Doctor WTF?!

I wanted to post this cover I recently completed for the anthology, Doctor WTF?!. You can find more details on the facebook page.

MEGA FRIDAY!

...Featuring Mega Man. Check out my galleries on facebook, deviantArt and my portfolio.

C

Happy Saint David's Day!

Happy Saint David's Day to all my fellow Welsh folk and to everyone else who may want to partake in the one that is not as "cool" as St Patrick's and Robby Burn's, merely because it doesn't involve copious amounts of alcohol and being bastardised by Americans. Ha ha.

And to celebrate, here's a doodle of a (Welsh) dragon.

Kinda.

Now on Facebook

Hi all.

Just a quick note to point out my new facebook page which can be found here. Think of this as an extension of this blog but with less personal output and more just pictures and links.

C

Memory Lane

Just found something that tickled me on the internet.

I wanted to use my old university building, the North Wales School of Art & Design, as reference for an image I was drawing and found a photo of my work from my time there up on the walls of the corridor.

Very funny.

Hi to New Zealand!

I've been a very busy bee lately, so, as usual, I have neglected my blog. So get something new up I'll post a taster of what I've been working on.

Yeah. The Maori.

On a side note, check out the new trailer to X-Men: First Class that debuted last night. Cool, eh?

Carl!

First of 2011

Brilliant.

I'm now operating from my new office and I've completely moved out of the old paper mill.

I'm nearly set but I am ready and raring to get working from here. Computers set up. Shelves set up. Drawing board. Desks...

Good to go.

I thought my first entry to the blog for 2011 by showing a before and after. To the left is a doodle of the Hulk I did on the back of an envelope. On the right is the same image but coloured in Photoshop.

I had a basic idea of what I wanted to do but ran with it a colour stage.

Keep and eye out for more personal and 'work' stuff coming soon. If I were to make a new-year's resolution, which I don't, then right after "get more exercise" would be "keep on top of your blog this year". Let's hope I can keep that one, eh?

Christmas Card 2010

May I present my 2010 Christmas Card in all it's glory. Now I just need to get it to the printers...

Award info

Follow the link for some information on the Moonbeam Award that the book I illustrated, Attention Girls, won gold for this year.

It's point number 31 down the lower end of the page.

Christmas is just around the corner...

The ink drawing for my 2010 Christmas Card design. It shows our new house in the snow globe.

Frankenstein

I've been a bit obsessed with Frankenstein since Hallowe'en. As a kid I always loved gothic monsters in grave yards etc, but my fave was Dracula. I think as I'm getting older my tastes are changing. Maturing.

When I read the full unabridged Dracula novel by Bram Stoker a few years ago (after only ever reading my beloved Ladybird Horror Classic edition as a kid) I was struck by how revolted I was by Dracula the character. However, I felt quite the opposite to the titular character's creature when I read the novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley not too long after it.

My usual tradition is to watch James Whale's Universal classics at Hallowe'en but this year I went in a different direction and watched Hammer's Frankenstein movies. One after the other.

They were crappy, saved only by Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, but got me into the mood to not only re-read the source novel, but to do my own image and version of the 'Monster'.

I doodled on a phone bill envelope which turned into the above pen drawing. It's not finished yet. It will be full colour with Mont Blanc (hence being covered in frost and ice) and Frankenstein himself in the distance and in book cover format.

My take on the creature is closer to Shelly's description and devoid of the usual scars and stitches.

I interpreted the vaguely described process in the novel to be that, although 'materials' from corpses were used in the creation of the creature, it was more 'grown' than stitched together like a rag doll. The parts would be decomposed and useless anyway. I imagined bones and tissue being brought together, assembled in a basic frame in which living organs could be grafted and then the surrounding skin and muscle grown at a cellular level. Almost like a plant crossed with a skin graft.

But I could shake the image of Karloff's amazing face. I used it as inspiration, but not exact. Anyway.

Keep your eyes peeled for the final image on here some time soon.

Pen Drawing

Oops.

I've neglected this wee blog a bit lately. Been very busy with work and the big move to my new house in the hills.

Thought I'd stick some ink drawings on here. This first one is a for a colour image I did where I knocked together my own slant on the Spider-Man villain, Venom. I'm more a fan of the classic villains but visually this one has... potential.

He's normally depicted as a rubber-type clad wrestler of sorts. I wanted to show him as a bubbling, seething, oozing, slopping, globby mass of evil oily drippy crap. Like a huge wall of oil in a basic human form. A cross between The Blob and Batman villain, Clayface, I suppose, mixed up with a crude oil slick.

This here is the pen lines of the character. Done with a Rotring (drawing) fountain pen on Bristol board.

That reminds me... I need to do this year's Christmas card!