HEY KIDS, SMOKING MAKES YOU LOOK COOL!



A new panel from Freak Show. I'm trying out a rougher inking technique while trying to retain the graphic, high contrast way i illustrate my pages. I'll either get better at it of just give up in the end, but so far, i'm reasonably happy with my progress.










Dec.

MIKE WIERINGO, RIP





















I was very saddened to hear of the passing of artist Mike Wieringo today. I didn't know him, but i was a big fan of his work. My tastes have always lent towards artists with a more 'realistic' style, but when i was younger, Wieringo's work blew me away.

On Sensational Spider-man, he was drawing these great, breezy, entertaining Spidey stories. I picked up the Modern Masters book dedicated to him last year, and from it, it was clear he really enjoyed fun drawing comics that anyone could read and wasn't fond of the trend of angst filled, dark heroes. It's a shame his return to Spider-man last year was a story that led in that direction, and didn't take advantage of the great work he could have done with the right type of story.

I suppose at least he left us so much amazing work for us to remember him by.

Dec.

CLASSICAL SHALVEY

Hey kiddies.

Right, close mates know all about this already, but, y'know, i don't have a lot of close mates, so this post is for the rest of ye.

For the last few months i've been doing some extra work in an attempt to get a new job. Not an easy task, when also drawing Freak Show every day, but it seems to have worked out in the end. Now, i've hinted to side projects a few times on this blog. Some have developed, some haven't. But this is not one of them. I haven't hinted to this job once for fear of it falling apart and blowing up in my face.

I've just been hired to illustrate a graphic novel. It's an adaptation of Mary Shelly's Frankenstein. Yep, Frankenstein. The proper one. No futuristic crazy gun toting Frankenstein, this is the original, misunderstood creature. It's part of a series of graphic novels coming out from Classical Comics. They've other books coming out, such as Macbeth, Great Expectations and Romeo and Juliet by other artists like Jon Haward, John M Burns and Gary Erksine. What can I say? I'm thrilled to be working on a project that puts me in such esteemed company. For this book i have an editor, an art director, a colourist and everything! The script is adapted by writer Jason Cobley, writer of Bulldog Empire
Here's one of the finished pages i've done so far.





















So, that means i've 4 different projects on the go:

The Frankenstein graphic novel,
The Freak Show Volume 2 series, with writer Rod Curley
A project called Tim Skinner: Total Scumbag, with writer Andy Winter
And my self published project Your Round, (with anyone who'll pitch in)

So i'm going to be a verrrry busy bunny.....

Not that i wasn't before, but now, i'll be even busier.

Dec.

EDINBURGH REPORT

Well, i've had an interesting couple of days. Was supposed to meet a couple of friends from home in Edinburgh, but unfortunately, they missed their flight, so i was left to my own devices.

Spent a lot of it just wandering the city, NOT going to any shows, cuz i was on my own and would have felt ridiculously awkward going to shows on my own. Everyone there seemed to know what they were doing, and i was walking around like the awkward, difficult eejit i am. I did see one show, mind, but i knew the fella performing it, so it was okay. It was Kev F Sutherland's show, The Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre, and it was very funny. If you're at the fringe, definitely go see it. Popped out with Kev afterwards also, so big shout out to him for lettin me tag along, and a huge shout out to illustrator Andy Hepworth, who was kind enough to give me a place to stay when i was really stuck. Thanks again Andy!

I also got to go for some drinks with some good folk i'd met at comic conventions and proceeded to talk comics all night, which was just fine by me! I'd done some sketches for them at cons before, so this time, they returned the favour! Check them out...











































Also, just found this today. Established writing duo Leah Moore and John Reppion, writers of Albion and Raise the Dead mentioned Your Round on their blog, just click here and scroll down a bit. They say "Drunken pub stories in comic book form is really a genius concept." Well, who am i to argue with them......? Thanks guys!

Dec

INKS














Here's the inks to yesterdays panel. Off to Edinburgh for a couple of days to see what all this festival malarky is about. I fave a feeling there's gonna be a rake of hippies about. I hate hippies.......

Dec.

SPLAT!












Rough pencils from yet-another-one of my side projects. It has an ickle bit of violence in it.

Dec.

PORTRAIT



Artist Kev Sutherland (The Beano) did a signing here in Aberdeen this weekend. Since i can't really show any work i've done the past few days i thought i might as well stick up this; a portrait Kev drew of me. I gotta admit, it's pretty accurate!

Dec

BIRDS OF PREY

A commission i finished yesterday. Got a group of commission requests a while ago. This was the second request i received, but unfortunately, the last to get done. This is my 3rd pass at the image; i tried two different compositions, but they just weren't working. Pretty happy with it now .....eventually








Dec.

COVER PROPOSAL

Rob (Freak Show writer/ creator) asked if i'd like to do an alternate cover for Book 2. Of course, i was very happy to be asked. As much as i liked Sean Phillips' and Stephen Mooney's covers for Book 1, i would have liked to have done a cover for a book which i'd drawn 60 story pages for. So i'm really happy i'm getting a chance to do a cover for my own book.






This is a rough sketch for my proposal. I had a previous idea, but Rob suggested i show characters from this new story arc, which i had no problem with.

Dec.

JAMES


















Here's a couple of panels from a new Freak Show page. It shows James. I'm 80 pages in to my run and i'm only drawing James, one of the main characters, now! So i'm not as used to drawing him as much as the other characters, but so far, so good.


Dec.

Monkey Business
















Gah! Was slowed down yesterday cuz i had to draw some monkeys in the new Freak Show story. Which is fine, but i had never drawn a monkey before. Tried to fluff it on the page, but twas pretty obvious i didn't know what i was doing, so i looked for some reference and practiced drawing monkeys for a while. Here's the rough sketches. Once i felt more comfortable, i got back to the page and had much better results.


Dec

MORE LIFE DRAWING



































































Had another life drawing class yesterday. Again, really enjoyed it. Instead of concentrating on doing two, proper finished drawings, i instead concentrated on getting as much poses and angles as i could. Did a couple of pencil sketches, but then pulled out the auld pen and brush and went to town. I wasn't bothered about getting all the proportions right, i was more concerned with figuring out all the muscles and shadows.
That was the last class, so it sucks i won't be able to do this again for a while, but pretty happy i got to do this for a couple of days.


Dec.

STAR WARS COMMISSION


I did this piece on Friday. Didn't get a decent scan of it, so this photo will have to do. It's a wedding present a friend asked me to illustrate of the bide and groom as a Jedi and Han Solo-type characters, with two friends as a Wookie and a bounty hunter. All the greywashes took me a while, but quite happy wuth the result. I may try this technique again with an upcomming Freak Show cover.




Dec.

YOUR ROUND: TEQUILA

Don't know how i missed this.

Your Round got a mention on silverbulletcomicbooks.com on the All The Rage column.

And a first review here.

Yay!

Dec.

SUB-CON POSTER

Rob asked me to illustrate a poster for his Sub-Con event in September. He said i could use a character of my choice, so i went with good old reliable Batman. I wanted to do something moody and eye-catching, rather than a big, complicated image. I had Batman: Year One, and the logo from Batman: The Animated Series in mind here. Maybe i should have used the opportunity to do some off the wall character that i haven't drawn before, but c'mon ....it's Batman.


Dec.

FREAK SHOW / ATOMIC ROCKET GROUP 66


Phew! This fella took me 2 whole days to figure out and draw. It's a vertical double page spread of Robert Curley's Freak Show and Atomic Rocket Group 66 characters, the latter group designed by Will Sliney. This was a lot of fun to draw, i must say, but still tough. It's nice to do a big f**k-off pin up every now and then, to break up the grind of doing sequential pages. Saying that, i love sequential pages, but they're so labour-intensive. Not like pin-ups, which are more show-y anyway.



Dec.

LIFE DRAWING

Hey kids. Did something i've been dying to do for ages on Sunday and went to a life drawing class. It was great, i haven't attended a proper drawing class since art college, four years ago. Just to look at a real life model again and to try learn from it was a great experience, considering all the referance i get these days is from photos or 3D programs. They're great of course, but nothing beats the real thing. The teacher was giving pointers to others, which reminded me of all the techniques i've learned but am so used to now, i take for granted. When i concentrated on those techniques, i ended up doing bad drawings cuz i was forcing my drawing needlessly. It was cool to do a finished pencilled drawing too, with shading and everything. When i pencil a page, it's only basic information i put down, leaving the rendering for the inks, but it was refreshing to do a proper pencil drawing for once. I did some sketches and stuff, but i'm too lazy to scan today, so here's photos of the two 'finished' pieces i got done on the day.



An ink drawing. I was also testing out some new Pentel Colour brushes i got in London with some nice results.

















And the pencil drawing. Even though it's shaded i can see how i still block different areas of shade, much like i do with my black and white work.











Dec.

IM BACK AND I'M BLACK

Well, i'm not black, but i do wear a lot of black, so that kinda counts ....right? But one thing's for sure, i'm definately back. Had a great time in London meeting up with some old friends, and some new ones too. Will probably stick up some photos when i can be bothered.

DRUNKEN HILARITY

In the meantime, he's some drunken endevours i produced while on holiday with the help of my good pal Will Sliney. In the pub, i had some pens on me, got some paper and we got scribbling.
Ignoring the bar which was more and more becomming full of attractive girls, Will and i resisted our carnal urges and instead geeked out on old cartoons and came up with a couple of themes for us to draw from. The first theme we came up with was characters from the old X-men cartoon. Y'know, the one where Rogue had a really sexy voice, and Wolverine sounded bad-ass. I came up with what character Will had to draw, and vice versa.




















We came up with another theme for the second one: Villains from the old Batman animated series. Man, i loved that show.



















Once we finished a sheet, we each did a portrait of each other. Pretty much flawless in every way, they were. Will definately summed me up pretty well.

More crap soon.


Dec.

***HAPPY BIRTHDAY BLOG***

Hello all, no art or nothin' today, i just wanted to mention that this blog is a whole year old as of today.

Seems wierd that i'm so used to posting now. I originally started it just so i could leave abuse over on Bob Byrne's website. He told me i should start posting but i dismissed the idea since the internet scared and confused me. Also, it required effort, and i wasn't so hot about that either. However, i was soon heading to San Diego (unlike this year) and reckoned giving my art some net presence couldn't hurt in case there was any interest in me at Comic-con. As it happens, i still don't have a website (in the process of startin one up tho) and i'm pretty sure no editor stateside has been stalking me since.

However, i've been getting into a good habit of getting work done, just so i have something to show for myself every couple of days. Also, i suppose it's worth mentioning since i started this blog, i have:

Gotten a proper job drawing comics,
Moved to a different country,
Gotten my own studio,
Done a handful of signings,
Did a couple of covers for other folks,
Created my own self-published comic,
Won an Eagle Award,
Gotten fatter,
And made a few friends on the way....

A lot has changed in a year.

So, Happy Birthday blog, 'tis been a year since i first posted on thee.....

Since it's been a year, and as far as i know, 4 people actually read this blog, so if you do check this blog the odd time, do me a favor and post a comment, to wish my blog a happy birthday, or just to curse my name and tell me how much you hate me. At least i'll know how many people read this. And hate me...

Dec.

BLOOD PSI























Hey kiddies, not many posts in the last couple of days and there's about to be a hell of a lot less! Been real busy the last couple of days, and i'm taking a week or so off. Visting mates back home and in London for the next week so don't expect much bloggin till i'm back..


Big news is that Andy Winter's new book came out this week. Blood Psi, is a new comic coming out under Andy's One-shot Club line, which also included Hero Killers. It's illustrated by the very talented Keith Burns and features a cover by myself. I'm quite happy with how the cover image came out and that's it's hitting the stands and being seen. I actually did a post on this blog where i showed how i put it together step-by-step. That post is now a feature in the back of the book, which i'm also chuffed about.


The book has gotten great reviews all round. Go to http://www.moonfacepress.com/ for links to all the reviews, and http://www.bloodpsi.com/ for more info on the book.

Then go BUY IT!

Dec.

JACK

A quick pen and drybrush test of Jack from Freak Show on watercolour paper.
















Dec.

TEEN-AGE RIOT

The title of one of my favourite Sonic Youth tracks, and also, an appropriate way of describing this panel.






















Also, my main man Will Sliney found a small article on Blood Psi, Eagle award winning writer Andy Winter's new book, out this month i believe. Gets a nice little mention and even complements the cover i did for it. Nice one! Click here and scroll down for the article.


Dec.

BIRMINGHAN INTERNATIONAL COMICS SHOW 2007











Just found out my name has been added to the guest list for the
Birmingham International Comics Show. Although i was technically a guest at last years con and the Bristol con just gone, this is the first time i've actually been officially listed on the website, along with all the other professionals. I am of course, thrilled to be listed with such high caliber talent, some of which are HUGE influences of mine.

My name is just four names away from Mike Mignola, three from Kevin Nowlan, two from Sean Phillips and twenty-four away from Alan Davis! Well, twenty-four away from Alan Davis isn't a huge deal, but still...


Dec.

PREACHER






















A pencilled piece of Jesse from Preacher. Man, i loved that book. I started reading it at just the right time. I guess i must have been fourteen or fifteen, kinda growing out of superhero comics, when i started reading this. Not that i don't like the superhero stuff (i'm still a sucker for that stuff), but by that age, i was lookin' for somethin' different. Man, did i find it. Plus, it had irish characters, with one story featuring the 1916 Rising! It was like the book was written just for me.

Was a lotta fun to draw Jesse....

Dec.

FREAK SHOW PENCILS










Dec.

FREAK SHOW LAYOUTS




















Dec.

Hello all. Some might remember, months ago, i mentioned i was working on a Freak Show short story. If not, just click here. I didn't want to elaborate at the time, but it was a short story for the small press section of the JUDGE DREDD MEGAZINE. Well, i can now announce that said story will be published in this month's issue, Meg 260, out tomorrow. The story is basically a prequel to the ongoing Freak Show series, featuring Jack in a solo adventure.

I hope it'll stand out as one of the better small press stories that have featured in the Meg. In any case, it'll be great to follow in the footsteps of Bob Byrne and the Sancho boys. Above, is the meg cover, available in your local comic shop, WH Smith, etc. To all my Irish friends; Go to Easons.

Below is the first page of the story...





















Dec.

THE FRENCHMAN


A commission of the Frenchman character from 'The Boys'

















Dec.

ELECTRO STRIKES!


A new commission. Quite enjoyed this one actually. Wasn't sure how i was gonna depict him, but ended up with an interesting pose, and got to playaround with some drybrush.


Very happy with the results.










Dec.

YOUR ROUND AVAILABLE TO BUY ONLINE




















Your Round: Tequila is now available to buy online, like i just said in the title.
For those who don't know, Your Round, is a new anthology series (created by myself, thankyouvewymuch) of pub stories, and sure who doesn't like pub stories?. The first issue; Tequila, is filled with highly entertaining pub stories written and illustrated by shameless Bob Byrne and very lovely James Hodgkins and of course, myself. It is now available to buy via the Asylum Books and Games website, just click here

Sound.

Dec.

INKS



















Here's the finished inks to the last panel i posted. I noticed i never drew any feet for the onlookers to the left of the pick-up truck, so i fixed that in the inks, as well as simplifying some background faces. I could have inked every last bit of detail, but sometimes what you leave out is as important as what you leave in.


Still not sure if i should have filled in the writing on the banner (top of panel) in black. I went with leaving it open in the end. Don't thonk it makes much of a difference in the end.


Dec.

FREAK SHOW PENCILS




















Howdy. Here's some pencils for a panel of Freak Show. I consider these finished. Since i ink my own work, i don't really need the pencils to be ridiculously tight. This is as detailed as it needs to be, because i may still change things in the inks.






















This is earlier, when i was underway with tightening the pencils, and adding more details.



















And here is the initial rough pencils i did. Here, i've worked out the perspective and more importantly; the composition, which can be the hardest part of sequential storytelling. Working out the best way to compose an image is a key part of telling a story with images.





Dec

COMMISSION


Did this commission today. Pretty happy with it. It's a portrait, but not a traditional headshot. If i'm doin' a portrait, i try to depict someone's personality rather than just draw their face.

Hopefully, the girl in question will be happy with it.








Dec.

MID-INKS









This is an unfinished panel, but most of the work is done. At this stage, i will have figured out exactly where i'll place my blacks so i get my pens and go over all the linework on the page. In the end, it looks like this.

Next, i take my ink and brush and fill in the blacks; my favourite part. Once i work on my blacks it feels like the page starts to 'pop', whereas before the page looks more like a map to me.

Anyway, to see the finished panel, buy the next issue of Freak Show you cheapskates!!!

....whenever it comes out, that is.

Dec

IT'S ALL IN THE EYES....







A couple of panels from the next chapter of Freak Show.


Dec.

BACK TO FREAK SHOW








Hello all, just back to Aberdeen today after a brief Irish excursion. Did a signing in Galway with FREAK SHOW writer Rob Curley and my collaborator in all things offensive, Bob Byrne. Seriously, on the train from Dublin to Galway, me and Bob were doodling, and between us we came up with some pretty messed up stuff; not fit for public consumption. The signing was admittedly a bit slow, but i'm told that was down to the obscenely glorious sunshine that reigned down on Galway that day. Man, i had a lot of ice cream that day, i can tell yeh......

The rest of the week entailed visiting friends and family, except for Will Sliney.
I pretty much met up with everyone else.
Yep, except Will Sliney.

Also got to hang out with "The MoonDog" and co. at his studio too, and finally got to see Raiders of the Lost Ark for the first time, which was sweet.

All in all, a good week.

In summary, i'd like to thank both Rob and Brian Curley, who invited me and Bob to Galway, and put us up too. Would also like to thank everyone who came to the signing, picked up a book and got a sketch

...............including my mammy.

Dec.

DOCTOR STRANGE


Finished this last night; another comission. I'd never drawn Doctor Strange properly before, so this was a lot of fun to do. Off to Ireland today, to do a signing in Sub City in Galway this saturday from 12 O'Clock. Come if you dare! Looking forward to a few days home and seeing friends. Probably no posts for a week.









Later, as the kids say,

Dec.

Ahhhhhhhhhhh......


Feels good. Andy Winter (Hero Killers writer) just sent me this. Makes it official. Also, all the work i've done over the last few days ain't up for public consumption yet, so i might as well post somethin.



Dec.

THE SHADOW --FINISHED


Here's the finished Shadow commission. Since i liked the original sketch so much, i magnified it and lighboxed it onto the artboard. I wanted to keep the image looking 'fresh'. Sometines when you re-draw an image it looks stale, or just not as exciting as the sketch. So by lightboxing the sketch instead of re-drawing it, i thing i manages to keep it feeling loose, while still having a finished piece.




Dec

THE BOYS


This is a commission i did yesterday, but when scanning, i just couldn't register the scans together right, so, pissed off, i fecked off home and scanned it this mornin' instead. Well, that was more information than you needed to know. Come back soon for more ramblings kiddies.










Dec.