Layout devices

A spread from 'Writing and Illustrating the Graphic Novel' by Mike Chinn -sorry for the quality of the photo- just realised it was Friday and i've no idea where the original art is and can't find any scans. Click through for a larger version.

These pages dealt with various ways to layout a story page - not just in terms of 'boxes' but on a more conceptual level. Pencils were done half way between thumbnails and finished and done more cartoony than my normal style - think that was my choice at the time (but can't remember why)

Right off to get drunk for a few days - have a great New Year. I've decided on a New year's resolution for Scotch Corner so i'll be starting that next week - hopefully it will go better and last longer than all my previous resolutions over the years.

Typhoid Mary. Sketch.

This particular sketch of Typhoid Mary was requested at Leeds Thought Bubble in November. Never drawn the character before and only half-remembered the costume. Thankfully we had a spare Daredevil comic to hand to remind us. Coincidentally, John Romita Jr. was only a pen's throw away at another (bigger) table but I didn't want to hassle the guy. Besides, there was a huge queue of fans in front of him and I didn't fare my chances of getting to him!

10 minute turnaround from initial rough.

More redcoats

A bit of a development on a painting of some redcoats I was doing months back, now pushed on a little further, adjusted, corrected, mistaken and revamped.

I reckon the beard is a mistake - I can't find a line of text which says British infantrymen (Light infantrymen in this case) had no beards in the Napoleonic era, but I have never seen a British soldier illustrated with a beard in any source from the period/illustration of the period. I'm not even sure 'taches were allowed for the rank and file soldiery. But I quite liked the way it looked, so there.

Ho Ho Ho

I was asked by Pete Wells if I'd like to contribute to the 2000AD Community Board's annual advent calendar, the theme being of course something 2000AD related. Nothing says Christmas like a graffiti scrawled Justice Department H-Wagon in the dark snow filled sky of Mega-City 1 more. Hope you had a great Christmas and have an even better Hogmanay and New Year!

Jonday whoops

Missed my slot yesterday, so I'm retroactively back dating this one.

I found this on my HD it's called "Stabfawn". I think it's a PS brush test. Make of it what you will.

Woof Woof

Running about in a headless chicken parent mode just now doing Christmas Eve duties, so just time to post a quick doodle from my sketch book - a biro scribble of a mate's alsation.

Merry Xmas one and all.

Comics Alliance - 12 Days of Comic Book Christmas.

Adri Cowan asked me to contribute to her 12 Days of Comic Book Christmas post for the Comics Alliance site. The series would feature various creators producing their own take on the 12 Days of Christmas. I was paired with Warren Ellis and asked to provide Day Seven. Warren, of course, supplied a suitably barbed piece of prose.

You can see the other contributors here.

Brrrrrrrrrrrr.....

Its a Scrooge's miserly christmas greeting from Ebeneezer Tightfist Curmudgeon McHepworth this week. Aye, freezing to death? Luxury! When I were a lad we was so cold that we never even thawed out during summer. Summer? We never even had summer when I were a lad, A Lad, we never had children when I were...

Merry Christmas one and all ;)

Edit; image ©White Wolf 2009, illo from Exalted RPG

Ho Ho Ho

I drew this what seems like a lifetime ago now when I was still fully employed in the design and marketing industry. I sat and doodled it one day at my desk and it made me laugh enough that I got it printed as a Christmas card. Still makes me chuckle.

Have a great Christmas!

Jonday: So long Captain Beefheart

Not my words - I stole them from Youtube where someone has written some much more in tune with my own thinking than I could manage to fit into words myself:
"Rest not in peace, but as you lived; a raining sonic flame, vivid- and by christ did you make the hairs on the neck stand up!- Don, you were not for this world, enjoy your long dance into dust my friend. I speak for all when I say 'Rest In Peace'- but dont be too quiet about it."

RIP Capt.

It's possible that I'll be drinking Scotch in a corner somewhere next week, so....

Happy Holidays to one and all. Thanks for watching this year and here's to 2011.

Judges Anderson and Dredd

Not really much to say about this one - along the same lines as last week this is another Anderson pencil page that i came across whilst clearing folios, although this one has Dredd too. Click on the image to view the larger version.

Night Crawler - X-Men sketch, Lille.

Another sketch from Lille. Night Crawler. Wonderful character and well conceived on film by Alan Cumming. Always a favourite X-Men.

Preview

Although we all sit on top of months, if not years, worth of work which is covered/protected by Non Disclosure Agreements (NDAs) occasionally the companies we work for will produce their own sneak previews of art for up and coming products. In this case I've had the go ahead to show off another piece of CCG artwork after the company did a teaser post last week.

I don't often pose live models for images - I should do it far more often than I do - but a friend stood in for the preacher in this instance (and doesn't it make a difference!?). Ta to Frank Morrow for the top class modeling!

Marv

The old Christmas rush deadlines are biting at my heels this week so here is a pencil sketch done back at the start of 2009 of Marv from Sin City.

Jonday: Almost late

Whoops!

Scraped it in just in time!

A cover for Ulisses Spiele, a fantastic German games company.



Phew!

Robo-Dragon

I'm contributing to a series of Savage Dragon backup stories that are running as support to Eric Larsen's main strip. The page I did featured this character , Robo-Dragon, which was drawn in a 'British kind of way'. It's some way from publication , but here's the character sheet I drew.

Judge Anderson

Woops -alomost missed this one due to crazy catch up hours enforced by the recent nonsense weather. Anyhoo, rescued by a page from some Judge Anderson samples - click on it to view a larger version.

Jonah Hex!

Another convention sketch. Jonah Hex. Enjoy!

Brainzzz

Cyberpunk illo from Fanpro? Catalyst game labs? Shadowrun pen and paper RPG. The license has changed hands quite a few times, and although I think it was done when Fanpro owned it, Catalyst now produce the product, and also now own the artwork. Shadowrun is an RPG which blends fantasy elements - magic, elves, dwarves, orcs - with the modern 21st century cyberpunk.

I seem to be sitting on years of NDA'd works at the mo, so new stuff is trickling onto the blog slowleeeeee. Damn the red tape!

©Catalyst Game Labs 2008

What's it all about…

Pencils for a painting finished about five minutes ago.

Spaceship

It's a spaceship. I doodle this kind of stuff all the time.

Wolverine sketch

Just a quick doodle of Wolverine from my sketch book this week - unfortunately the paper in that particular sketchbook is a bit thin so apologies for the 'see-through' that appears in the scan from the drawing on the other side.

Captain Britain - The original and best.

Another sketch from Lille. This is my favourite Captain Britain costume. The original and best red version. Not the easiest to draw from memory (thanks to Lionel for supplying me with a copy of a French Marvel Comics Presents) Wonderful stuff from John Byrne and the Arcade character.

More Cthulhu Work

Following on from last week's small image from Cthulhu Britannia; Avalon, we have a larger illo from the same product - our investigators being attacked by a nameless horror inside some desolate farmhouse.

Image ©Cubicle 7, 2010

Menhir

Happy St Andrews Day! I should have thought things thru a bit better and drawn up something very Scottish for today but that would have required more forward planning than my brain normally allows. Instead I'll just happen to mention that my first ever strip for the weekly comic 2000AD will be on the newsagents shelves tomorrow (1st December). I've illustrated a four page Terror Tale called 'Menhir' written by Arthur Wyatt. Obviously I'm highly excited to be in a comic I've read for the last 25 years so I hope, if you don''t all ready read 2000AD every week (if you don't you've been missing out), you'll pick up an issue this week.

You'll spot issue #1713 very easily on your newsagents shelf as it has a brilliantly colourful cover by Matt (D'Israeli) Brooker to accompany the Judge Dredd strip inside drawn by the legend that is Brendan McCarthy. Reason enough to go buy.

Oh I should also mention I've done an interview over at the "Everything Comes Back To 2000AD' website.

Jonday - hard day's knight

Another one for d101games.


Cheers!

Cheeky little Sunday post: Artrage chat

I'm sneaking this one in all unofficial likes...

Just a quick one to let everyone know that a bunch of luminaries of the ArtRage scene and me as well will be appearing live on the internet demoing and taking questions about ArtRage and our work tomorrow (29th November 2010) at 2.30pm UK time (9.30 am EST)

All the details are here, over at the Ambient Design forums:
http://www2.ambientdesign.com/forums/showthread.php?t=32150

Hope to see you there!

About Artrage:
Artrage is a very accessible and inexpensive piece of software that emulates traditional media rather well. I personally use it for most of my art creation these days. You can learn more here: http://www.artrage.com/

The Lovers

I had a reason for drawing this, I can't remember what it was though.

Snow White sketch sheet

Another Fables character sheet from my sketchbook. This weeks features the Fables version of Snow White - click for a larger version. Not really much to say about this other than to go out and buy some Fables trades if you don't already read it - you'll be pleasantly surprised (at least i was).

Red Skull.

I draw enough Captain Americas at conventions but this was my first Red Skull. Delighted to hear that he will feature in the upcoming new Captain America movie.

I'm walking backwards for Christmas

Or would be if the girl was Sadako (The Ring/Ringu), which she isn't. Just influenced by. No horror girly with lank black hair cannot be partly influenced by the odd horror of the Japanese jerky villain (a phrase not to be taken out of context) nowadays. An illo for Cubicle 7's Call of Cthulhu range. © Cubicle 7 2010

Happy Who Day to you...

Woah it's Tuesday again and its sneaked up on me, luckily I'm working on a Doctor Who illustration and I can get away with showing some pencils from the piece that shouldn't spoil what the final work will be. Also very appropriately its Doctor Who's birthday today as the first ever episode 'An Unearthly Child' was broadcast 47 years ago today. Happy Birthday Doctor Who!

Jonday Roman in the gloamin'

For my pals at d101 games...

Sunday Guest Post – Warwick Johnson Cadwell

We welcome along the multi-talented WJC to the Sunday Guest Post!

A week later than hoped but this is a tribute to the late great Dino De Laurentiis, Paul Maud'Dib from his epic Dune. Flash Gordon is my true favourite of his and I've had a go at those before though have always been keen to get stuck in to the cast of Dune.

Maybe they'll be more sometime but Gungle is calling.

An awesome rendition and one that demands we all go and watch Dune again very soon.

You can catch WJC's work all over the place but make sure you start by visiting his regularly updated blog site.

Robot thing

Sketchbook thingy. Dunno what it is.

Prime time

I'm also guilty of struggling for time this week so a couple of sample pencil pages from a while back for this week's post. The characters are from the old Malibu comic range - Prime, Prototype and Rune - was asked to do these by the publisher after meeting him at a convention and thought i might be getting something from them - but then pretty soon after they were bought out by Marvel and eventually disappeared - ho hum. Click on the images to view the larger versions.

Right, gotta get back to the grind.

Two-Face!

Another convention sketch from Lille.

Woops!

Wednesday flew past like Concorde, and today I was building a toilet seat for reasons far too mundane to go into here. All of which means I missed my posting slot, and feel greatly ashamed. Pencil cartoony cutey work today from a little while back.

Darth Vader

I've so amazingly ran out of time this last week to do something new or in fact any kind of illustration work that I've had to call on the dark side to help me out for my post this week. Here's a Darth Vader pencil sketch that I did for the first Hi-Ex comic convention back in 2007. Time allowing there'll be something new next week.

Eel witch finished

Harvey Head

I'm going away for a bit, so this comes from my sketchbook. It was for Harvey Pekar on his 70th birthday.

Outerspace backdrop

Been playing about this week with different ways of creating space backdrops for an upcoming project - tried to avoid the use of plugin effects and filters etc and created this one in a much more 'manual' way than previous ones i have created. Actually prefer this method now -much more control and really didn't take much longer than going the 'easy' route.

Lille Comic Festival, France.

This weekend I will be in Lille, France for the annual Comic Festival. Julien Schantz the organiser invited me back again this year after my successful wooing of Frank Quitely to appear as a guest. We are also going to be signing at Furet du Norde de Lille bookshop (which I believe is the largest BD store in France? Maybe even Europe?) A great opportunity to meet fans and generally have fun.

Other guests include JH Williams, Barry Kitson, Jock and Andy Diggle (the Ant and Dec of comics) and a host of European artists. Should be a good event.

No sketch this week (again) as most of my current work is NDA and the schedules are kinda crazy, especially with the down time lost for travelling. For this post I have included a photo of myself content and at home at last week's London MCM event. One of the CosPlayers graciously allowed me to wear her Silent Hill helmet. I really think this is my new look of choice and compliments my kilt beautifully. What do you think?

another portrait

Working on another greyscale portrait in my spare time just now - not really decided on what they are wearing yet, but I'll figure that out down the line somehow. The face is about 70% done, I think, a bit of blending still to do, a lot of work still on the hair. Based on photo reference.

Would you care for some tea?

I watch a lot of Doctor Who anyway but my two boys add to the tally a lot by requesting their favourite episodes on while eating lunch. One of them is the series five episode 'Victory of the Daleks' which features those amazing Union Jack fitted Ironside Daleks. It does also feature the 'new' Daleks in a rainbow of colours, love them or hate them they're a toy producers dream!

Jonday Witch

A personal piece I'm working on. It's in progress:

Athena

The goddess Athena, a major player in 'Peace' , the book that I'm doing with Martin Millar. The trick is to make her look beautiful but also intimidating.
Incidentally my studio mate George O'Connor did a really great graphic novel about Athena that I can wholeheartedly recommend.

Ride the Rocket

Swamped with new work and catch ups since getting back from hols - so rescued by some old stuff again this week.

Main characters from ‘The Funky Space Nation’ multimedia project by Team Effort Productions.The initial character designs were done by Steve or Dave Pugh (can't remember which one) before i came on board the project. From memory the designs were only tweaked slightly for the comic, primarily as the costumes had already been made for the live events, photo shoots and TV etc. The characters were Daniel-1, Prince Darkstarr, Solarris, Destiny and Hiro. You can probably still find the ‘Ride the Rocket’ vinyl single (7″ or 12″) on e-bay or the like.