Jonday poster

Something from a little while back, which hopefully I haven't posted before.

GOOD MORNING AND HELLO!

Did that waken you up on a Sunday morning? Sorry about that.
Graeme has very kindly asked me to upgrade from my semi regular guest spot status to full Sunday member and after much dodging (I'm a commitment phobe, just ask my wife) I'm here to foist my art dump on you on a weekly basis.

In the 90's I used to draw Dredd strips amongst others for 2000ad. After ten years away from the character, I painted this image for Zarjaz, the 2000ad fanzine. The complete image is a full wraparound cover which will be revealed much nearer its July release on the Zarjaz Blog.
I'll let you get back to your kip now. It is Sunday after all.

This is kind of fun

Ok, not 'fun' exactly. This is more sketching in my wee notepad and farting about in Photoshop. A lot of the texture comes from the smears of pencil from my hand on the rough textured paper. It looks VERY Enki Bilal-esque, which is just fine by me.

H is for Hellstorm and Hellcat

Marvel A - Z week 8: Hellstorm and Hellcat

Click on the images for larger versions.

Daimon Hellstrom - the Son of Satan, first appeared way back in the first issue of the original Ghost Rider series and has been dotted around the Marvel Universe since. He's had a couple of short lived series but was a regular in the Defenders for a while and is currently with the New Avengers. Probably the closest marvel has to a John Constantine type character.

Hellcat has appeared mostly in the Avengers and Defenders titles, although her civilian identity of Patsy Walker has been kicking about in comics since 1944 where she starred in her own teen romance comics. She married Hellstorm after meeting up in the Defenders, but his demonic side eventually drove her insane and she committed suicide. Luckily she lives in comics world and has recovered from her death fine - in fact she's pretty fit for a resurrected bird that's been kicking about since the 40's.

Spider Jerusalem, Transmetropolitan.

Here is a panel from a larger double-page spread commissioned for the new Transmetropolitan 1oth Anniversary Art Book. I went for aWarhol-inspired checker pattern (including the image seen here) with a portrait of Spider Jerusalem in lineart only. The book was made possible by the Kickstarter site.

Overwatch 2

The rulebook for Nightfall has been released as a PDF and features (among others) the artwork for 'Overwatch 2' which was done back in September or October.

I fiddled about with the framing of the image a little as you can see, but the tighter focus was considered the better of the pair.

H is for Hulk

Just for once I feel like I know something about this character as apart from growing up in the 70s and 80s and watching Bill Bixby transform into the Incredible Hulk every Saturday on the TV I also read the UK comic 'Hulk Weekly'. The Hulk was created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby back in 1962. Dr Bruce Banner gets himself exposed to a gamma bomb explosion and when he loses his temper he transforms into the Incredible Hulk. I've always liked the Hulk because it is essentially a horror story, well the original concept is anyway, I'm not sure how well he works mixed in with other super heroes but if its a story about a guy who changes into a monster which he can't control then I'm interested.

Two things I remember very well from my youth is having an amazingly cool Hulk t-shirt when I was about eight and a giant sized Hulk versus Spider-Man comic. The Hulk leaps into New York and your friendly neighbourhood Spider person decides he better convince him to leap on. Loved the comic.

Jonday - the evening is still Monday

Late again! Sorry. Very busy. I'm sorry.

I clicked on a page at random on my Imageshack page, to source an image of yesteryear for today's entry. It's one I find still bearable despite it's age. Made many a moon ago for Alderac Entertainment, for a game that never came out. Looks like it might come out one day, but I'm certainly not holding my breath. She looks a bit like Lady Gaga, right? Predates her by some considerable margin, but that's ok.

Pink Lady

I've been playing around with lo-fi scanning and various other ways of deriving textures from the existing material. In this case I drew the pic on a crappy piece of typing paper, that bled really badly. I scrunched it up in my pocket, then scanned in colour and amped up the grain of the paper with the Curves tool. I did another scan in bitmap mode so that I could get a mask easily.

G is for Gargoyle

Marvel A - Z week 7: Gargoyle

Click on the images for larger versions.

Gargoyle is (again) probably one of the more obscure characters on my Marvel list. He's had his own mini-series or two and appeared in various titles, but his mainstay was the Defenders comic - specifically the 'New Defenders' era. I've seen him drawn as skinny, short and fat and of course the standard superhero stature. The wings too have ranged from tiny to huge, so have had to make a few decisions on this one based on my memory of the character.

Sexy Wolverine!

Another sketch from Paris Manga. A request by a lady for a sexy, Hugh Jackman inspired Wolverine (without the broken nose and body hair I normally draw) More of an X-Darcy?

More Nightfall

Another image from the Nightfall card game from AEG. I think there was a John Bolton image in the back of my mind while doing this, which I remember from decades ago of a vampire girl swiping her arm up against a wall and leaving a bloody streak. And Underworld. That was in the back of my mind too.

Originally The hanging guns were the small shoes of children (She is an evil vampire girl, BTW) as a nod to Bram Stoker's Bloofer Girl (Lucy, I think), who was supposed to prey upon children at an orphanage if my memory serves correctly. But it was felt that that was too dark a hint and the guns and weapons instead hint at her badassery and countless warrior victims.

Edit; the card is up on the Nightfall site. She's called Lilith lawrence .

©AEG 2010

G is for Galactus

I'd have thought that Galactus is one of the Fantastic Four's most well known bad guys, maybe Dr Doom would be first in that poll? Anyway, I know he devours planets, he's got the Silver Surfer to fly about for him and he's huge. Apart from that he looks cool.

Jonday

I wasn't a date late. And these are not the droids you are looking for.

My spies tell me this cover is out on the front of a magazine, and later will be on the book I did it for.

Can't say any more than that, since Google Translate tells me fans are speculating!

Cheeky

I drew this for the cover of an indie anthology called 'Commercial Suicide' #2 some years ago. As you can see we went out of our way to avoid taste and decency.

F is for Firelord

Marvel A - Z week 6: Firelord

Click on the images for larger versions.

Firelord is one of Marvel's 'cosmic' characters - an ex-herald of Galactus (the third one i think). Don't think he's had his own series at any point but seems to make regular appearances in books like Silver Surfer, Thor, FF, Avengers etc. Was introduced to him as a kid in old Marvel UK weeklies and always kind of liked him because his attitude was a bit different - basically a bit of a prat (that's the PG description). Guess he had the same appeal to me that characters like Gregory House have now - outside the norm of expected/accepted behaviour, doesn't give a monkey about others opinions - so entertaining to watch from a distance but you would hate if you knew them in real-life.

Paris Manga - Boba Fett!

Last weekend I was at the wonderful Paris Manga event. I met many friends and fans there including my favourite Bounty Hunter Boba Fett (David "Bobadave" Freymont, President of the 59th Legion)

Gothic Rocket

I love the Gothic Rocket that has been left as a monument to victorian engineering on Princes Street, Edinburgh. Built in 1875, the Scott Rocket, later renamed the Scott Monument, was intended as a three man vehicle to reach the moon. Featuring four, yes four, booster rockets whose design was later stolen by NASA Engineers, this incredible feet of victorian genius was...

Ahh, OK, its just a bit of rock. But a very pretty one. And it is just along the road, so I went and shot some ref for this illo for Cubicle 7's Shadows Over Scotland book. © Cubicle 7 2010

F is for Mr Fantastic

Mr Fantastic, otherwise known as Reed Richards, is a member of the Fantastic Four. My knowledge of the Fantastic Four comes from TV cartoons more than the comics themselves. He's a scientist and can bend and stretch his body into any shape a side effect from the cosmic radiation he was submitted to during a spaceship flight. He's married to Sue Storm (Invisible Girl) who is the sister of Johnny Storm (The Human Torch). And his pal is Ben Grimm (The Thing). I think that's about the extent of my knowledge on the Fantastic Four, I believe (although I could be picking this up from the recent films) that Richards is trying to find away to return the four back to normality and in the meanwhile they fight crime and stuff.

Jonday - gone fishing

So today we went public with our new company which takes on the license to publish classic Brit rpg of the 1980s Dragon Warriors. http://serpentking.com/

In honour of this preventing me making a proper Jonday update until now (2019GMT) I shall post the Dragon Warriors core book cover, wot I done the cover for a few years back.


Dragon Warriors by *JonHodgson on deviantART

Mucking about

Just doodling in a sketchbook, then added some tints in Photoshop.

E is for Enchantress and Executioner

Marvel A - Z week 5: Enchantress and Executioner

Click on the images for larger versions.

Some more bad guys this week. These characters are again long running villians, primarily from the Thor and Avengers books. The characters aren't that well known out of the comics and some cartoons but i believe they both feature in the upcoming Thor movie due out summer time, so will probably be a bit more in the public eye then.

Paris Manga 2011.

I am heading off to France in eleven hours for my second appearance at the Paris Manga event. Very excited. A great show and huge audience. Schedules have not allowed me to post an image this week so I thought I would include a photo from last year's event. Here I am sketching alongside James Hodgkins. The Brits put in a good long show of nine hours a day at the tables and boards!

Inverness

There has been of an announcement of the impending release of Shadows Over Scotland, a Call of Cthulhu release from Cubicle Seven. Lots of period locations to do, and nice for a change to have some stuff close to home to illustrate :)

© Cubicle 7, 2010

E is for Eternal Brain

Nope I'd never really heard of him either. First seen in 'Red Raven' #1 by Timely Comics (pre name of Marvel Comics) in 1940, Professor William Carmody is mortally wounded by agents of the Emperor of Mongolia (um… okay) and has his brain transplanted into a tank of his own making where he develops mental (as in his brain not just crazy) powers. Later to appear in Marvel Comics: The Lost Generation the good professor has developed a robot body to house his brain called 'Walkabout' and is in the midst of regrowing his body (hence the embryo attachment) when he is killed by someone called Nocturne.

I can't say a lot of that makes any sense to me but you can read some more about him here.

I had struggled to think of anybody to draw for 'E' and had considered Elektra and Elric but hadn't found any inspiration so when I read about Eternal Brain I could see a more graphical approach to the subject rather than going down the robot with a brain in a jar route. Not often I produce an illustration purely on the computer but I had fun painting in the brain with some very loose strokes.