Cartoon time

A couple of more cartoony vector illustrations done recently.

Wondergirl. Sketch.

Star Wars - Bib Fortuna

I always figured Bib was a lot more savvy than he actually appeared, he was pretty easily led and obviously fooled by Luke but he looked to me like he'd played it smart to get to the position he was in with Jabba. I don't mean that he was a super intelligent behind the scenes schemer I just mean he caught a lucky break and was clever enough to exploit it. I loved the look of him, those staring eyes and teeth, the slow gait and calm stance. He didn't have much to do in Jedi other than look fantastic and be told off by Jabba.

Michael Carter played the part of Bib (although didn't voice him), he's a good Scots lad from Dumfries with a long list of credits to his name. My favourite though has to be his  scene in An American Werewolf in London, he's the chap running through the London underground, what a brilliant scene, love it.

And I think I'll give the Star Wars theme a break for a bit now, its always fun and I will certainly return to it but for now time for a change.

Hell Ride

Another one of my back burner projects is a cover painting of the Marvel character, Ghost Rider.
In preparation for this I built a very quick model of the bike.
I based this on a broad range of references from the comics. Sometimes the bike is drawn quite fantastical and sometimes more conventional, it just depend on the style of the artist who's drawing the strip at the time. My favourite had to be the version with the evil skull face plate and I took my lead from that.

Very Old Art

This is a page of 'Partee 2 ' which I drew when I was at college in the late 80s. I never finished the story . As I remember it was changing style every page or so , so the thing was wildly inconsistent looking. This is a normal thing with young artists I discover. It was inked with a Winsor & Newton Series 7 brush. That was my weapon of choice at the time. I've since gone back to brushes ( well brush pens at least ) so I find this oddly similar to what I'm doing now.

Vampire sketch

Just a quick vampire doodle.

Vampire Mermaid. Sketch.

Psychic Paper

Doctor Who's Wallet with his psychic paper, for getting one's self out of tricky situations not solved by the Sonic Screwdriver. ©2012 BBC/Cubicle 7 Entertainment Ltd. BBC, DOCTOR WHO (word marks, logos and devices), TARDIS, DALEKS, CYBERMAN and K-9 (word marks and devices) are trade marks of the British Broadcasting Corporation and are used under licence. BBC logo © BBC 1996. Doctor Who logo © BBC 2009. Tardis image © BBC 1963. Dalek image © BBC/Terry Nation 1963. Cyberman image © BBC/Kit Pedler/Gerry Davis 1966. K-9 image © BBC/Bob Baker/Dave Martin 1977

Star Wars - Han Solo

Saying that 'Han shot first' still implies that Greedo even got a shot off and lets face it he didn't. Han shot him, shot him dead in a shady bar full of disreputable characters who couldn't care less that Han shot him first, second or even later that day. And if we are honest the fans of Star Wars didn't care that Han had shot Greedo well before the need to feel that Han might have given the alien a fighting chance. Why would Han give Greedo a chance?

Back to drawing Harrison Ford and my quest to capture his likeness on paper, seriously he isn't easy, still I'm pretty happy with this one I think I caught the essence of the guy pretty well without going into major detail.

Jonday on the clock

Still monday technically, even if it is half past ten.

So I've been doing some experimenting with sketching and timing myself.  One piece of evidence follows:

Rolling back the years

I found this online a while back. Dredd over the years since 1977.
My version of him appears in 1998 .

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Esteban Maroto - trashed

Back in 2003 when I was living in France and drawing 'Family' for the Megazine. I was regularly chatting with Frazer Irving on ...whatever IM system was fashionable at the time. I had found a whole bunch of kinky pencil illustrations by Esteban Maroto ( one of my heros ) and I thought it would be fun to try and ink them . Just for fun and maybe to learn something. So I did this one and Fraze did another one. Sadly I don't have a copy of the one Fraze did. I seem to remember it was excellent , which will surprise no one here I'm sure.
The pencils were printed out Blue-Line and then inked with a Zebra G-nib or maybe a Maru pen . I don't remember.

W is for Wolverine

Wolverine sketch - wahay, finally got around to drawing something that i could colour up with the Pantone promarkers i've had sitting on my desk for the best part of a year.

Punisher. Sketch.

Who's Scotland

Dr Who's Scotland! The place with the monks and werewolves and Queen Victoria. ©2012 BBC/Cubicle 7 Entertainment Ltd. BBC, DOCTOR WHO (word marks, logos and devices), TARDIS, DALEKS, CYBERMAN and K-9 (word marks and devices) are trade marks of the British Broadcasting Corporation and are used under licence. BBC logo © BBC 1996. Doctor Who logo © BBC 2009. Tardis image © BBC 1963. Dalek image © BBC/Terry Nation 1963. Cyberman image © BBC/Kit Pedler/Gerry Davis 1966. K-9 image © BBC/Bob Baker/Dave Martin 1977

Star Wars - Boushh

I remember watching Return of the Jedi for the first time in the cinema and being fascinated by the bounty hunter Boushh, he looked cool (yes the character is meant to be a 'he'), acted cool, spoke cool, had caught Chewbacca and had the cahoneys to bargain with Jabba the Hutt with a thermal detonator. Yeah, pretty cool in my book.

As a family I wouldn't say we where poor by any means but we didn't spend money wastefully and while every other kid had Star Wars figures aplenty it took until I was given pocket money and saved up myself before I started collecting the toy figures. The very first figure I bought was Boushh (with the removable helmet to show… oh my gosh it was really… ). I never had an extensive figure collection, could never afford any of the vehicles or ships but I was happy with what I had. I'll mention a remarkable act of kindness shown to me by my brother. One Saturday I was poorly and while watching the wrestling (Big Daddy and Giant Haystacks not WWF in those days) my brother went out to town, when he came back he had been to the Co-op toy department and bought me a Gamorrean Guard figure. I'm still suspicious to this day, surely he was after something or trying to make up for some wrong doing but I guess really he was just being a most excellent big brother. Thanks mate :)

Jonday - Monster Island

Just released onto the intarwebs yesterday - cover for the forthcoming Runequest 6 book Monster Island from The Design Mechanism

God's hitman

He's a holy man who hunts demons but he's no angel himself and there's no rest for the wicked.

Please check out the Vixens Facebook page this month for your chance to win a VVW T shirt.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Vampire-Vixens-of-the-Wehrmacht/179230265443902

Zatanna

Nuff said really.

Catwoman

Quick doodle of Batman's femme fatale- Selina Kyle, Catwoman

Roller Grrrls. Sketch.

Sir Alasdair

From quite a few months ago for The Onyx Path, The Lost; Victorian book. © The Onyx Path 2012. (sorry folks! I've managed to post late 2 weeks running! oops...)

Star Wars - AT-AT

I've always loved The Empire Strikes Back its just got loads of great bits in it (and not too many puppets) and we are back to some excellent model work from ILM on the four legged Imperial Walkers that we see at the start of the film. In many ways the AT-AT's are the very worst kind of 'heavy tank', slow and with not a huge amount of ordinance, their long legs seem somewhat of a mistake too on the battlefront. But like many things in Star Wars for all their failings they look really really cool. Lumbering through the snow drifts in the Battle of Hoth, stomping along, blowing things up, yeah they rock. For all the digital tom-foolery you get on the sequels you can't beat the use of stop animation on the AT-ATs, it just works perfectly.

Jonday hills

Just a quick one.  ArtRage.

Raiders of the lost Arc-hives

Unearthed this really old sketch from the early 2000's. It was for a TV show that speculated what if dinosaurs didn't die out, how would they evolve and would they have experienced periods similar to humans, Bronze Age, Medieval etc.

Big boned

A robot that I drew for my own sick amusement.

BHP sketches

A few of the quick sketches done for customers at the Black Hearted Press ( https://www.facebook.com/blackheartedpress ) launch event on Wednesday night (Halloween) at Plan B Books ( https://www.facebook.com/planbbooks ) in Glasgow. Thanks to everybody who turned up to show support, chat and get sketches.

Pippa Middleton. Sketch.