MORE LIFE DRAWING





















Had another life drawing class yesterday, but here's more from last week's one. When you're time is limited sometimes you have decide between a line drawing or a tonal one. I was pretty happy i had enough time with this pose as i managed to do both.

Dec.

TODD CLOSE UP [PENCILS]















Whoops! Nearly forgot to post today... i get confused which day i need to post as when i'm posting every second day, the actual day changes each week.

Here's a close up of a new panel from Sweeney Todd. The script asked for him to look really sinister and i reckon i managed to achieve that. Really looking forward to inking this panel, actually.

Dec.

SWEENEY TODD PAGE 67 INKS
























Gah! Blog got spammed yesterday; every single post on this blog was spammified, if that's a word .....which it's not. All 370-something of them were spammed. Twice. Spent hours deleting all of it, but there's still 400 or so comments to delete. Blurg.

Anyway, i showed a hi-res scan of a panel form this page a week or so ago. Here's the whole finished page.

Dec.

LIFE DRAWING
























Went to another life drawing class this week that went really well. The last few times i was happy with about 30% of the drawings, yet was happy i'd learned a few more things. This time i still learned quite a bit, but i was actually happy with 80% of what i drew. Here's one of the drawings i think turned out pretty well. I'm sure i'll post more down the line.

Dec.

GAMBIT
























Anyone reading this blog probably knows by now that every Tuesday i post a new sketch up on the Eclectic Micks blog. Well, half of them have been moaning about how finished some of the drawings have been (not that there's complaints about any being too rough mind...).

Anyhoo, my sketches on the Micks blog have been described as finished pieces, which i suppose is true to a degree, but i've been trying out new things with the Micks sketches, and if i was do do a sketch at a convention, they would be of that quality, so to me they are sketches.

Still though, no harm in mixing it up a bit (or Micks-ing it up a bit ...eh ....eh?) so this week i decided i'd do a really loose drawing of Gambit, as i've been itching to draw an X-Man for a while. As i was working on it however, it felt like it needed more work, so while my aim was to do a really loose sketch, it ended up more laboured. It's still pretty rough, but it took more effort than i meant it to. So, having loosened up a bit, i tried a Batman and got the results i was looking for. Reckoned i might as well post the Gambit sketch here and the looser Batman sketch on the Micks blog.

Enjoy 'em both.

Dec.

GRUDGE!
























Hey all. I did this image for Andy Winter to have as a T-shirt for the Bristol con next month to promote Tim Skinner. Andy originally thought it might be a bit too cheeky to directly riff off the classic Judge Dredd line (who Magistrate Grudge is obviously a parody of). However when i sent him this image he reckoned we'd DEFINITELY get sued by Rebellion. So the t-shirt idea was abandoned. Ah well, it was a laugh to draw; hopefully ye'll get a laugh out of it.

Also, on the topic of Tim Skinner, the book got another glowing review and another honourable mention.

Surely you must all own this book by now!

No posts 'til next week, as i'll be off-line for a few days. Hell, i've been updating this blog every 2 days for over a month now, so you can hardly complain!

Later,

Dec.

PENCIL FIST
























Greetings. Today is Tuesdec on the Eclectic Micks blog, which means there's a brand new sketch from me up there. Go look. Before finishing it, i took a quick scan of the rough pencil construction lines. Here's a section of it. Finished piece on the Micks blog now.

Dec.

FARSCAPE
























My good buddy Will Sliney's first issue of Farscape: Strange Detractors is out this week. Do yourself a favour and pick it up. Will is doing the best work of his career and only a mug would miss out. There's a preview just up on Comic Book Resources. Check it out.

To celebrate, above are a few sketches of one of the characters from Farscape, John Crichton. Will does a much better likeness.

Dec.

UNCLE SPUNK NUGGET

























For those who don't know Bob Byrne (you lucky few) he's a one-man comics machine. Creator of the fantastic Mr. Amperduke, and Bob Byrne's Twisted Tales for 2000AD, he also was the man responsible for The Shiznit, a free pocket-sized comic that was distributed all around Dublin and other parts of Ireland (i remember handing it into some shops in Limerick once upon a time).

There were many short strips in The Shiznit, one of my favourites being his Rants, as Bob is funniest when he's angriest. But when it comes to characters, nothing he's created has made me bust a gut laughing like his Uncle Spunk Nugget strip. There were only two, but man, i loved them. I'm sure i begged him to do more at some point. Good news then; a brand new Uncle Spunk Nugget strip has started on Bob's new webcomic; SPAZZMOID. I urge you all to read it. You can see it here along with the two old strips from The Shiznit.

Dec.

TIM SKINNER REVIEWED












A really in-depth review of Tim Skinner went up on the Forbidden Planet Blog this morning; i'd urge you all to read it. Probably the best review any book i've worked on has ever gotten. I'd especially urge you to read the review if you haven't read the book; none of the jokes are ruined and it 'sells' the book better than i ever could.

For those who don't know, Tim Skinner is a full-colour one-shot comic i drew and coloured written by Andy Winter. It was a follow-up of sorts to Hero Killers, our last collaboration which won an Eagle Award. We thought it would be great to work together again, considering how much we've both improved since Hero Killers. I'm delighted with how it came out and it was an absolute blast to draw. Unfortunately, because of Diamond Distributor's new benchmark policy, Tim won't be distrubuted through them, which means the only way to read it is through Andy's Moonface Press shop. It's really disappointing, as it's definitely the most commercial project i've done. Anyway, read the review to get a better idea of what it's like, along with preview of the interior pages.


Dec.

PANEL SCAN
























I have this great 'Art of Hellboy' book which obviously, has lots of Mignola goodness in it. One of my favourite parts of the book however, isn't the (lovely) Hellboy water-colours he has, but the scans of his black and white pages. What's great about them, is that they're not cleaned up or anything; you can see the different levels of ink he used, the heaviness of the ink lines, etc. it's the next best thing to looking at the actual page. So, here's a reasonably big scan of a section of a recent Sweeney Todd page that i haven't altered. If you look, you can pick out parts that were done with dip-pen nib, brush pen, inky fingerprints, actual indian ink and various splatter effects.

I'll post the whole cleaned-up page in a few days.

Dec.

SWEENEY TODD PAGE 65; LAYOUTS TO INKS

Well, it seems no one objects to seeing layouts so i thought i'd show a page from Sweeney Todd, but show it from original layout to finished inks. Below you can see the layout for page 65. I sent it to my editor at Classical Comics for approval. Sometimes the layout needs to be tweaked, like if i haven't left enough room for speech bubbles, etc. It happens from time to time; but not often.
























There were no real problems with the layout page, aside from how the character in panel 5 had her finger to her lips. The script instructed her to do so in a certain way, with the palm placed flat facing her face, rather than placed on its side. However, my editor asked me to ove her finger to the centre more, rather than at the side of her mouth. Other than that, i could go straight to pencils.
























Long-term readers are probably aware of my work-process, but just in case, i blow up my layout page and lightbox it onto the full-size artboard. That way i can try to keep some essence of the spontaneity that the original sketch had. By keeping the composition as close as possible to the layout, i think the end page ends up a bit more engaging. I sent the pencils to my editor, but there was an issue with the last couple of panels. My editor was concerned that the character in panel 5 was silent (mouth closed, finger to lips) yet was speaking, so asked me to make the final panel bigger so the speech bubble could be placed there instead.
























While inking, i wasn't 100% happy with the arm of the character on the left of panel 4, so changed it slightly. I was also wary of the page looking dull as it is essentially a talking scene. I had used a non-standard layout to make the page more visually engaging, but i also tried to do that in the inks too by breaking up some 'dead' white areas with black ink-splatter and using white splatter to indicate sunshine coming through the window in panel 2.

Well, that's it. A whole Sweeney Todd page form start to finish. Hope this was moderately interesting.

Dec.

BATMAN COMMISSION 2.0

Hi chums. Regular readers would remember this commission from late last year i did of Batman and his Rogues gallery.
























Well, i'm finally getting around to giving it to my gracious benefactor but when i looked at it , it was looking a bit old and stale to me, especially considering the messier approach that's been creeping into my work of late. So, i decided to go in and add some greytone and splatter. I've been doing a lot of sketches with those tecniques over on the Eclectic Micks blog of late, and they've been getting a good reaction so they were worth trying out here.
























Well, here's the finished piece; hope you like it Dave!

Dec.