WWI Biplane vs Chinese dragon

As well as cracking on with the illos for Starscape, I sketched and inked this today as a warm up, then decided to throw some colour at it.

The idea came from a dream I had ages ago - although the dream was a lot more serene and involved a single biplane chasing a distant creature through the clouds that looked an awful lot like the Luck Dragon from the Neverending Story. Decided to ramp up the violence for this pic though!

Not finished yet - will probably tinker with the colour through the week.

Praying robot

Abandoned sketch. Another exercise in inking (the ruined church anyway), plus practicing ways of portraying columns of smoke.

Blood Forest

This is something from about 5 or 6 years back - an experiment in photo manipulation.

Life drawing

Still working on the Starscape illos, but thought I'd put this up from life drawing class the other week, as I was quite pleased.

WWI Germans

Couple of very quick sketches to round off a productive evening. The guy on the horse is particularly loose - aiming to incorporate more looseness into my work.

Apocalypso!

I'm currently working on a series of illustrations for Starscape - a new venture soon to be launched by Chris Smillie. It's intended to be a storypaper in the good ol' fashioned sense - a mix of prose and pictures, with the text hopefully reading more like thrilling adventure/horror/sci-fi comics. I've been contacted by a couple of writers to provide illustrations for their contributions, and this is the second one I've done so far. It's a work in progress - the finished pic will have columns of black smoke rising from the buildings and a scene involving several figures in the foreground, but I thought I'd post the backdrop at this point so I can document the process behind what is for me a complicated piece. I find it hard to get excited about drawing buildings and vehicles - I'm much more a head and shoulders man! I tried to come with ways of making it more exciting. First of all, a google image search on Brutalist architecture brought up the main building (which is actually - appropriately enough - an FBI headquarters), then to further spice things up for myself I deliberately tried to experiment with my inking technique. I'm quite pleased with the result so far... stay tuned for the finished piece.

Defoe - finished version

Happier with this now.

Zombie Hunter General!

After several false starts, my competition entry for the latest 2000AD art comp, featuring one of my favourite characters from recent years: Titus Defoe. Picked up the trade recently, and have been gagging for the chance to draw him.

Might tweak the colours a bit more before submitting it - looks a little flat.

More S/D previews

Don't Take Your Guns To Town is all done and dusted and sent off to the esteemed Bolt-01 for lettering duties. Look out for it in Dogbreath #22, released to coincide with the Hi-Ex! 2010, which takes place in Inverness on 27-28 March.

NOIR!!

Veda had a sort out today and unearthed a load my old drawings. This is a strip I half-heartedly attempted in either 2001 or 2002. I was reading lots of Raymond Chandler and Sin City collections at the time, I think it shows! These are my favourite panels from about half a dozen pages, cobbled together today in photoshop. It's interesting to look back and think 'actually, it didn't all suck!' but also to review it and see that I've progressed in a lot of ways too (particularly overall layout and panel design). Anyway, I had fun drawing this all those years ago, and I had a lot of fun today re-editing it.

Johnny Alpha pencil sketch

I'm going to work this up into a splash page for 'Don't Take Your Guns To Town'. Took several attempts to get this right!

Fractal Friction page six

Pencils and inks by myself, colours and letters added by the multi-faceted Jim Campbell. Check out the ongoing strip at http://fractalfriction.blogspot.com/

New Strontium Dog previews

Currently grafting away on a new 6 pager for Dogbreath, the S/D fanzine. The story is called 'Don't Take Your Guns to Town' and it's one I'm quite proud of. These are works in progress, and will feature in the next issue.