Judge Dredd - American Vampire

Haven't drawn Dredd for ages and this idea popped into my head the other day. The tagline works better pre-Day of Chaos mind.

Kid Tiger roughs

Quick roughs for a sketch of the teen vigilante, Kid Tiger. James Corcoran - who is currently drawing the strip - very kindly let me have a copy of The Long Tomorrow by Moebius as well as Prisoner of The Stars by Alfonso Font. This (once it's inked) is a little thank you for that generosity.

El Bigote - La Noches De Los Muertoads!

Here it is, the finished cover art for the next El Bigote (mis)adventure through the Mexican afterlife. As mentioned in the previous post, this was pencilled by my hombre El Chivo, and (digitally) inked and coloured by myself. Note to self - don't ink things this complex in PS ever again - takes soooo long! What was I thinking? Nah, seriously though, I chose to do it this way just for the challenge really, and to gain experience in digital inking. Must try to master Manga Studio at some point though - by all accounts it's much better for inking.

Nigel Dobbyn's Hellboy - coloured

2000AD alumnus Nigel Dobbyn posted this beautifully crafted Hellboy on Facebook earlier today, and within seconds I was bugging the poor chap to let me have a bash at colouring it. It was a chance to try out a completely different style to my usual one too, with these elegant lines demanding a more clean cut treatment. Pretty pleased with the result too.

New 'El Bigote' preview

Currently inking up this bad boy, roughs again provided by El Chivo. This is a tiny detail of a hugely intricate cover/pin-up to promote the next adventure of the undead quillslinger - 'La Noches de los Muertoads'. Just for a challenge/spot of masochism, I'm inking this digitally in Photoshop. Which is taking an age, but if it was too easy it wouldn't be any fun would it?

TWO book cover art

Now that the colours on Paradise Mechanism are all done I can get back to some eariler projects that I had to put on hold. Not least among them, the cover art for Ryan Henry's survival horror novella 'Two'.

Although I've been away from this for what must be the best part of a couple of months, ideas and influences have been percolating at the back of my mind the whole time. In particular, I've been thinking about how I wanted this to be a bit different, not just a run-of-the-mill depiction of a scene from the story. And it's not a comic book - it's prose this time, so I'm going for a more design-based outcome now.

Been studying a lot of cover art by Dave Johnson - a guy who, along with Mike Mignola, has to be one of the best cover artists working these days. Yes, it's comics they generally produce covers for, but they both infuse their work with a very strong sense of design, making them simple, bold, iconic and high-impact. There's also a dash of Hitchcok/Saul Bass going on here too.

Groucho in space!

A recent commission - the brief was the 3 words in the title of this post, the rest was left up to me! The result is a blend of certain influences I've been absorbing lately: Plague of Frogs-arc BPRD, John Carter, Moebius and The Creature From the Black Lagoon. Colour-wise I wanted to try something slightly different, at least in terms of the palette used, hence the hazy pinkish cast which is supposed to evoke the strange light on an alien world.

Joel Fleischman

For my girlfriend's cousin's boyfriend, who incidentally I used to be in a band with, work with and live with. Did you follow all that?

Kid Tiger continues

Another ongoing colouring project. This is my favourite panel from page 4. To see the full page and catch up with the strip itself, head over to James Corcoran's blog.

Another slice of El Bigote colour!

A special illustration by the very talented SKD to promote 'The Pantless Pistolero', a sort of one-off origin tale of one of the freaky bad guys from 'El Bigote'. When trying to evoke the Mexican afterlife, I find myself gravitating towards a palette of sickly-sweet/putrid pinks, purples and yellows. Another one I really enjoyed colouring.

Beat Takeshi

Working fast... pencilled in 5 mins (see that here if you're interested), inked in less than 10, tones and splash of colour added in PS in around 5 again. Really like the looseness.

Warm-up - inked portraits

Had a good month of colouring and now I want to get back to some actual drawing, lest my faculties wither and drop off. Inked up a few more recent 10 minute portraits to loosen up before carrying on with a couple of commissions.

These ones are Dashiell Hammett, Harpo Marx, Joe Strummer, Michael K Williams, Alan Turing & Sissy Spacek.

All for sale as usual (apart from Joe - he's promised to someone already), A4 on nice cartridge paper and priced £12.50 plus postage.

El Bigote - Shaky Kane cover (colours)

2012 is turning out to be a great year so far - I just got to colour this fantastic cover by none other than the legendary SHAKY KANE for an upcoming issue of El Bigote (the excellently titled '13 Dead Federales'). Whilst working on this I kept remembering how Shaky's art used to grace the pages of 2000 AD in my formative years, and had to keep pinching myself.

If you haven't already, go check out El Bigote here and here.

PARADISE MECHANISM teasers

Details from a selection of panels from my forthcoming collaboration with Dave Hitchcock, Paradise Mechanism. Although initially unsure whether my style would blend well with Dave's beautiful greyscaled artwork, I think we established a pretty effective partnership. My influences on this strip include French comics such as Orbital and that godlike genius of comic-colouring Dave Stewart.