Vincent Price as The Joker

Next illo for The Occultists podcast. Owen suggested this and as soon as I saw the phrase 'Vincent Price as The Joker' in print, it had to happen!

The Occultists

I'm currently engaged in the rather gargantuan task of colouring my first professional comic ('Banned Across The Universe'), but, conscious that I want to keep my hand in drawing-wise, I agreed to provide an illustration per month for The Occultists, a new podcast from writers Owen Johnson and Max Deacon. In said podcast, the guys chew the fat over cult movies, and it really is worth a listen. Owen approached me and asked if they could use my portrait of Elsa Lanchester as The Bride of Frankenstein, so I said yes of course, taking the opportunity to throw a bit of colour on it too.

The first podcast involved a discussion of 2 movies - Michael Lehmann's blackly comic 'Heathers' (1988) and the 1969 film version of 'Medea', directed by Pasolini and featuring the only movie appearance of Maria Callas in the title role. Owen requested a sort of mash-up illustration but unfortunately due to time constraints I only got around to drawing Medea. Did have bash at a logo too though - not often I get to flex my much-atrophied typography muscles.

I'm looking forward to next month's already, as I get to draw Vincent Price as The Joker!

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.

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.

The Bride

This one's a birthday pressie for a relative.

El Bigote - One Sore Loser

After my stint inking and colouring the cover for 'El Bigote - A Tequila-drenched Reckoning', Matt McLaughlin (writer and creator of the strip) invited me to contribute a pin-up of the character for a future issue. This is what I came up with - the undead quill-slinger kicking back in his favourite local hellhole, enjoying a relaxing game of poker with some poor schmuck who's clearly bitten off more than he could chew (and who looks very familiar come to think of it). The woman behind the man is the mysterious and deadly Rita Moreno - more of her coming soon in the comic too.

Helena

Another one I've managed to finish up this week (God bless half term). A companion piece to Corporal Starkweather, this will feature in Ryan Henry's zombie horror novella 'TWO'.

PARAGON #10 Cover Art

I proudly present the cover art for the upcoming issue 10 of excellent British small press title Paragon. The actual cover is slightly different - editor Davey Candlish requested a deep red background as opposed to the grey-blue one I've used here. I quite like this one personally, so thought I'd show it here - and when the comic comes out you can see the red version.

The brief was simple - a montage depicting the 4 main characters featured inside the issue: Icarus Dangerous, Mekko-Sapiens, Spencer Nero and Jikan. Had the most fun with Jikan, and just had to give him the spotlight! I also begged Dave to let me include Battle Ganesh - who doesn't feature in this particular issue - simply because I love the character.

Corporal Starkweather

About six weeks back I posted this. That has now evolved into the above, which I think is pretty much there now.

SIX endpiece

Last year I illustrated Ryan Henry's superbly disturbing zombie horror novel 'Six'. Towards the end of that process, as well as doing the front cover, he requested one final illustration, which was this.

It was a hugely enjoyable project and I learnt a lot, so I was delighted when he contacted me again and asked for a couple more for his next project - a novella called 'Two' which features - you guessed it - two more survivors in a 'sidequel' of sorts.

I'm currently finishing up these new illos and will hopefully be able to blog the results soon.

 

You can download 'Six' for absolutely bugger all here.

Durham Red returns...

...Well, to my blog at least. Drew this a couple of months back, and was going to make some more changes but then my laptop bust (I'm still without a computer, but working on it). So because it's been too long since I posted anything, I thought 'what the hell', and here it is. It was inspired by a Durham pin-up drawn by that erstwhile gentleman and scholar Kev Levell.

Samurai

Loose chips sink ships*

Latest one for The Weekly Themed Art Blog - this week's theme is Norts vs Southers, and as any loyal squaxx will tell you, this relates to the devastating future war on Nu-earth as seen in the 'Rogue Trooper' strip. I decided to do a vintage recruitment poster, in the style of those grand old WWI propaganda posters.

It's actually an homage to/direct rip-off of this:

If I get time I'll keep working on it - the colours are very basic at the moment, and I'd like to include a similar background too.

 *with a big thank you for to Johnny Mc for that title

Anderson versus Death

Latest contribution to the Weekly Themed Art Blog.

Toshiro Mifune

Last one tonight. Not a fantastic likeness, but lots of fun nonetheless. As far as I can recall, I've never drawn a Samurai before, so this at least remedies that.

Dredd - up close and personal

Quite pleased with this one.

Erm...SHAKARA!

Can't think of anything else to call this post... another one for The Weekly Themed Art Blog.

Abe Sapien

Another one for The Weekly Themed Art Blog - Hellboy's pal Abraham Sapien. I'm ashamed to say I don't actually own any of the comics or trades, so my reference for these two were the movies.

The Big Red One

Some of you may have already seen this over here. But things have been quiet here at Grimm Tidings for a while, and I quite like this one, so here it is again.