Another page from Dave Hitchcock's PARADISE MECHANISM

This is my favourite page so far, and probably the best colouring I've ever done (objectively speaking). See more of Dave's awesome work here.

19 pages are in the bag now, with 20 nearly done - only 6 more to go.

Paradise Mechanism

A page from a project I'm tackling this month - adding colours to 26 pages of Dave Hitchcock's glorious ink and pencil work. The strip in question is slated to appear in something rather special - a new digital comic project from 'V For Vendetta' artist David Lloyd. I can confirm that I'm ridiculously excited about being a part of this.

Bob Dylan commission

The third of my latest batch of commissions - to go with Jimi and Marilyn. Really pleased with how these turned out.

New inky portraits

Been a while since I did any of these - great practice for keeping it loose. L-R: Bob Dylan, Harry Dean Stanton, H.P. Lovecraft and Jimmy Stewart. Each one is for sale for £12.50 plus postage.

Jimi Jimi

Another commission - part of a set of 3 (Marilyn, Jimi and Bob Dylan).

The Bride

This one's a birthday pressie for a relative.

Marilyn commission

The hair's not quite finished yet...

Kid Tiger pin-up (colours)

Pages 3 and 4 of Kid Tiger are imminent, currently being finished off by the rather excellent James Corcoran. When they wing their way to me, I'll be adding colour again. In the meantime, here's a superbly drawn pin-up drawn by James and coloured by me.

Bruce Lee

In a moment of rare repose, right before destroying some motherf*cker (probably).

Grace Kelly

Today's warm-up inks and tones.

American Werewolf

Practicing quick tones in PS.

More 'Game of Thrones' pics

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.

New 'Game of Thrones' portraits

Midway through the second season of HBO's superlative fantasy drama and the show just keeps going from strength to strength. This is due in no small part to the quality of the child actors involved - as absent fathers and elder siblings march their armies back and forth across Westeros, the younger lords and ladies are increasingly left to rule and/or fend for themselves, and both Arya (Maisie Williams) and Joffrey (Jack Gleeson) in particular make the show worth watching. Just check out episode 5 of season 2, in which the diminutive Maisie stares down a malevolent Charles Dance - just incredible.

These were a few 10 minute portraits that I inked up quickly just for practice. The tones were added in PS even more quickly, but I quite like the sketchiness of them.

Kid Tiger - colours

My good friend and ex-Fractal Friction compadre James Corcoran is producing this excellent Boys' Own adventure style strip for Starscape comics online, and he asked me if I'd be interested in colouring it. I couldn't resist, there's something wonderfully old-school and earnest about James' drawing, and the premise of the strip is pure costumed-hero goodness. These first two pages show our Kid getting into a spot of bother with the rather nasty teddy boy villain Vincent Vyle. 

Beyond making the tiger costume orange (obviously) James allowed me complete freedom, citing only the muted palettes of Daves Stewart and McCaig. Funnily enough, I've been idolising these two for some time now, and this was just another reason to say yes and experiment with a simpler approach. More pages to follow soon.

Jon Snow

I'm doing Game of Thrones over on my portrait blog this week, in honour of the fact that the second season of this excellent show has just started. This was an ink drawing I did last year of the sullen northern bastard Jon Snow, now with colour. Not to be confused with the Channel 4 newsreader.

Jikan - Stowaway preview 4

My 3 pages for this Jikan story are now in the bag. Here are a couple more panels to be going on with.

Quick 2000 AD headshots

The Weekly Themed Art Blog is paying tribute to the 35th anniversary of the Galaxy's Greatest Comic this week. I had an ambitious plan to draw 35 quick portraits of some of the best loved characters from the comic's history, but it was a little over-ambitious as it turns out. Our long-awaited house move is going ahead in the next few days (fingers crossed), so I'll probably have to put the artowrk on hold for a while.

Each of these is about 8x6cm, inked quickly and with tones added in PS.

Another Jikan preview

Getting massive satisfaction from drawing this Samurai badass. So much so I just offered to draw a couple more pages. Here's a preview from another page of 'Stowaway' by Dirk van Dom.

El Bigote - anatomy of a cover

Stage 1. El Chivo provides the pencils, having done the leg-work in terms of the overall idea and composition (this is a wraparound cover btw)

Stage 2. Inked with my Pentel brush pen

 

Stage 3. Greytones are added digitally to give more depth

 

Stage 4. Blocks of colour are added in Photoshop (the part of the process that's known as flatting)

 Stage 5. Final colours - highlights, shadows and textures are the last things to be added

Then it's off to Bolt-01 and Owen Watts for the logos to be added, before the comic heads off to the printers very soon. I've already seen some of El Chivo's roughs for upcoming El Bigote adventures and I'm really looking forward to inking those too.