Two Birthdays

This post marks the third birthday of my blog. Weirdly, this is also post 333, does that make it 50% evil?!

A good pal said to me over the seasonal break that he would like to see my take on The Dude, from the Coen Bros. fabulous The Big Lebowski.
I've got a real soft spot for The Dude, His Dudeness or El Duderino (if you're not into the whole brevity thing).

Like the film itself, there was a nice syncronicity to events, my friend's birthday is tomorrow, my blog would be 3 today, it was a nice quick sketch that I knew he was after and that suited my current status of waiting for feedback on the project I'm working on. Nothing was f**cked, So I drew him a card!


I don't think I've quite captured what I was after, but Jeff Bridges is a tricky chap to depict, even trying to get an essence of The Dude is a tall order... the desire to include (clever) quote related 'in jokes' was definitely not satisfied and originally I intended to do a group shot including Walter and Donny too, but sometimes you eat the bar and sometimes... well, he eats you!

A Wee Drinkie?

This is another panel from the strip I'm doing for Dogbreath... and, from the end of the week, you'll be able to pre-order both Dogbreath and the issue of Zarjaz containing the strips I did previously... exciting isn't it!

There's cause for celebration again, as I had a very encouraging e-mail from Paul Gravett on Sunday. For those of you who haven't heard of him, Paul is a tireless supporter of the comics medium, through his own works, journalism and the organisation of the Comica festival.

Pat Mills had suggested (at the signing) that I contact Paul and I'm chuffed I did because this is what he had to say:

...I've taken a look at your site and blog - Pat's got a good eye, and he's right, you're talented and just need that good story to work on.
You're on my radar now...

I know it's not an offer of work. But I do feel that I am close to making that leap from amateur to professional paid work. With the pot emptying faster that I can fill it, that would be no bad thing.

Carpet Pattern Card

I've finished my submission for Scotch Corner and I've had word from Graeme that he'll post it up in tomorrow's guest spot. Here is a bit of a teaser...


...and this is a pattern I created for an aborted project that involved a flying carpet. In the Harley Quinn pin-up, I've used the pattern as the pattern on the back of the card, and I have to say, I think it's far more effective as that than it ever felt as a magic carpet design.


I always think of Weaveworld when I think of magic carpets, and I am sure I recall thinking about that book when I was designing this pattern circa 1999 - now that's recycling for you!

Harley Quinn

I'm honoured to have been invited by Graeme Neil Reid to contribute to Scotch Corner. Scotch Corner is a collection of (top) Scottish professional artists, and although the only thing even remotely scotch about me is a penchant for 12 year malts, I am chuffed that I'll be in such illustrious company. Just as soon as I work up the sketch below to a finished standard, I'll send it to Graeme, with thanks for his continued support!



Batman villainess, Harley Quinn - does she need any explanation or reasoning? I'm gonna do a clichéd 'joker card' background that she's just shot/blasted her way through, hence the 'bow/curtsy' and hopefully it'll work. I've slapped some rough colour down and she's looking sexy enough... I have some other stuff to muddle through today and thoughts before I get back to it later (most likely tomorrow) would be most appreciated.

In other news, my refreshed website is up and ready for critiques. There are some errors I've already found and there are some things that can't be revealed just yet... but please pop along and let me know what you think. Thanks to Phil for plugging it already on his blog too!

Channel 4 - Life Class

Today's model was Maria Muñoz. Dancer and choreographer... brilliant pose, from two sides. I really enjoyed today's episode.


Click top to see a composite of the two sketches (I really like this). Click bottom to go to my flickr page where you can view all today's drawings and the previous days' too.

Channel 4 - Life Class

Today's programme had three shorter poses in contrast to yesterday's single set-up.


Consumate professional Ken Fahy hardly moved at all, he had a great physique that was really interesting to draw.


This was my favourite pose of the lot - there were some fascinating details in the hands that I would have loved to have had more time to observe.


The long pose was this classic foreshortened pose, I'm pretty happy with it - although a little longer would have again been good.

I think this is a great programme, Channel 4 has unsurprisingly had complaints - I can see that from a parental point of view, it's not what you want your child to see at lunchtime - but is it really so offensive?

Freaked Me Out, Man

Prog 1639 dropped through my door this morning... and what was on the cover? Yes, that's right a recreation of that classic prog 310 cover that I had myself done homage to earlier in the week.
One has to ask whether there is something in the cosmos... a weird psychoactive something or... possibly a result of a hive mind thing. which ever way you look at it - it's definitely unsettling when coincidences like this occur!

There are definite parallels that can be drawn between the two Dredd tales "The Starborn Thing" and "It Came from Bea Arthur Block" and so it would seem a natural thing to pay respect to the former, a classic from the 2000AD vault.

I have to admit that I did have prior warning of this potentially mind-bending coincidence before my prog arrived today. Shortly after I posted it on the 2000AD online forum, my old pal PJHolden sent me this sneak preview. He had this to say about it:

"...the idea of using the McMahon cover occured to me while talking to Gordon on the phone about the wigs story (probably before the first script was even written). I just thought it'd be hilarious. (attached is the cover sketches I sent to Matt - cover 1 was a half hearted attempted to give an alternative...)


Tried my best to evoke McMahon without mimicking him, did that by using strokes instead of solid black, using the same pose (obviously - though drawn to fit how I normally draw DREDD) and colouring the artwork in the style I remember from when McMahon would do coloured work in the Annuals."

For me, I think this is a really interesting opportunity to observe how three very well respected artists have interpreted the same scene.

Here then, as a comparison sort of thing... Ezquerra's original from the actual strip (actually taken from the double page spread in prog 311) and McMahon's re-interpretation of that for the cover to prog 310.


There is a real continuity that I had not expected to see - four very different artists all depicting the same thing in their own way. From a story telling point of view the impact can only truly be acheived with a first person perspective - it's the attention grabbing aspect you are after. I can only hope that mine holds up in such illustrious company!

I'm going to be interested to hear what's said about this on the forum!

*EDIT* PJ has also put a posting about his first 2000AD cover on the wonderful Eclectic Micks blog.*EDIT*

DrawerGeeks - Dragon

The new topic on DrawerGeeks is Dragon.

I'm supposed to be packing the house up for our upcoming move...


...but I found 25 minutes to take part. I'd normally have loved to get all involved doing a lovely fantasy dragon. I nearly drew Bruce Lee, but in the end humour won out, and you have the submission above.

Goth

The current DrawerGeeks topic is Goth:


This was a quick digital sketch to get the idea of the simple b&w graphic down - Although, I think there might be a better execution of this idea.

Miss Moneypenny's An Eejit

The current topic over at DrawerGeeks is James Bond 007, obviously in honour of The Quantum of Solace release last week...

I've seen it and it's a thumpin' good 'un - it's getting some duff reviews, but I think that's as a reaction to the fact that expectations after Casino Royale were extremely high - I think we need to remember how much better than some of the other Bond movies this new one is... go and see it, it's great!

The main thing I've missed in the Daniel Craig films is the delightful MI5 secretary and her flirty quips... even though she is daft enough to fantasize about James, I've always liked her character, especially Samantha Bond's more sassy incarnation.


This was a very quick pencil sketch that I threw some colour on in photoshop - it's a bit rough but I didn't want to get side tracked from the Dredd script too much more.

If you're wondering about this post's title, it's an Alan Partridge quote - Steve Coogan at his best...

Judge Dredd - Informant 1.0

Managed to get down to it today... I took an eon constructing this first (still unfinished) panel, which is shameful given the single-point perspective.


There will be a lot more characters on the panel and bags of detail hopefully. I giggled to myself when I drew the lanky guy on the left hand side... I think he looks like Lurch from The Addams Family , which is no bad thing!

I'm really glad to be finally getting the strip drawn up.

Page Four Inked

Page four? Page four? Where the hell is page three?

Yes, it's glaringly obvious that page three has gone missing... where is she? She's sulking, cos I can't bring myself to get involved with that damn night club scene again so soon... I needed a break from drawing loads of people so I moved onto a page where I got to draw the fascist anti-hero that is Judge Dredd.

To my surprise, I really enjoyed drawing the vehicles in panel one and obviously Dredd's grim expression in panel two.

Graeme Neil Reid left some really encouraging comments on the last post. Thanks to Graeme and also PJ Holden, Chris Weston, Chuck Wells, Dave Taylor, Dylan Teague, Stephen Reid, Lee Townsend, Jim Boswell, and Dan Panosian who've all been really supportive of my recent foray into comic art. Sorry if I've forgotten anyone, I really do appreciate you too!

In other exciting news, I'm going to have a Creator Showcase up on Bullet Proof Comics' website soon and also something very exciting might be happening with Taormina too... so watch this space!

Celebrating the Centenary.

Some nice news for my 100th blog posting. I was intending to do put up a finished piece but this incredibly encouraging discovery (made with google blog search using my name) has just blown me away.


A talented chap by the name of Dave Stokes posted a homage to Taormina on his blog in July - I'm amazingly proud and humbled to have inspired work in someone else - a lovely feeling - thanks Dave, you don't know how much this means to me!

Through this blog I have received such a lot of encouragement and support. I really appreciate the comments everyone has made and the efforts that have also been made on my behalf, many thanks to you, you know who you are and you all rock!

Judge Dredd - "Nobody" (pg 1)

Last friday, I received my sample script in the post from the good folk at 2000AD... emblazoned across the top in big capitals, the legend: NOT A COMMISSION!


I've pretty much done roughs for all the pages now. I'm working slightly differently with this - I've done really, really rough thumbnails to sort the panel layouts and then I've made a template sheet that I've printed out on file paper. I'm working at 80% printed size and will blow it up in photoshop to work at 133% printed as an underlay for the final, hopefully tightened up pencils (I may elect to eliminate inking but I'm not sure at the moment).

PJ Holden has already given me some pointers on this page, mainly he thinks I need some establishing information in there. I'm grateful that he's taken the time again to help encourage my endeavour, as I know he has with other aspiring comic artists.

From a quick search on 2000AD review I found that the story was already published in prog 1467 and was written by Robbie Morrison and originally drawn by Richard Elson. Thankfully I didn't see anything that has affected the way I'm approaching the script.

Judge Dredd © 2008 Rebellion Developments/2000AD

Another Taormina Rough

This is the next panel and again this is only a really rough digital sketch.


I posted up my Judge Dredd pages over on the drawingboard and I've had some really good, constructive criticism which you can read here. I decided to try to practise some of the dynamic frame composition stuff that was lacking in the Dredd pages with this next episode of Taormina. I hope that's working in this panel - again I'm using the golden ratio, fibonacci or golden spiral in all my Taormina panels.


I think you'll need to 'mirror' this one to get the right orientation for the panel above.

A Giant's Tale

Just after Christmas I did five illustrations for a book about the fictional life of giants... I was in a bookshop yesterday and found that the book was out on shelf!! From those five illustrations, only two have made it into the final book but if you want to see my first commissioned work in print: The Secret History of Giants is published by Templar Publishing and I am credited here, which is really cool!
...and for those of the curious persuasion, here, in all their glory, are the five illustrations I did!

Giants Playing Quoits

The Giant's Daughter's Wedding and A Giant With A Dragon's Tail

Jack The Giant Killer and The Childe of Hale

It's nice to be in print and especially to be involved in a nice project with a well respected company...

...buuuut, this is the only real work I've had this year...

And The Award Goes To...

Thanks to Matt Dawson for nominating me for a weblog award... check out the seven lucky bloggers who he's nominated for this fuzzy-feeling accolade over on his blog... and spare a few moments also to pop onto his newly revamped website - I think you'll be glad you did.

I don't normally indulge in circular/chain type things, but this seems like something to not simply ignore.

I'm not going to continue this any further than to simply direct you some of many of the blogs I find myself going to more often... and please do also check out my links (if you haven't already done so) as all of them deserve awards too.

• Alina Chau
• Bad Librarian
• Chris Weston
• David Bishop
• Digital Scott
• Friday Frog
• Joshua Middleton
• Ken Anderson
• Rufus Dayglo
• Sean Phillips