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.

Joker. Are you serious?

Another Joker sketch. This character is becoming a favourite on the convention circuit. The straggly hair from the first version has been replaced by a more Elvis inspired haircut. Well, huh!

Really need to put up the Harley sketch soon.

face WIP

A crop of a larger image, the face of a more cartoony character than usual. More than a little bit influenced by the work I did and was exposed to while working on Exalted, the RPG from White Wolf. I usually find it difficult to depart from standard flesh tones, so this is partly an exercise in something a bit off-colour. It is work for myself, so it is almost certainly doomed to never be finished.

Halloween

It is a couple of days since October 31st but I couldn't resist sketching Michael Myers from the 1978 John Carpenter film 'Halloween'. This is another franchise that has diluted the original horror but the first and second films are well worth watching. As is so often with my posts I'll also point out that for UK readers you can catch the first film right now on the BBC iPlayer (I should start getting sponsor money for all the shout outs I do) for what is left of the week.

Jonday snow orc

45 mins speedpaint.

And the dirty vy-do: