Marker Time

If you pay attention to my other sketchblog , draw-bridge.blogspot.com , then you will know that I've been playing around with Copic markers recently. It's a way get stuff done without using computers ( I think that's what 'Paint' is for too ). Here I did the tonal drawing with markers then tinted it in Photoshop...because I am too cheap to buy a full set of coloured markers, only the grey ones.

Q is for Quasar

Marvel A - Z week 17: Quasar

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Quasar has been kicking about the Marvel Universe since the 70's albeit originally known as Marvel Boy then Marvel Man for a while. He is one of Marvel's cosmic heroes and was assigned the role of 'Protector of the Universe'. His power is derived from the Quantum bands he wears and which were originally worn by the original Marvel Boy from the 50's (you can check him out in the Agents of Atlas books). He has been a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent as well as an Avenger and is hanging about with the curent version of the Guardians of the Universe just now. He had his own series which ran for about 5 years from the late 80's into early 90's

GlasCAC 1990

Here's a classic Erskine image from the convention brochure of the Glasgow Comic Art Convention in 1990, it doesn't say but I'm guessing its the character Stacy which Gary mentioned back here.

Next Thursday we are into the month of May and our first month long guest on Thursday!

Trial

Every once in a while I try something new out, a new technique (to me) or a new approach. This week's post is another Nightfall card (© AEG 2011) which I tried to pull off with colour over line artwork, rather than painting with opaque colour over the rough. Of course my perception of the requirements and difficulties of the technique turned out to be somewhat different in practice. Probably needed a touch more contrast in the colouring?

Goodbye Sarah Jane

Unbelievable that Lis Sladen has died, THE Doctor Who companion. As a little boy I adored her and as a grown man I admired her… goodbye Sarah Jane Smith.

I really hoped I'd have time to do a new drawing for this post but work has seen put to that, I will attempt a new illustration soon. I did this pencil sketch from a few years back while being engrossed in the CBBC series The Sarah Jane Adventures, a fantastic children's show with enough clout to have the Doctor visit a few times!

Jonday Smoke

My new toy is "Smoke", an application for making smoke like images as above. Mac only. Look for it on the app store.

Judge Jury and Executioner?

No it's not Judge Dredd, It's that other icon of Law enforcement officer Dibble. This was drawn one lunchtime at work and was a lot of fun to do. When I was young I used to draw the characters from this show over and over until I had the style locked in my head and after 30 years I only had to have a peek at a couple images of the background buildings to remember how they were done.

I totally love this style of art and if I could go back in time, (I'd place a huge bet on the Grand National) and I'd try to get a job as an artist on Top Cat.

P.S. I had planned to put up the cover for Red Sands 2 but on reflection it is exceptionally gory and I thought better of it. There might be kids watching, (who will probably now go looking for it.)

Eisner sketch

I was at the Big City Drink & Draw the other day. We did lots of stuff, but while I was listening to Elgin Bolling give a charicature demo, I drew a quick charicature/portrait of Will Eisner ( who's face was on the video monitor at the time.

There was also a 15 minute 'Speed Draw' which the subject was 'The Joker'. This is my Joker. The general standard was very high. I didn't win , because I was one of the Judges and thusly was disqualified.

P is for Power Man

Marvel A - Z week 16: Power Man

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Sent to prison for a crime he didn't commit. He promptly escaped (after undergoing a super power experiment) from a maximum security prison. Still wanted by the government, he survived as a hero for hire. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find him, maybe you can hire Luke Cage: Power Man. Hmmm, that concept sounds familiar.

Power Man was another of my favourite Marvel characters as a kid. I've still got most of the original series and it's still a fun read (if you ignore the initial Blaxploitation and the awful stereotypical unrealistic 'black speak' aspect of it, which i was completely unaware of first time round as a kid)

As mentioned before his series eventually merged with Iron Fist to create one of the best Marvel books of the time (IMHO). Hence my doodle is again the original costume. He appeared throughout the Marvel Universe in various capacities including another solo and team series. His name was cleared along the way and these days he is a member of the Avengers although these days he is just known as Luke Cage and wears street clothes as his 'costume'.

Comic World interview

Come with us now back to the heady days of April 1993 and an interview conducted by Comic World editor Steve Holland with an artist who has "…got nothing witty or interesting to say…"

The interview appeared in issue 14 of Comic World and is © Steve Holland 1993. Many thanks to Steve for allowing us to share this with you, please be sure to check out Steve's websites Bear Alley and Bear Alley Books where you can order some fantastic titles.

More sketchiness from the vault

Another sketch from the vault, even from as far back as 99 this week. Sheesh. Looks like the Napoleonic obsession I have goes back longer than I thought it did too. This was never for anything, other than practice I think. Edit; obviously this is unfinished, I guess she's supposed to be resting that hand on a sword or similar?

Landfall

This is a recent commission for the Radio Times to support the Saturday Play on BBC Radio 4 called 'Landfall', a nice little sci-fi play which I had a lot of fun illustrating. Check out my own blog where I've posted the supplied brief and approved sketch for this piece.

This isn't Wednesday. Or Friday.

But it is a post. I had to forgo my Wednesday posting last week because of family commitments, but I have no excuse for not also posting on Friday, when I had time to do so. Sometimes "I'll do it tomorrow" means nothing of the sort, eh?

This is really old work, from 2000, or 2001 which later went on to get painted in oils. Having a look through my old sketchbooks the other day and they are an odd combination of "Wow, I really could draw" and "Whaaaaat did I think I was trying to do with that?!?!?"

(Edit; apology to Jon, who IS supposed to be posting today. Not meant to shuffle you off, or steal your thunder, sir!)

Jonday back from the dawn of time

I got one of those flowery iMacs (1999?) when they came out. And that introduced me to the idea of making painterly style art on a computer. Which seemed pretty stupid and hey still does, but then that's never stopped me doing anything.

This is the first piece of digital art I made, aside from all the stuff I did in Melbourne Draw on my Speccy, then IconGraphix, then Dpaint 4 on me Amiga etc etc. This was made in Apple Works.

Small Press

Red Sands was a 24 page post apocalyptic comic strip that I drew when I was at college in the early 90's. It was a mix up of Strontium Dog and Mad Max meets High Plains Drifter. At the time I was heavily influenced by Carlos Esquerra and several other 2000ad artists.

Early last year Starscape comics asked if they could continue the strip with a new artist and writer. I was happy to agree because I had no plans to continue it any further myself. Before the new strip kicked off, Starscape re-published my original comic through Lulu and free from My Ebook and I provided an updated cover based on my original 1994 image

Red Sands issue 2, written by Matthew McLaughlin and Illustrated by Bruce Mclaren is an ultra gory and violent sequel to the debut story and I painted a new cover for that release too. Keep your eyes peeled for that image next week

Power Girl

I missed last week ( VERY BAD!! ) so in an effort to make it up to you all I drew a PowerGirl drawing especially for you.
I'm reading the Amanda Connor, Jimmy Palmiotti & Justin Gray PowerGirl run at the moment and enjoying it quite a lot.

O is for Odin

Marvel A - Z week 15: Odin

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Odin is Thor's old man and is the ruler of Asgard. He's a bit of a grumpy old git and is always banishing and punishing his kids (Thor more so than Loki even though Loki is the evil one) whilst half the time he actually seems to be the cause of Asgard's problems and invasions himself having created the Destroyer and Odin-Sword etc. Whenever trouble is brewing he'll nip off for a nap (the Odin-sleep which is never to be disturbed) and leave others to sort out the problems - lazy sod. Probably the Victor Meldrew of Marvel's characters.

Anthony Hopkins will be playing Odin in this summer's Thor movie by Kenneth Brannagh - trailers are looking good.

How Dare he!!!

Hey, it's Graeme here. Mr Erskine has the gall to be temporarily too busy to post on Scotch Corner and with his impending marriage (best wishes from us all) and his jaunt to the other side of the World we've seen fit to grant him an extended leave. So for the next few weeks I'll be posting Gary-tastic images on his behalf and then we have two great guests who are going to step in and post throughout May and June.

Gary has been posting lots of convention sketches in recent weeks so I'll not break the trend and post up this sketch of Dan Dare which Gary drew for me back in 2008 at Hi-Ex in Inverness. I'll catch Gary out here and say that I asked him to sketch the Mekon for me and he declined saying that he wasn't up to 'sketching speed' with the Mekon and that he'd do Dare instead, I wasn't going to complain but I'll get that Mekon sketch one day Gary, you are warned :)

Going Batty…

Gah… Tuesday already… no time…

Jonday - Azuran

Hey! As those of yous what know me will know, I haven't had much work to show this year. It's all been LOTR which is underwraps until the publisher does promo with the images or the book comes out. Likewise I've been crazy busy creating art for a facebook game called Trials of Azuran. I'm allowed to show some of that though, thanks to the kindness of my Azuranian overlords. So here's one of the big adversaries from the game:



Image (c)2011 Project Quest

Steam Punk-ed

This illo from a year ago was my first ever attempt at doing something in the Steam Punk genre. I painted the image in full colour originally but this sepia version is my favourite take on it. For me anyway, it seems the most true to the period look I was hoping to emulate. With the sepia version I also tried to match the ghostly blur you see in the days of early photography. Long exposure times meant the slightest movement created these wraith like figures. Those photographic 'ghosts' spooked me when I was a wee boy and it's always stuck with me ever since.

N is for Nightcrawler

Marvel A - Z week 14: Nightcrawler

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Nightcrawler has been a mainstay of the X-Men books since his introduction in Giant Size X-men#1 (1975) where the X-men concept was relaunched by Len Wein and Dave Cockrum to great success, eventually leading to the X-men books becoming the main cornerstone of the Marvel Universe. The design and concept of Nightcrawler (as with a few of the other 'New' X-men created for the relaunch) were actually characters created by Cockrum for DC's Legion of Superheroes books, but they were rejected by the editor at the time so Cockrum just took them with him to his next gig at Marvel. Doh!

Ghouls!!

More Nightfall card art this week. Mexican ghouls! ©AEG 2011

Todays post is more of a shout out for a new blog by Gavin Leahy called '2000AD Sketch Show' it does what it says in the title.

Jonday - the hidden city at the south pole

A cover for my German friends.

Cannibal Queen

Chris Smillie approached me early last year to do a cover for a new comic he was planning to publish. I thought something in the spirit of the Heavy Metal magazine covers might be a good approach to catch the eye of new readers. This Cannibal Queen illo drew it's inspiration from many of the video nasties of the early 80's such as Cannibal Holocaust and Cannibal Ferox. If you like the image there's a 1920X1200 desktop version available on my blog. Just don't stare into her eyes too long or say something stupid like Candyman three times. http://alexronald68.blogspot.com/2011/02/cannibal-queen-desktop.html

Cosmo

It's nearly impossible to draw the way I normally do on an iPad, so I've had to try and recall all those old painting skills I haven't used since college. Think in terms of colour and tones. I'm not so sure about this painting, but frankly I could have lain in bed all morning just tweaking and fiddling with it. At least with an inked linedrawing I know when it's done.

M is for Man-Thing

Marvel A - Z week 13: Man-Thing

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Man-Thing was created when scientist, Ted Sallis, injected himself with a failed 'super-soldier' serum (he had been trying to recreate the Captain America formula) and crashed into a swamp (later revealed to be a magical nexus) while on the run. The combination of chemicals, magic and swamp transformed him into the Man-Thing. Appearing about a year and a half before DC's Swamp-Thing the origin stories are incredibly similar and apparently almost led to a legal battle between Marvel and DC. The characters diverged quite drastically after the origins though, so it never really came to anything.

He's had quite a few series over time and appeared regularly throughout Marvel's various titles since his creation, he's currently a regular in the Thunderbolts title.