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Cripes! A month between posts...


This was done as a very quick entry for this month's A Little Bit Bunny, pop on over there to see this guy as I intended to present him...

I vaguely thought he could be Wolverine's dad!

This was quickly sketched out whilst on holiday last week... used it as inking warm-up over the last couple of days.

Recently did this illustration of Emma Frost for Andi Ewington, he of 'The 45' from Com.X fame. Watch out for 'Blue Spear' coming soon from Com.X by Andi, Eddie Deighton and Cosmo White.


She'll wrap you around her little finger, so it's no surprise that here's a picture of a happy looking Andi with my interpretation of Ms. Frost!

Well, last month I was delighted to be invited to contribute once again to Scotch Corner, the Caledonian Comic Artists Collective who're celebrating their blogging birthday this month with a series of guest slots. I'm am amongst some seriously talented folk contributing, too many cool people to name have already contributed - and there's more to come!

Previously, I've submitted Bat-world pieces to their guest slot: a Harley Quinn, a Joker, and a Catwoman, but no surprises, it is 2000ad that I have turned to on this special occasion. Specifically the world of Strontium Dog, and as is usual for me, I gravitated to the girl in the gang - Durham Red.


You can see the full coloured version of that over on Scotch Corner. Also note the edited hand... after I'd inked it, and saught the advice of trusted indivduals, I felt this version was too claw like.

If you like this, then please come back tomorrow as I'll be posting up a piece that celebrates the return of Johnny Alpha, in fact, the resurrection of Johnny Alpha and his imminent return to the prog - as trailered in prog 1742, see the prog or ECBT2000ad for the details!

Something for A Little Bit Bunny. Coloured version there.




Will Somebody Get This Big Walking Carpet Out of My Way?

Amongst other bits and pieces and preparation for this weekend's Kapow, I've been doing a commission for John Burdis, I'd done something for The Cellar of Dredd before, a quick single illustration of Hondo-Cit's Inspector Inaba. I'd done that under my own steam following the fab time I had at the Hi-Ex Comicon, but this time, John had something in mind.

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!

I've just done an Artswap with a good pal and long time supporter of mine Graeme Neil Reid. A while ago, Graeme was doing a series of Ghostbuster illustrations and I asked if he was doing a Sigourney Weaver as Zuul, could I have the original in return for an illustration by me...


I'm chuffed to say he was up for it and chose a very broad topic of "Characters from Hammer and Universal Horror movies"... I have to confess to a soft spot for Frankenstein's monster (one of the first things I ever shared on this blog was a "Frankie"). So it was long over due to do another... this time I tried to capture Boris Karloff in his career defining role as the monster...


I hope Graeme likes the illustration when he finally receives it (weather permitting), and I look forward to the Gatekeeper arriving in due course!

Thanks Graeme!

I've had a quick attempt at Peter O'Donnell and Jim Holdaway's Modesty Blaise.


It's the result of a suggestion made by James Corcoran, who when we were doing the Art Swap included a little bonus sketch for each of us... I only found this fab little depiction of Dirty Frank by chance when I was clearing up, and I'm so glad I did.


Dirty Frank is one of my favourite characters from 2000ad's Low Life, a story about undercover Judges, written by Rob Williams.

Here's an inked illustration of Judge Anderson I've just done as an inking test trying out some paper with a rougher surface.
It's all about getting those dry brush effects without the expense of losing higher level detail...


Well, I'm pretty happy with it, could see it working as a cover for the Megazine in fact, I'd be glad to hear what you think of it too...
Although I've offered out my services to do commissions before... I really haven't tried to sell anything that I've done off my own back. So as an experiment, I'll be more than happy to sell this to the first person who offers me £50 for it. It's A3, inked straight over the pencils (which is unusual for me as I normally scan and print out my pencils so I have a back-up) so this is a true original never to be available again type item. Oh, and that price will include recorded delivery!

Part of the reason behind a drought of posts is because I've (finally) got my head down on Corvus!


I don't want to show too much too soon, so here are some inked sketches of crows and or ravens... Done whilst at the second meet-up session for Cambridge based comic creators inaugurated by the hugely talented Emma Vieceli.

Here's a panel from something I've been working on... I've edited it (a bit) so as not to give the game away too much (I hope).


I've tried to use black more on this... I was just experimenting really, but moody was the order of the day so, I wanted to at least have some hatching and areas of 'spotted' blacks.

One of my cohorts on Fractal Friction, (the not so grimm) Matte Soffe has done me the honour of inking up some of my recent sketches, please read his full blog posting here.


One of the pieces was my recent Dredd sketch, which he also did some beautiful colouring on... and as if that weren't enough he's been universally lovely about promoting it all over the web too... Thanks Matt, you're a gent, a talented one too.

Cor! Can you believe we are up to page 21?!?!!
For those of you interested in this sort of thing... Here are the original pencils, including the panel that was revised.


And here are the inks.


If you want to see what a spot of colour did to these inks, head on over to Fractal Friction to see the finished page...

Here are my inks for Fractal Friction page 8 - available to read in glorious full colour over at the Fractal Friction main blogsite.


What do you mean, you're still not reading it!

Two updates to the work blog in less than a week? Start building your fallout shelters because the end of the world is no doubt on the horizon. The sketches above are some rough character/concept stuff from a project written by a friend of mine. I think they came out looking pretty good.

I'm currently writing the third and final book in the Forts series, and finally feeling excited about it. For a while there I was struggling with how to start, and seriously lacking motivation for some weird reason.

You know...because motivation is never a problem for me.

(That last sentence was as sarcastic a sentence as I've ever written.)

Steven

Bubo, a little character I used for a 12-month calendar
and many other projects.
In this one he's modeling for February :)