hols with the kids this week so a few more illustrations of Cammy Leon from the day job. One done up as Charles Rennie Macintosh and the other using the' Glasgow armadillo'. Normal service (whatever that is) will resume next week.

Thursday, October 22, 2009

Samurai and Geisha.



Something more restrained this week. A magazine illustration of a Samuarai and Geisha done earlier this year. Was nice to work with the textures and designs on the kimono and the print behind the figures. There are several colour versions of this piece on my Facebook site but I thought the turquoise worked best (and brought out the gold of the dragon more)
Next time I would like to tackle the samurai armour (very much in the style of Kurosawa) and should hopefully be able to include it here in the very near future.

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

More changeling


Another Image from the Changeling product line, I think from "Swords of Dawn". A small illo about folk pulling other folk's strings, playing games with people and so on. I think this was one of those images which went through a lot of different versions in the rough stage to get to a final design, but if the result works, then its worth it, eh? (C) White Wolf 2009

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Schwarowski

illustration,Graeme Neil ReidThis is one of those illustrations that I can't remember much about. It appeared along with another illustration in 'Interzone' magazine (issue 199) to accompany a short story called 'Bird Songs at Eventide' written by Nina Allan in 2005.

All I can really remember about it is that the man is called Schwarowski (its on the file name of the illustration) and that he was the boss on a scientific observation post on another planet (I think), he had scarred hands and the thing in the jar is a dragons scale.

There, you know as much as me.

Monday, October 19, 2009

Jonday - some grey ones!

From the forthcoming "Friends or Foes" from Magnum Opus Press. After a long break from black and whites I really enjoyed these a great deal. And I think it shows a little bit.

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Image Hosted by ImageShack.us

Images (C)2009 Magnum Opus Press and Jon Hodgson

Cheers!

Sunday, October 18, 2009

Sunday Guest Post - Ralph Horsley!

Prepare to pick up your popped out eyeballs here's Ralph Horsley!

I would like to thank everyone here at Scotch Corner for the very kind offer of this guest spot. Though currently based south of the border I am very fortunate to be able to lay claim to Scottish roots; being born in Aberdeen, where I spent the first five years of my life, before being dragged southwards to have my accent mocked then corrupted into English intonations.

Whether it was a means of surviving such childhood trauma I know not, but my main passion in life soon revealed itself to be drawing, and so it is that I now find myself to be a freelance illustrator working within the games industry.

I have worked for a large number of clients throughout my career, but am now very much focussed on producing cover artwork, a couple examples of which I’d like to share with you here.

Martial Power 2


This was commissioned for a forthcoming Dungeons & Dragons gaming supplement details of which can be found here.

I enjoyed contrasting the fairly static figure with the swirling cloak and hair, so that there is movement and dynamism, even whilst the figure can maintain that direct-to-viewer stare.

Temple of the Serpent



Games Workshop’s very successful run of novels about Gotrek and Felix has produced a spin-off series about their arch-nemesis Thanquol, the Skaven Grey Seer. I have been commissioned to work on the covers for this series, and Temple of the Serpent is the second novel. The first announcement was made here.

Interestingly the Editor picked up on my tendency to put in little details for his blog entry. I like to think that my pictures can deliver an initial punch, but then also reward further viewing.

Further examples of my work can be found at:
http://www.ralphhorsley.co.uk/
or my own blog:
http://ralphhorsley.blogspot.com/

Many thanks to Ralph for a great guest post, some brilliant examples of his work and remember to click on them to see at a lovely large size. And remember that anybody can take part in Scotch Corner and become a guest contributor (yes, we mean you reading this!) so click here and take part!

Friday, October 16, 2009

Work, work, work



Another different stylee today. I was recently told that i have no style, which i thought was probably a good thing artistically - turns out they were talking about me, not my art.
Anyhoo, generally my day job at Dunning doesn't call for a lot of illustration but recently the company has done a bit of internal rebranding which ended up with the creation of a new company character - Cammy Leon. Although the final character is quite a simplified illustration (drawn up in Illustrator) the character went through many iterations to get to this final version. He'll be getting used here and there so i'll get to draw a few, Glasgow based, character bits for him. Anybody who has ever visited Glasgow should recognise the scenario below.

Thursday, October 15, 2009

Flea - A Red Hot Chili Pepper.



Sometimes I paint. But not that often.

This effort from 1992 is a portrait of Flea inspired by the SPIN magazine photo set. I saw the cover and had to paint it. This is the first version. The second features on the back of my leather biker jacket and includes the rest of the band. Music always inspires me and keeps me company while working. Even when I took a forced sabbatical from comics tenyears ago I was fortunate enough to work in Broders Music epartment and had a quarter of a million accessible cds to listen too. That is certainly quite a playlist!

For this picture I used acrylics with coloured pencil for details. I would love to get back to painting again soon.

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Animation design



Some old work from a few years back now - some animation concept design for Osmo Production in Finland. I loved this job, a series of contracts which covered about 8 months of commissions. I did a little bit of scene concepting, but ended up doing more character work than anything else. Today I present one of each! Images (C) Osmo Production 2007.

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

A real fistful...

illustration,Graeme Neil Reid,Western

Experiment time for me. I wanted to do a colour test and I also wanted to do an illustration from Sergio Leone's 'A Fistful of Dollars', so I combined those two needs.

I pencilled this almost as usual but wanted to keep the figures pretty vague in detail as part of the colouring test was to be about textures more than anything else. Once it was pencilled I scanned it and adjusted the levels and contrast in Photoshop to create the 'inks' and then spent about two to three hours playing around with the colouring. The result is for me not a success but a move in a direction I want for some work I have planned. I've done a flat kind of tonal style before and I wanted to add to that with a rough and quick texture. Maybe it works and maybe it doesn't, as an experiment it didn't take too long and I can see the next step to take so many positives.

Pencil,Graeme Neil Reid,illustration

Monday, October 12, 2009

Jonday - From the vaults

Funny what gets published and what doesn't. Here's an image from a couple of years back which I thought went rather well. The game it was for is still bouncing around in development,and I rather suspect the company will use the art fro something else in the end.

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(C)2008 Alderac Entertainment Group.

This one was painted almost entirely in Photoshop as a break from my usual Painter/'shop team-up.

Friday, October 9, 2009

Tell the truth



After my Hulk experiment a few weeks back and Graeme's comments, miss Carter seemed like an obvious choice to dabble with. So another wee experiment directly in Flash as my main drawing / colouring tool. Still working away with a mouse which doesn't make it easy but the great thing about Flash is the ease of line manipulation once the initial lines are in. Cheated again at the end adding a wee bit of blurring and glow in Photoshop (i know you can do that in Flash these days, but still prefer Photoshop for that kind of thing when it's not an animation).

Thursday, October 8, 2009

Hypersonic.



Hypersonic was a book I worked on in 1992 for Tundra Publishing and was written by Dan Abnett and Steve White. It certainly played to my creative strengths (hardware and sci-fi crap) and was great fun to work on.

The story centered around the pilot Wesley Anger and was set in a near future war scenario. Our hero is captured by a covert military team and introduced to captured alien technology that allows pilots to be 'jacked in' to the craft forming a symbiotic link with the 'living' plane providing full 360 degrees vision. The hardwiring was similar to HDMI links and USB links we have now but we only could use audio and video cables of the day (primarily SCART and coaxial although the future intentions were there)

Really enjoyed this series. Dark Horse Comics eventually picked it up and we were given a sterling colour job by the talented Dave Nestelle. The environment he created for the characters and story was astounding and the seven year delay proved beneficial for the belated release. No collections as yet but I may pester Dark Horse with some new artwork to encourage them (after the success of the Lords of Misrule release last month!)

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Objection!


Another late reply, though this week it has been because of civic duties and Jury Service, fortunately now over and done with for another few years (I hope!). How I wanted to grandstand like a movie brief, and approach the bench to whisper in conspiratorial tones with the judge and the defense. Ojection! Sustained! Overruled!

Anyhow, an old oil painting from my vault which I think I'll do a re-work of in the near future with some digital overpainting. I think this was done shortly after buying the Alan Lee/Brian Froud book of faeries, but there's elements of Boris hinted at in there too I think.

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Going commando!

Painting,Graeme Neil Reid,Commando

Now these are another dip into my past having created them at college around 1991. This was all pre-computer for me so all the logo's, text and graphics where printed onto a clear acetate sheet and then like animation of a bygone year the colour was added on by hand on the reverse of the sheet. Then of course the painting, done in gouache back then, was placed underneath. The text on the left is "Lorem ipsum" a block of Latin text that has been used for years and years by designers all over the world when they want to indicate text but have no real 'copy' to put in place. Makes me shudder now to see some awful 'widows' on the text, those are words that stand out on their lonesome at the end of line (see 'quis' on the sixth line down) and would look better taken over to the next line. Ah, well I was young and it was all hand pasted.

I still read Commando comics and would quite fancy having a shot at a real cover or two if the opportunity arose, maybe something for me to add to my list!

Monday, October 5, 2009

Sunday, October 4, 2009

Sunday Guest Post - Manoel Magalhães

Graeme here, I've known our guest contributor for a little while now and I'm very happy to receive a contribution from this very talented Brazilian artist.

I'd like to thank you for the opportunity to contribute to Scotch Corner! I'm sending the image of the cover of of my creation, Synchronicity. I've had some good feedback about this project, but still haven't got the time to finish it :(
And as for a good reason I should be an adopted Scotsman, the only thing I can come up is: I've always wanted to learn how to play the bagpipes!
Thanks again and best wishes!


Go over to Manoel's blogsite and check out some extra pages for his new series, sadly he doesn't update it as often as I'd like but then I'm just greedy to see more of his work. Many thanks Manoel!

Friday, October 2, 2009

Space Nation to the rescue




Still running about like a headless chicken back and forward to the hospital this week, so another few pages dredged up from the defunct Space Nation project. (Yes, the bad guys did have spaceships that were flying hands - don't ask)

Thursday, October 1, 2009

Retro post - Warheads character sketches.

After last week's Knights of Pendragon post I though I would return to the second series I worked on back in 1992. Warheads was part of the Mystech line of books brought out by Marvel UK in the early 90s and featured some sterling work from fresh talents like Dougie Braithwaite, Dermot Power, Liam Sharp and Gary Frank amongst others. It was an incredibly enjoyable time creatively and we were given pretty much free reign to 'go for it' as far as the art was concerned.

Paul Neary (the senior editor at the time) saw my convention sketches and had asked me if they could form part of the new Marvel UK series of books planned. Warheads was written by Nick Vince (the Hellraiser and Nightbreed actor) My original designs and sketches were tweaked to fit in with the story and vision of the book and work began in early 1992. Unfortunately a series of family events meant that I had to leave the series (my biggest regret) and although the book continued it eventually got cancelled further down the line. I only ever drew 30 pages of this series but it remains a very personal favourite work.

I have included the original convention sketch (completed the day before the 1991 UKCAC) and character sketches (Leona, Misha and Dean, their original names) As much as I like clean and unfussy artists' work such as Hugo Pratt, Mazzuchelli and Craig Thompson... there is an 'everything and the kitchen sink' aproach that I can't resist from my love of Geof Darrow, Otomo and Moebius. Most of the artists who dismiss this bludgeoning approach appear more concerned with the hard work and effort (and lost page rate) in producing a page like this than for any artistic or stylistic reason. It is what it is.



I always like the line from Se7en (later in the film when they are driving to the desert) when John Doe tells Detectives Mills and Somerset that 'Wanting people to listen, you can't just tap them on the shoulder anymore. You have to hit them with a sledgehammer, and then you'll notice you've got their strict attention.' I like that line and have it as a mantra (whenever possible) for my approach with my art. Not known for a quiet whisper, it has been a while since I last roared. Here's something to remind you...

September Competition - The Result!

Well then, we had 56 comments left for this competition, some funny, some complimentary and some really bizarre but all very welcome. We've pondered long and hard about who should win, and it was too hard a decision. So in true X-Factor/Britain's Got Talent style we harshly worked away through the comments and sent 10 entries into a lucky dip. And so with no further a do... the winner is "Kopic" with his comment:

Great picture. Always good to see the Special Weapons Dalek out on day release.

Congratulations to Kopic, your prize will be on its way just as soon as we receive your details! Commiserations to all the other entrees, go and enter the October competition and win yourself some prints.

October Competition - A3 signed prints by Andy Hepworth!



October is here and so its the start of another new competition! It couldn't be easier to enter, all you need to do is leave a comment about the prize and you'll be entered into the running. Any kind of comment counts but you have to make sure you think about it as you can only enter once, so make it funny, make it complimentary, make it a song, make it weird, make it anything you want but make your comment count.

Andy has supplied two great signed A3 prints for you to win from White Wolf's 'Changeling; The Lost' product.The 'Goblin Market' image from the core rule-book, and the opening fiction full page illustration from 'Lords of Summer'. © White Wolf 2007/8.



Terms of entry: 1. Only one entry per person. 2. Comments must be left by the end of 31st October 2009 to be entered into the competition. 3. The contributors to Scotch Corner will judge the comments left and decide a winner with the contributor supplying the prize having the casting vote. 4. The winner will be announced on the website as soon as a decision has been reached. 5. If the winner does not have a contact email address available on their comment profile then it is the winners responsibility to contact Scotch Corner at scotchcorner@me.com and supply mailing address details. 6. If the winner does not contact us after one full month a new winner will be chosen. 7. All decisions are final. 8. If you are unhappy with any of these conditions please do not enter.