'MY robot!' page 1

'MY robot' is for the upcoming 'Robot' anthology.
The idea for this story came fully formed, but it still seems to be turning out a little different.
I'll post these in order as they're done, there's 6 pages in total, and if I get cracking they should all be up over the next couple of weeks.
I might have gone overboard with the grey tones, but I was having fun.

Actual arrogance

Well, not arrogance maybe, but confident at least.
This was my first go at drawing Christopher Lee, and I think I got it right first time. Wow.
I did a scribble of Clint Eastwood at the same time and utterly failed to capture him (who is that squinty guy with the cigar that doesn't look like Clint Eastwood), so I'll not get too carried away with my ability.
This sketch might give away which Lee character I'm drawing, but it might not, as I decided to take a few liberties. All will be revealed when I post the finished art.....

Peter Cushing

Just finished this as a present for someone.
I'm not much of a caricaturist as I tend to strip away rather than exaggerate but I hope I managed to capture Peter Cushing's striking handsome features as well as his elegant and sinister brittleness - it's why I opted for the younger Dr Frankenstein look. It makes me smile to think of him playing Grand Moth Tarkin in his slippers, how simply British. An incredible actor.
As I'm giving away the original artwork I used nice paper and brushes instead of the cheap paper and chunky markers I've used recently figuring photoshop doesn't care what I use to make lines with. It reminded me that I love work that exists finished in the real world rather than the digital one. I even decided to try a bit of dry brushing on watercolour paper and am quite pleased with the results. Hope it goes down well with the giftees (think Imade that word up!)
Might draw Christopher Lee to complete things.

Mike Wieringo

As some of you already know, excellent comic artist Mike 'Ringo' Wieringo passed away recently. 'Ringo was a great superhero artist, he got that they were fun, and his early run on Flash with Mark Waid was fantastic. Friends and fans decided to mark his passing by re-interpreting his Flash characters. The standards of work posted already show the high regard Ringo's work was held in, see it here.
Here's what I've sent.

Over?

Almost two weeks since Rebecca's last treatment and as predicted, she's feeling fine. In face she's been feeling better since middle of last week. There's a slight bit of discomfort still lingering but on the whole, it's all over. Big sighs! There'll be regular check ups, and a scans, but that's it, just recovering now.
It's been a mixed up six months, weirdly not all bad, with a bit of luck, and work, we'll be getting back to normal life.
Thanks to everyone who's expressed support and concern, all great appreciated.

The Man Who Shook

Quick as a flash after the last post, you may now head over to a whole new blog here and read an old short story of mine.
I wrote 'The Man Who Shook' under the influence of M.R. James way back somewhere in the misty regions of 2001. I do like a creepy yarn and it seemed the older stories hada different weight, a creepier one. I decided it would be wizard to set a story in the sort of present but write it in a style that seemed older (I've since discovered Mark Samuels who does something like this and does it brilliantly). I could have carefully researched and spent a great deal of time emulating the prose of James or Algernon Blackwood, but I thought it'd be easier and more fun to just bang it out. Oddly it came remarkably quickly and I had a lot of fun doing it. Having enjoyed the experience I decided to never repeat it and went to work not writing much, and when I did trying to keep it as simple and direct as possible.
Even though I could have taken the opportunity of retyping it to smooth out rough edges, and generally improve the writing I decided to stick to the spirit of the original and just bash it out expanding some bits and cutting others down for no other reason than I felt like it.
Lest you think this is some wonderful minor piece of literature due to the length of this inroduction, let me absolutely assure you that it is utter nonsense. But it really was meant to be:)

Living off the past

A week later and things are still a bit rubbish, but Rebecca's slowly starting to feel a little better and is managing a few hours sleep. We had bad news during the week the Rebecca wouldn't be getting her full sick pay, nor would she be getting statutory sick pay which was a bit of a surprise and left us feeling a bit run down, luckily we've managed to sort something out that should get us through the next couple of months.
Meanwhile I'm revisiting old work in an effort to get my, ahem, 'creative juices flowing.
I'll post a short story soon. I wrote it years and years ago but lost it from my hard drive when my last computer died. I'm not sure that it's any good but I've got a soft spot for it so I decided to type up the hard copy pruning it a little in the process. I've not really changed anything, just added a touch of rouge to a moldy old corpse. Anyway, that'll go up as soon as I find out how to do the whole 'click here to read more' thing, or give up and just put up one big post.
Artwise I've dug out a story I did a few years ago for Solar Wind called 'Punk Princess'. Again, I'm not sure if my artwork's much good but it was a great script so I thought I'd try and improve it a little, especially as the printed version was badly pixelated.
I had hoped to post a Wickerman picture, sadly it didn't turn out too well so that'll have to wait, I do have another idea I'll draw up soon.

Weary

Today was the last day of my wife's radiotherapy treatment. The last week's been awful, and it's not really over as radiotherapy stays with you for maybe 2 weeks. In the last week sleep has been difficult and she's been putting up with what feels like bad stomach cramps every few minutes, not pleasant when she's already got the external pain to deal with. Morphine would have helped, but it would cause other problems making things worse, so it's been a grin and bear it situation.
It feels like we should be marking the last treatment with some sort of celebration, but in the circumstances it's not really practical, or possible to be honest. So I bought flowers, a crap mag and a tub of Bailey's ice cream complete with the promise of doing something nice in week or so.
Better news is Olivia's now on her fifth tooth and is becoming more mobile.
Posts about inconsequential nonsense like horror, comics and dopey pin ups will resume:)

The Terminator

So, I had planned to do a different picture, but I was struggling a bit, so I decided to do something else, I will finish the other one though.
Quite taken with halftoning at the moment, might permanently add it to my personal catalogue of fx. Incase you don't recognise the scene, just picture Pill Paxton's corpse at Arnie's feet.
Er, what else? Hmm, the logo's 'inspired' by Monstermag stuff which I'm very taken with at the mo. It also reminds me of the logo for 'The Invaders'.... a Quinn Martin production!

Edit. A brief comment from Peter Bangs, allows me to ramble about my 'technique' :)
After scanning my line art I turned it red and removed the bg. In a seperate layer I filled in the main shape with a lighter red, then painted the tones in using white or varying degrees of transparency. Selected the 'colour halftone' from the pixelate/filter menu I set the 4 channels to the same degree to give the dots a uniform look. The I laid the original line work over the halftoned layer.
I used another layer to give Arnie a solid white bg and coloured the blood on his hand, this allowed me to make the fist nice and dark but still keep the halftoned shading effect (I also didn't like the way the fist looked when I tried colouring it as part of the halftone) - don't know how well it shows up, maybe better on the larger version.
Originally the bg was going to be a flat blue so as not to jar with the halftone, but it didn't work, so I went for something a bit more textured. The logo was a hand drawn after thought that I really like now, looks like The Cramps version of the Terminator or something.
And that's it, apart from the trial and error I went through to figure all that out:)

Grrrr

Feeling very frazzled, tired and emotional you might say. Can't go into full details really, suffice to say that not everyone has been as supportive as they could've been during Rebecca's illness, and it reached new lows yesterday.
Guess it's a cliche that big things like life threatening illnesses make you view things differently, but it's a true one. 2007's been a weird old year so far, I think I'd like a very different 2008.

Basil Gogos

A bunch of books turned up on my doormat yesterday and today. Reckon I'll have to knock it on the head for this (paid) month, most of what I've bought has been 2nd hand, but not all.
Anyway, got some nice stuff to read. 'Thrill-Power Overload' is the history of 2000ad and full of interesting behind the scenes info.... zarjaz! Cassanova by Matt Fraction and Gabrial Ba is a lot of fun, stylish artwork that reminds me of a cross between Eduardo Risso and Paul Grist and a story that's Jerry Cornelius by any other name, but with some other interesting concepts thrown in so it feels fresh not derivative.
Coolest of the bunch is 'The Art of Basil Gogos', I've only seen a little of his work, the odd cover of 'Famous Monsters of Filmland' viewed from the other side of the counter of a 2nd hand book stall in Hartlepool when I was a wee un. Gogos produced some perfect portraits of horror icons, in fact did his bit to make them icons, certainly in America, this quote from Roger Corman sums it up perfectly, "Basil's art was an amazing gift for me as a filmmaker. Fans were scared once they had seen one of his portraits. They knew the picture would terrify them by the time they got to the theatre." And if that's not good enough, here's link to his site and the cover to his book.

Red in claw

Kelvin's comments on my Nightmare on Elm Street pic have prompted me to update. Not a major difference, so I've added in a couple of sketches. As usual I sort of like the sketches more than the finished piece, aint it always the way.

British horror

So, you know how I found some interesting stuff in an Oxfam book shop a while ago? Well, I had the same success in a Barnardo's bookshop. I'd not read anything by R. Chetwynd-Hayes before, but was familiar with his name due to Jeremy Dyson talking about him on a documentary about the old BBC Ghost Story For Christmas (genius) series and because his work was adapted into 'The Monster Club' and 'From Beyond the Grave' films, which, coincidentally, were the two books I found. So far I've read a few stories in FBTG, and they're great, a lovely mix of cosy British quirks and horror, one making the other stand out nicely.
In the meantime I've started 'Obsession' by Ramsey Campbell, it's very good so far. I've only read short stories by Campbell before, they're very good indeed, he has a nice prose style, it's occasionally wanders a bit, but he seems to know where he's going.

Simon Gane

Probably should've linked to Simon Gane's blog ages ago, but some things are so good you want to keep em to yourself. Getting hold of Simon's work was tough, specially since I left london and the small press friendly bosom of Gosh, but I've got hold of a fair bit (wouldn't mind getting hold of the rest of The Adventures of Scrumpy and Smiles, assuming there was more than one issue), Punk Strips and Meet John Dark are must for your bookshelf. Since collaborating with Andi Watson on the wonderful Paris (due out as a proper book with spine and stuff very soon) Simon's work will hopefully reach a bigger audience with DC's The Vinyl Underground, here's hoping.

Nightmare On Elm Street

Odd choice of pin up for me as I don't really care for Freddy Krueger, even a gore hound like me is a bit put off by the strange love people had for Krueger, as played up by each film where Robert Englund portrayed him as almost lovable with a quip for every occasion.
On the other hand I did like the inventiveness of the dream sequences, and all this is pretty hindsighty. But really, I did this because I suddenly had an idea for a visual and when I scribbled the twist curving figure I quite liked it.
Oddly the colouring is not how I originally intended, but I figured what the hell, mess around a bit.

Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny and Girly on DVD

At last! Only a few months to wait and pretty cheap. Danny turned me on to this and I've been waiting ages for a prohttp://www2.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifper release (Redemption were supposed to bedoing it but that was ages ago), it sounds utterly fantastic and one of the main reasons I bought Jonathan Rigby's excellent - which clued me in to a load of brilliant sounding films.

Zardoz

Okay, I give up. Think this is as good as I'm gonna get it without starting from scratch. There's two big mistakes here. One was with the colour, I was aiming to do something with a limited palette and then throw the big red nappy and 'x' into the mix to make it jump out. Good idea, I think, but I haven't pulled it off, there's no contrast with the colours or shades. The other mistake was to fall under the spell of someone else's artwork. Still, a couple of important lessons there.
The original drawing had a few other figures in the background, but it distracted from Zardoz's big floaty head.
If you've seen the insanity that is John Boorman's 'Zardoz', you'll know that the phallic positioning of that gun is not accidental:)
BTW, haven't said this in a while, but all criticism is welcome.

No picture

There really should be a rather lovely picture of the film Zardoz here. Sadly I've been struggling with it, which is annoying as I had the basic thing drawn. Then I redrew it. The I scanned and coloured it. Then I recoloured. Again. Again. Still not happy. Colouring is hard, and I've been looking at some amazing work by people who seems to be easily able to do then kind of things I'm struggling to do, inspiring, but infuriating. I will finish the thing by the end of the week. Def.

Redux

Just finished messing around with 'Zombie of the Great Unwashed', it's now got a grey tone and some general tidying up. If you want to see the new version go here I'm going to work on a toned version of 'Bad Advice', my contribution to 'Best New Manga', I might even redo some of the bit's that don't work, it's a bit of a Lucas, but seeing as I was turned away from doing something for the 2nd volume I figure it probably does need improving. No badly CGed characters will be added though:)

Death Race 2000

The totally excellent Death Race 2000 was produced by Roger Corman and Paul Bartel directed it, a perfect meeting of exploitation and fun. Horrifyingly Paul Anderson maybe remaking it, so there's a good chance it'll suck.
Anyway, here's my stab at it with a pic of Frankenstein (played by David Carradine). I'm sorta chuffed with this, mainly cos of the background, which was a result of me not quite being sure how to do a half tone effect, in the end I got an effect I liked better. Going with the look of the bg I decided to go a little further and tried to mimic an off register effect on Frankenstein's leathers.

Doctor Who, again

Oh, I've got such a big smile after tonights episode. So digging John Simm, so many lovely little touches. Can't wait for next week!

Meanwhile, back at home

Rebecca had her last chemotherapy yesterday. Sadly it's not the end of the treatment as there's radiotherapy next. This is to minimise chances of the cancer coming back and to sort of 'mop up' what's left - which seems to be very little after the examination, pretty good as one of the masses was 8cm.
Radiotherapy won't be any where near as long as chemotherapy, but will still have some side effects, particularly in Rebecca's case. Finger's x-ed that she deals with this as well as she has with everything else. Not long now and it'll all be over...... *big sigh*

It's clobberin' time!

Here's another stab at working in colour. Still not that successful, but getting there I think. Blue Eyed Ben looks pretty close to how I saw him in my head, he suffers from a similar 'blandness' to my previous MM pic, but not so much (maybe 'cos he's such a cool looking guy).
The background was drawn seperately and scanned, then I spent a hell of a long time working on it before I realised it was rubbish, it really was far to bland, heavy use of perspective grids and trying to be painterly. So I took the basic elements and just drew 'em quickly and picking angles I thought were fun rather that right. I think I went a little too far with the the 'off' angles but it was an improvement. The colour choices aren't great but I'm happy with the technique. I've always liked big flat colours as well as grainy texture and I tried to combine what I liked about a few favourite illustrators work.
And that's it, hopefully getting better each time.

Oh Doctor

Woah, another fine fine DW! What a brilliant cliffhanger.

Marv... Miracleman

This went through sooo many different versions, and I'm still not happy with the end result - think I prefer the penciled version to the colour. I think this as good as it'll get, trouble is, it's boring! Reckon my love of the comic's made me a bit too reverential.
The whole religious tone of the pose seemed to be a given, as did trying to make MM look elegant and graceful, more ballet dancer than superhero. I'd thought about putting the sun or Earth in the background but went for flat colour and ripped off one of Barry Windsor-Smith's covers, hey, if it's good enough for BWS! There's been some amazing art associated with MM, Garry Leach, Alan Davis, John Totleben (my own favourite) and that's not including some great work on the original run.
Anyway, I tried to do this nearly 2 months ago and planned to write a little article to go with it. Now that the picture's done I'm not so sure the web needs another Marvelman article or what I'd add to it, so go here if you want to know more about the last word in superheroes.

Moffat does it again!

So the Doctor barely appears, so what, 'Blink' was one of the best DWs, this and last weeks two parter have fully restored my faith in the show..... until the next run of duff eps:)
In the corner 'Any Dream Will Do' is freaking me out by using the Star Wars music when Darth maul kicks jedi arse (until he, y'know, just lets the crap one kill him), think I'll turn it off.

Crazy world

I shamelessly steal this link, because frankly it blows my mind.

Character rough

This sad chap is from my story 'MY robot!'. The design might change, or it might not, but I fancied having at drawing something from scratch on the Mac to see if I could (I couldn't, I scanned in a rough sketch and worked over that, I'm sure I'll get the hang of it though)
'MY robot!' will be part of the next AccentUK anthology, in the meantime check out their latest anthology, 'Zombies', featuring the strip I drew for Jason Cobley, there's some great stuff in it.
I've also got a script to draw for the next issue of 'The Girly Comic' which is pretty cool.
In the meantime I've started scribbling ideas for a whole bunch of pictures of some of my favourite films (well, the sci-fi/horror ones anyway). I WILL BE PRODUCTIVE! GRRRR!

Doctor Who

Utterly utterly utterly brilliant tonight! Which is good as this 2 parter comes of the back of some pretty lame episodes.

Robot hitting things

I was invited a while ago to contribute to the Metal Man Project. It's a fun project doing a 'grown up' version of a childhood creation, there's a lot of goofy charm which I thought I'd have a go at trying to capture.
I like reading 'process' stuff, so here's mine.
The pencils involved a ridiculous amount of redrawing. I do this far too much at the best of times but MM was harder purely because it's such a simple image (the perspective on the crashing fist was tricky, hopefully it looks like a huge but not stupidly so) and it's amazing how the smallest alteration in a line can change the look of a drawing. Seeing as I still just use a brush to ink this stage is straightforward. Freehanding circles in pencil and then inking them with a brush is insane, but I did it anyway.
There's nothing fancy with the colouring, I used one layer to put down the base colours and another layer for the shading. I'd like to be able to copy just the linework into another layer so I can mess around easily and erase or recolour, either Coral Painter doesn't do it or I haven't figured out how yet. I recoloured some lines (as I did with Axel earlier) by drawing over the top of the black line, this isn't ideal and there's areas where it shows, but it does the job I guess.... hope.

Axel Pressbutton the remix

After a bit of faffing around with my new Wacom tablet and Coral Painter I think I'm starting to get the hang of it. Here's my first publishable attempt along with the original. Be interesting colouring stuff drawn with colour in mind.

Mr Gum and the Biscuit Billionaire

The first Mr Gum book was a rare old treat, and so is the 2nd book, quite frankly it's genius on toast. Stop reading this right now, go buy the book, read it, come back.....
Brilliant isn't it. It sort of reminds me of Vivian Stanshall with it's lyrical nonsense, don't you agree? I bet you loved the opening "It all started late one afternoon in the peaceful town of Lamonic Bibber. Summer was at an end and the day stretched out long and lazy like a huge glossy panther made of time." Oh and the fab description of Mr Gum, who after drawing some extra scowls on his head with a felt tip "scruffed up his big red beard to make it as wild and frightening as possible. It wasn't quite terrifying enough so he stuck a couple of beetles in it and a photo of a shark." Or maybe.... hang on, we'd better stop talking about it, don't want to spoil if for those too foolish to have already bought it.
Here's the Mr Gum website to get you into the mood.

28 Weeks Later

28 Days Later seriously shook me up, it's combination of Wyndham and Romero was pitched just right and although it owed a lot to those two giants it struck out on it's own in fine style.
28 Weeks Later doesn't manage to follow suit. It's a great film, and I daresay if I hadn't seen 28 Days Later I'd have been blown away, with some striking and shocking imagery and some interesting ideas. The problem is that the ideas aren't fully explored, much more could have been made of Robert Carlysle's storyline, an actor who could've really explored the moral implications of his actions ends up being used as a boogey man. I also found his storyline had a touch too much convenience to it.
There was a fair amount of chat in 28 Days Later heavily punctuated with violence. Violence seemed to be the order of the day for the sequel, I've not got a problem with that, but without the chat the military aspect of the story wasn't fully explored.
None of this is what really let's 28 Weeks Later down though, the sad fact is that even though it wasn't just a retread of the original it didn't do anything terribly new either. If 28 Days Later is comparable to Night of the Living Dead the 28 Weeks Later falls short of Dawn of the Dead.

Update

And another big gap between posts. Been a rough old time lately, Rebecca's found the time since her last treatment a bit harder than the last ones, culminating in some serious fatigue. Next treatment may be delayed which isn't serious it just means the whole process will be longer which is a pain.
Olivia's got two little teeth poking through and is handling it very well, although she's had her moments.
I've not done much worth posting about. I used my birthday cash to buy a little Wacom tablet that came with a Coral Painter package which I'm messing with. Don't think it's the right package for me but it's much better than what I was using and should make colouring more interesting. I've got a little check list of some things I want to draw and I've even been writing a few things, nothing major but I'm going out of my mind with stress and boredom so I have to do something!

Comic mechanics

This has got me oddly excited. Whenever I find myself in the doldrums for a while I inevitably started getting interested in all the things I've been missing, which is signal that my mood is shifting ready for the cycle to begin again.... anyway.
I've been scribbling a little again and thinking about how to put 'MY robot' down on paper and reading other comics and interviews of guys I like trying to familiarise myself with comics again. Even though there's no dialogue in 'My robot!' I found the above linked article by Eddie Campbell, and I agree with every word. The great thing about Eddies' theory as opposed to the usual one is that it makes sense of the layout on the left.Generally this layout is a no no as it can be hard for the reader to see which is the 3rd panel, is it the one to the right of panel 2 or is the panel below 1 and 2? I have to say I hate this layout but have had scripts where I think it (or a variant of it) is probably the best way to go (oh, why do writers ask for a big 2nd panel? - or just ask for more info in it, which amounts to the same thing), but I've done something else simply because of the worry of confusing the reader. Following Eddies' advice the balloon placement in the diagram on the right makes the layout easier to follow (it'd probably work better if there were pictures to follow too!) I'll still avoid this layout, but the balloon placement lesson is sound I think.

35 today

I woke up at 9am, yes, a lie in, to a box of dvds and comics, ah birthdays. Mingled in the fine dvds was 'Trancers' which I've already watched, no finer rip off of 'Terminator' exists and it's as fun as remember. I'll be watching 'District13' (or 'Escape From NewYork', in French, with jumping, and no Snake Plisskin) tomorrow, might even read the 2nd collection of DMZ (or 'Escape From New York' without Snake Plisskin.... the 1st collection was excellent BTW, recommended), in the meantime I'm gonna try and read 'The Professor's Daughter' tonight in between watching 'Ugly Betty' reading another story from 'The Man From The Diogenes Club' and cooking a big birthday meal. Not exactly the most exciting birthday but it ticks all my boxes!

Strolling down memory lane

After finding Henry Rollins on Youtube I had a hunt around and struck gold!
Back when I was a little lad with no money I used to tape songs of the telly, as well as the radio of course. I wish I still had some of those tapes, particularly one from TheTube, ‘The Bushes Scream While My Daddy Prunes’ by ‘The Very Things’. It’s pretty much as I remembered it, very cool, with a great intro/outro on the video.
Anyway, enough of my jakkin’, lets boogie

Gaye Bykers on Acid were pretty much the first grebo band IIRC. Loud crashy and probably a little amatuerish they combined lots of samples from cult horror/scifi stuff and stirred it badly with a big wooden spoon, I still love them! ‘Nose Dive Karma’ was from ep of the same name and ‘Git Down’ was from ‘Drill Your Own Hole’ their first full album, which was a bit concepty as it tied in with a seriously lofi atempt to create the kind of film that had inspired their music. Incredibly rough and shoddy looking it was a lot of fun.... if you were a fan:) Lead singer Mary Mary went on to do the theme tune to the first Charlie’s Angels film as Appollo 440 (think that was their name), and other stuff I can’t recall.

Did I make you think?

Here’s a packed post as I fit in all sorts of nonsense that’s been on my mind in an effort to satisfy Katy’s thinks post.
Big news is that Rebecca finally got the results of her scan after a irritatingly pointless delay, and the news is good. The doctor says that the cancer is showing very encouraging signs of shrinkage. Had no idea how heavy the weight on our shoulders was until it lifted, which leads neatly onto the next point.
We went to a Cancersupport centre last week and Rebecca insisted that I stop telling people I’m fine. The truth is Rebecca has been taking things well and I’ve been having a tougher time. The woman who spoke to us told us this is no where near unique, in fact it’s pretty typical as in a lot of cases those closest to the person with cancer have a harder time coping. The problem is that when Bec is so positive I don’t want to bring her down, and it feels wrong to harp on about what’s bothering me when something so major is happening to her. It turns out those feeling aren’t unique either.
Over the last 2 months I’ve slowly felt like my own sense of self has been slipping away between looking after my wife and child has left me with less time for myself, made worse when one of our parents comes to help out and I find even more expectations put on me (not to undermine how much help they give, which has been fantastic).
As I’ve drawn less, read less, written less and so on I’ve become a little more withdrawn and miserable. Oddly this doesn’t effect me all the time and has had no impact on the fantastic opportunity this horrible thing has given us to be a family with no work commitments for a while.
Writing this I feel like I’m whining about nothing, but rebecca doesn’t think so, and if she’s concerned then I want to sort it out. I do have the sneaking suspicion that she’s using this to get me to deal with the fact that I can pretty miserable without the aid of an ill wife. Anyway, the upshot is that Cancersupport offer a free bunch of services to the sufferer and those close to them, Rebecca's scored some massages and I get to see a counsellor.
On the up side the woman we spoke to was incredible impressed with Rebecca’s attitude, and thought I was doing much better than I thought I was, and it was reassuring to hear that I’m not feeling any different to a lot of people in this position.
No doubt due to my gloomy mood I’ve rediscovered my love of Henry Roliins thanks to Youtube. I don’t have a tape deck any more and my Rollins is on tape so it’s been a while, and I sort of thought he was a bit to, um, teenage, for me. Guess I’m still an angst riddled teenager at heart:)
Here’s one of my favourite Rollins songs (my fave is ‘Low Self Opinion’, but the ‘Liar’ video is better!)

Okay, part of the thinking bloggers bit is this -
I gots to nominate 5 bloggers who I want to join in, sorry if I don't name you, I enjoy all the blogs I link to I'm just a jerk

Danny
Okay, he doesn't post that often, and sometimes tries to past of quickie posts as real ones, but when he does post I always remember what a thoroughly lovey bloke he is and want to give the charming chap a big hug.

Andrew
A very talented artist with a blog with brilliant work here, but what I really love is his other one, the one where he fills my geek head with insightful geek tomfoolery.

INJ
I dream that I could cut my arm off and replace it with his thereby being the fabulous artist he is. Sadly this is but a dream (although I have been know to visit Nottingham so be warned INJ), so I just look at his artwork in awe.

Mewsings
I'd love to put Garen on this list, but he's pretty much dropped out of blogging and sticks to updates about hsi excellent comic Rainbow Orchid, luckily his brother Murray's blog is always interesting and either offers whole new stuff for me to find or tells me something I didn't know about something I already liked.

Curtis Jobling
The guy created the look of Bob the Builder, he's working on his very own Frankenstein's Cat cartoon adapted from his fine book and Biteneck Beatniks absolutely rocks.

For the above writers, this is your mission should you choose to accept it:
1. Write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think.
2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme.
3. Proudly display your TBA award with a link to the post that you wrote.

The Mighty Thor

Man this sat half finished for a couple of weeks. Why has it taken this long to finish? No idea really.
There's more to add to this pic but I'd like to do it in colour, stuff like lighting effects and cracking ground, that sort of thing.
I would've liked to simplify this more, bringing it closer to my sketch, but I chickened out, the curve of arm to shoulder was less broken up, as was the curve from leg to leg, Moljinor was bigger too, but I was getting penis envy:)

And back again

It's been a rough week so still no artwork - there is some coming.
Rebecca had her third chemotherapy today and it seems to be taking a little more out of her each time, she also found out that she has to get a series of injections to stimulate her bone marrow into producing my white blood cells. More injections is a pain, but they seem pretty easy, the important thing is they allow her to get her chemo on time and they aren't there because of anything bad.
My grandad went into hospital last week because of his stomach cancer and it looked bad for a day or so, luckily he's come out of hospital better than when he went in.
To top all this off Olivia's teething! This probably seems the most minor, but as Rebecca need to relax, particularly a few days after her treatment, the timing could be better. Also, it's not nice to see the poor little thing in pain. Luckily for everyone so far Olivia is sleeping through the night just like always, it's just during the day that she's grumpy or in discomfort - taking her for a walk seems to help, so I think there'll be a lot of that.
Is this the best time to decide to start exercising again to undue 2 months comfort eating? Not really, but I'm doing it anyway.
On the nice side of things as well as struggling with teeth Olivia is coming on really well. For some reason she's been fascinated with cups, and as I drink a lot of coffee she's had plenty of opportunity to see how it's done, often reaching for the cup if she's sat on my lap at the time. In a moment of parental amusement I et her go for my (empty) cup and was choked up with happiness when she reached round to grab the handle and brought the cup to her mouth! Just think what I'll be like when she takes her first step or says her first word! Anyway, a baby cup's been purchased and she's getting more practice in. She's also enjoying eating baby rice from a spoon, and trying to hold the spoon herself. Honestly, I'm such a sap for this stuff!
As usual I attempt to counter and miserableness of these posts with photos, guess which one is Olivias' failed attempt at using a spoon:)

Iron man in good comic adaptation shock!?

Maybe if this pic is anything to go by.

What's going on

Bit of a funny few days so I've no done much, still got some pencils needing inking and I really should get started on 'MY Robot' for AccentUk's next anthology, 'Zombies' was about zombies, see if you can guess what the subject matter is in 'Robots'.
In the meantime I need to get this off my chest, Life on Mars is one of the finest pieces of TV ever, just fantastic.
Doctor Who's started stronger, last series was a bit patchy, and Torchwood had many many (many) moments of utter cringing embarrassment. Many.

The Three (Miserable) Bears

Edited to replace wandering pic.
Still not so hard at work doodling pinups, there's two nearly ready to post, but I'm trying to make my mind up if one should have some background (I draw them on occassion!) or not. In the meantime here's an old picture I did.
This was a bit different for me, mainly because it was one of my first attempts at using a pen (flexible nib), but also it was me trying to build a portfolio. Both of those endeavors were doomed. Even though I was pleased with the penwork I started missing chunky lines (it also threw up an odd thing for me, I love scratchy wibbly (technical term) pen lines, but also love smooth fluid brush lines, I'd love to combine both but have never managed it - maybe using brush work on textured paper as well as pen might work? The other doomed aspect was the portfolio, my usual lack of ideas and inability to stop dithering and just enjoy my work led to me giving up (not unusual for me, after a nightmare year of illustrating greeting cards for idiots I stopped drawing for about 6 months. I also tend to quit drawing comics once or twice a year!), and this story got no further than 3 pages .
It's a shame I didn't complete my own version of the Three Bears as I actually knew the basic plot which is odd for me. Anyway, at least I've got that look on baby bears face, love the way that turned out!

BlackBolt

There's been some great Jack Kirby characters (apparently Stan lee had something to do with them? This could just be a rumour though.), but I remember reading some old UK annual with marvel reprints (found it in the local tip, ah those were the days) and discovering The Inhumans, or rather Blackbolt, and being seriously impressed. His origin is brilliant, born into the royalty of a society of superpowered people Blackbolt's power was strength, flying, yadda yadda, but his real trick was that the slightest whisper from him could decimate buildings, so his first cry when he was born killed his mother and father, and a fair chunk of their home. From then on BB had to keep quiet if he didn't want to cause serious damage, giving him a real sense of sadness and dignity.

A real Powergirl

Another 3 weeks another day of chemotherapy for Rebecca. Everything went as it should from the last treatment and she's dog tired again from this one. Sadly there's hair everywhere in the house, worse because she still had the excess of hair from being pregnant. It's not noticable to anyone else that it's going, but it is. A bit of retail therapy, including a couple of cool summer hats has helped, but, well, who wants to lose their hair.
Luckily health wise everything's going well and a few other problems we had have been sorted.

Powergirl

Okay, I know very little about Powergirl other than she's been blessed with a really bad costume. But in connection with the Supergirl meme there's a new meme to save this postergirl for hormonal boys.
I'm mainly doing this because I suck at drawing females, too much time spent drawing 2000ad characters with clenched teeth (them, not me), this gives me an excuse to practice.
My version keeps the colour scheme, the hair and the idea that her cape is held on with a sort of sash thingy. Oh, and the heck bits pretty similar. other than that I just went with something that hopefully makes her look powerful yet feminine (not sexy, which I think her original costume was meant (and failed) to do.
The sketch shows an early cape/dress idea the my wife liked, so I'm posting it to keep her happy.

Men with big sticks

Seeing as Andrew prefered Captain Britain to America I thought I'd indulge him. I'll try and do another with the Alan Davis version but I've got a soft spot for the old school version and as I'm a big fan of Jack Staff this idea seemed to fun to ignore - has anyone else had this idea?

Cyberman

Had to dig through some artwork today and saw a bunch of stuff I hadn't seen for a while so I thought I'd post it while I try and do some new stuff.
This fella is an old school Cyberman I drew years ago for a collection of short Doctor Who stories. Looking at it now is a bit weird, at the time I was really proud if it, now all I can see is all the rubbish bits, but funnily enough I still like it, warts and all. I think it's the characterisation I like? The Cyberman are sort of sad so an obsolete design left slumped and forgotten seems to work for me, and hopefully rises beyond it's poorly drawn origins..... longwinded rationalisation for duff drawing over!

Polo

Those with long memories and nothing else to think about might remember me mentioned the book 'The Adventures of Polo' by Regis Faller a while ago. It's a beautiful book, smart, inventive and lovely to just look at, and there's another out now (I'm waiting patiently by the letter box for it) In the meantime have a look at the Polo website here, it's gorgeous.

Shucks

My go at the recent Supergirl meme got an honorable mention on Proect Rooftop which I'm totally chuffed by! If you've not been there (and you should check it out), PR where people submit new costume designs for superheroes. There's been some brilliant designs and fantastic artwork. What I find interesting is that away from the safe 'commercial' dullness required by DC and Marvel there's a lot of possibilities not being explored, if only some bigwigs at DC or Marvel let loose some of the talented folk who've contributed to PR there might be some much improved comics out there.

Life

It's been nearly a week since my wife had her first chemotherapy treatment, and thankfully so far it's gone fine. The first couple of days Rebecca was sick but this settled down when we found out it was not directly because of the treatment, but because her stomach was now more sensitive, a little change in eating habits and it's under control. Tiredness has been the main problem, it's important that Rebecca sleeps when she needs it to help keep fatigue at bay as this can be really tough.
Unfortunately as positive as this is, it's still early days. Rebecca is now entering into what is scarily called the 'nadir', this is the point where her white blood cells, which provide immunity, pretty much disappear. The worry of catching something, and everything can be life threatening in this stage, is what's been at the back of my mind. We've been getting into the habit of regular, and frequent, hand cleaning, being careful about food preparation and being careful with Olivia's contact with her mam. The trick has been to get into the habit of doing this without it feeling overbearing, Rebecca's kept such a positive outlook that we don't want to make a big deal about doing things differently.
Anyway, to counterbalance the 'dark' bit of the post, here's a cute as a button picture!

Captain America meme

There’s another meme just starting, this time it’s Captain America’s turn, inspired by the recent storyline that I’ll not spoil.... then again I’m sure everyone who’d care, and a few others beside, already know. Cap. has long been one of my fave superheroes and I had tried to draw him a while ago and failed, but when the meme calls inspiration strikes!
Seeing as it takes me ages to colour in my creaky fashion I'm posting the b&w now and I'll edit this post later when the colour version's done, in the meantime, hope you like.

Edited to add the colour version, and a quicky Red Skull version - it struck while doing this one the Vincent Price would've made a top Red Skull.
If you dropped by to check out the meme, why not look at some of the other artwork here. Thanks for visiting!

For kelvin

Better with stripes or without?
If you've come for the meme why not have a look at some more drawings here
Thanks for visiting!

Pic

After the weightiness of the last post here's a pretty (I hope) picture. The colouring was done on a pretty lame package and I had to do some of it pixel by pixel, which was satisfyingly mind numbing...... of course, naff colour choices are all my own fault.
And hey, if you've come to look at the meme why not look at some of drawings, just click here.
Thanks for dropping by!

Sigh

It's possible posts might be pretty erratic here for the next few months. A couple of weeks ago my wife, Rebecca, was diagnosed with a form of cancer called lymphoma and will be going in for her first treatment of chemotherapy any day now.
It's been a weird couple weeks, not least because Rebecca has shown no symptoms of cancer at all and so it hasn't felt real, in fact if not for Olivia's birth it wouldn't have been spotted yet, which makes her something a double miracle for us.
Rebecca has been amazing, strong and positive, I only mention her occasionally here (she's internet shy) but I hope my love and respect for her is apparent for all to see, and those of you who know her will probably not be surprised in the slightest at how well she's dealing with something so hard.
I'm not going to turn this into a 'health watch', and it's likely that I'll still post the usual artwork and waffle here as I intend to honour Rebecca's commitment to getting on with things as normal, so please keep dropping by, just don't be surprised if the usual amount of posting or obsessive comment replying dips.

Supergirl meme

And another late contribution to a meme. This one really needs colour but I'm still without a proper art package
- a friend is helping me with that though.
Anyway, Supergirl, haven't got much interest in the modern SG, luckily her comic is supposed to be rubbish inspiring the meme as redesign. My design doesn't actually add much that other better ones out there, but it is how I'd do it. Seeing as there is no colour I'll just explain that she's wearing a blue (natch!) smock, yellow belt and paler yellow tights with red boots and cape...... can't believe I just had explain how I'd colour it how lame is that!?
Quick edit, you can find the meme here.
And if you come for the meme, you can see more of my stuff here. Thanks for dropping by!

Firey biscuits, or something

Kelvin's done a cool pic for a Ghost Rider meme so I though I'd join in with one of my own. It's a cheat really as it's just a redo of a pic I did ages ago (and posted here I think), but as I gave the original artwork away and was a little unhappy with it I though I'd tidy it up. Think the crop might be a bit severe but there wasn't much going on below.
Quick edit, you can find the meme here.

Comic nonsense

Hot in the heels of Fantagraphics Popeye collection is their reissue of animation legend Gene Deitch's little seen newspaper strip 'Terr'ble Thompson'. I love the angular style, I love newspaper strips and Terr'ble Thompson, although not exactly funny, is an awful lot of fun with a wonderful freewheeling sensibility. Highly recommended.
Fanatagraphics are going to be reissuing 'Pogo' again in what I guess will be a similar format to the Peanuts books, this is brilliant news as 'Pogo' is just beautifully drawn.
All this newspaper strip nostalgia has me reread one of my favourite newspaper strips 'Calvin & Hobbes'. after a few years of not looking at them and not only is it great to see them again but I'm struck by how much of an influence they were on me when I first started trying to do comics of my own. It took me a while to move beyond my early ideas of drawing which were a little more 'realistic' - nothing wrong with that kind of drawing of course, but although I (still) find it easier to draw like that and can do it very well (modest!) I just don't care for the results, I tend to think it looks like anyone could've done it and even a little mechanical. Anyway, loving Calvin & Hobbes again but in a bitter sweet way as Bill Watterson's (he's a bit of a hero of mine and not just because of his work) work is sorely missed even if there have been other brilliant strips since.
Seeing as I'm an a strip mood I've been trying to track down copies of 'Flook' by 'Trog' lately, I remember seeing this as a kid and enjoying it (even though it was going way over my head), the artwork was just so good.
Also read the TPB of Street Angel and it's brilliant, and utterly absurd - a young girl is the best kung fu skateboarding homeless not actual superhero ever and the scourge of deadly, and hopeless, ninjas that seem to crop up all over, and there's time traveling pirates, a neck breaking Jesus, blaxplaitation superheroes, a wereshark (coolness!) and loads of silly stuff that somehow works because it's hard to tell if it's serious or not. Check it out folks - Danny will cos I'm sending him my copy of the 1st issue.

Valentine

My present to Rebecca (we decided not to buy anything, and it's been ages since I drew something for her) I liked the scritchy line (I love scritchy lines, have I mentioned that before?) on the final rough so I've posted it too.

Hope you all have a lovely day.