Saturday, 24 November 2012

Gruesome Non-toothsome

Coloured up and finished from previous line work...trying out various ideas and techniques. Based on a landlord I once had.

Friday, 16 November 2012

I See You! x2

A sneek peek of a couple o' new monsterously ghastly pics I've been making on and off over the last few weeks. Pretty hard to work on when Photoshop won't let you make more than half a dozen actions before crashing each time. When are those new Mac's gonna hit the high street? 'Dear Santa, I have been good all year...tho' I have sworn a lot'. I wanted to get one image done for Hallowe'en - fat chance! Maybe H2013?

Keep smilin'.

Tuesday, 13 November 2012

Process of Jordan

Jordan
(Acrylic on canvas board)

Am doing a bit of old school painting...yeah, with real paints! - remember those? Two reasons: one; because real paints rock, and two; I'm only just coming out of a serious slump of technical issues with hardware and software. Aaaaaargh!
However, the above process of paintings is not recent, but was completed a while ago for my sister-in-law, as a memento of a departed pet. Painting pet pooches or pussy-cats is always to stray into a dangerous arena. I'm thinking of those kitsch pet portraits you can see propped up in a garage sale which only serves to remind you how a rash idea can turn into an offense against humanity... and somehow one that is more easily made than when painting human portraits or landscapes. I hope I've managed to avoid that crime here, but maybe it can't ever be totally avoided. Perhaps the transgression's already made with the choice of the subject matter, before one's painted the initial stroke...ach, move on!

Monday, 22 October 2012

Scrappin' it - Mean & Fear

Just some scraps for this post, faithful visitor. I'm having computer meltdowns at the moment and new gear is in order. Transitions are always painful and time consuming, so having nothing better to show, I've gone back through the virtual sketchpad and sifted through the many doodles, trials and experiments I'm always scratching away at. Most of them don't see the daylight as they're usually unfinished, lame or dead in the water, etc. But sometimes a judicial crop here and a bit of text there can inject a bit of life. So in the absence of anything more note-worthy here are some perennial fan-art faves from the greatest comic in the universe: Judge Fear and Mean Machine Angel (again).

Saturday, 13 October 2012

Autumnal Joe

Time for another Dredd. Another experimental piece - though not immediately obvious - so not imperative to have everything absolutely cock-on, finish-wise. Just running some tests on certain techniques and time needed to execute them; all to see whether the whole process is worthwhile. I love this kind of finish but the process can be a drag. Which is a real pain if you're doing a lot of stuff with it.
 Anyways - when it comes to the uniform, I've always preferred the big flared lid. Don't know where I saw it first but that's how I prefer to draw it...

Thursday, 11 October 2012

Tweetin' ma lines...Rusty Cooker style

After holding off for a dang long while I've re-activated my twitter account as I found it was the only way I could communicate with certain people who weren't active elsewhere. So if you're not a regular blog-checker yourself but are just plain silly about twitter and you want to be informed if a new morsel of art has been loosed upon the virtual world then sign up here - you'll now be welcomed with open wings. I hereby promise no meditations on what I've had for breakfast...

Artists & Illustrators: create your profile...

Just a quick heads-up for all you who are looking for further online sites to promote yourselves and your artwork. The online magazine site called 'Artists & Illustrators' is offering free profiles, albeit with the limitation of only three pieces of work and no opportunity to sell originals. You can improve your lot with them by paying a smallish sum where you can have unlimited uploads, sell your originals and write your own blog, all for the sum of £2.49 per month or £24.99 per annum. To find out more, click this link which'll take you to the relevant page. Your first thought is probably 'why pay for a premium profile  when I can get those services for free elsewhere?' and it's a fair question. A&I obviously feel they have a greater reach than your average free site so I can only suggest creating a free, limited profile with them to start with and then try the paid version for a few months for the purposes of selling your originals. If after that it doesn't pay then quit it. See ya there and good luck!

Ya Missed The Hutch!

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Wednesday, 10 October 2012

Thursday, 13 September 2012

Torquay Landscape I

I visit family down south west in Torquay throughout the year and usually take a camera if I wander the country lanes that divide up the countryside. Always end up snapping rusting railings, delapidated outhouses and collapsing barns along with various farming implements seemingly abandoned and in various states of decay. The above image was drawn from a photo taken in a semi-failed road close to my parent's house which seemed to be populated with all the above examples.

Tuesday, 11 September 2012

South facing...naturally aerated...

Really should put down Call of Duty and go sort out those soffits...

SBP & Ps with Pc

Monday, 10 September 2012

Thursday, 6 September 2012

Buscemi-Pelé-Smalls Mash-up!

Another little experiment working with multiple images for the purpose of more advanced and involved compositions. I liked how the colours worked so I decided to upload it...

Pelè

The great Pelè!

Friday, 31 August 2012

Günther Takes The High Mountain Pass...

Günther's taking the high mountain pass to visit his girlfriend Heidi in the next valley over. Today, as always, he'll be late, due to him stopping to appreciate the fairy lights, a phenomenon of high altitude and bad grog.

A totally organic experiment hence there being no sense to this whatsoever other than the mangled narrative I've suggested above. If he's got ginger hair, how come he's got a 5 o'clock shadow? Oh well...

Tuesday, 28 August 2012

Pete

Peter Cook

The great comic actor, writer and comedian in digital pencil.

Discovered this in the vaults, about 9/10ths done - so I dusted it down, tarted it up and shoved it out the front door.

We Love Skullzzzzzzz!

Skulls are always great fun to draw/paint/spray/doodle. I never tire of finding different ways of drawing a skull with a pair of crossed bones...not since that first school exercise book, all them years ago...

Wednesday, 22 August 2012

Sergio Toppi - remembered

A quickish sketch of the great Italian artist and comic illustrator who died yesterday, and is surely deserving of a more involved study at some point. That's three legends gone this year - very sad. I haven't discovered one definitive web site dedicated to him but if you want to see this master's work (and you really do want to see his work) then your best move would be to image search his name on google - do it now!

Monday, 20 August 2012

Angry Avian

I'm experimenting here. Used Sketchbook Pro, or rather a free trial package, to do all the rough sketching as well as the inking. It's really proving to be a more powerful tool for drawing than Photoshop...well, more powerful than the CS2 version that I'm still using. Maybe the latest version of Creative Suite has addressed this. The inked stage was still taken into Photoshop for all the colour work as it's still got all the advantages in that department. Do any of you guys use Creative Suite 6? Have they improved the settings for intuitive sketching, drawing and inking or does Sketchbook Pro still hold the high ground?

Judge Death sez "Fools!"

Photoshop +PC
More fan art: this time Judge Death, one of Dredd's apocalyptic antagonists. Good fun to do, this.

Sunday, 19 August 2012

Anthony Burgess

in Photoshop on PC

Changed the brush settings and went for a more dip pen approach with this one. Why? Anthony Burgess had a wild head