Wednesday 9 December 2009
Saturday 28 November 2009
Comic Cast Exhibition
This cartoon was done for an upcoming exhibition organised by Craig and Liam who present Irelands foremost comics podcast, The Comic Cast.
The theme of the exhibition is "Just what I always wanted" so Gar Shanley drafted up this idea to fit the bill. The exhibition is being held in the Twisted Pepper with the artwork being auctioned off on ebay. All proceeds from the sales are going to the Crumlin and Temple St. childrens hospitals (my mum used to be a nurse in Temple St back in the late fifties so she's well chuffed about all this!).
For more information on the event go HERE.
Friday 16 October 2009
Colour it in...
Another page for a colouring book I'm working on.
ALSO, our new Hat animation has gone LIVE!... LIVE, I SAID!
Thursday 1 October 2009
The Hat Will Return
Anyway, we're making a short flash animation based on The Hat from the Windell comic. Richard O'Shea (Ireland's foremost Grizzly - also the heaviest baby in the history of the state) is bringing my drawings to life while Garret Shanley (who also wrote the windell comic) is on script duty. It's going really well and should be finished soon, available for all to view on youtube. The guy in the pic above is one of the guest stars.
Thursday 24 September 2009
Noted
Look at this beauty. Got it yesterday, along with a bunch of equally splendiforous comics from blackshapes creator, gentleman, scholar, Phil Barrett. Thanks a million, Phil. Your work is always pure quality.
Friday 18 September 2009
Samples From a W.I.P.
A W.I.P. of course is a Work In Progress, and that's very much what this is. I'm still writing this stuff as I'm drawing it, which is a bit bonkers, but I just can't bring myself to sit down and contrive the material into a soup-to-nuts document.
Why?
Because the drawing informs the writing as much as the writing informs the drawing. Sufficed to say, this is not a process I'd necessarily recommend to anyone, or even one I'll be using again in the future. The only reason I'm doing it on this ditty is beacsue it's an abstract narrative, and if I just attempt to plot it out, the left side of my brain will lock the door on the right side. Can't be having that.
If I was doing a straight narrative I'd almost certainly outline and write it before illustrating it. But you really don't have to be able to see the forest for trees when you're creating abstract narratives 'cos by defintion they're more holistic. As long as the individual units sustain themselves the whole should look after itself. Any joins you're making are going to be more indirect, symbolic, unconscious, or even thematically driven, rather than functioning as a set of linear progressions on the surface.
It's not to say I don't love straight narrative. I love plots. LURVE them. But I love abstract shit too. Horses for courses, and all that.
Thursday 10 September 2009
Salvo's Colouring Book
Silkscreen Print
I recently received this beautiful print in the mail from Ztoical. In a feat of clairvoyance that would make Derren Brown flinch, the colour of the walls in this print are almost identical to the colour of the walls in the room where I work.
Sunday 23 August 2009
Tuesday 18 August 2009
Salvo's Test Card
Nothing signals the counter-cultural intentions of an artist quite like the fusion of dismembered heads and test card chic. That’s right… one look at this baby and the beholder is left with little choice but to conclude that its creator is one of those serious artistic types who would never let THE MAN’S member get within an asses roar of his bum hole.
Who knows, the viewer might even be inclined to picture the draughtsman responsible for this illustration as a hopelessly maladjusted (and probably overweight) fellow who has taken up permanent residence beneath the monstrous shadow cast by the establishment, clutching a shovel in his fist.
On a more practical level (and putting aside any and all considerations of creative matters) the periodical transmission of this test card on giant screens all over the world would allow any viewer the opportunity to conserve vital energy by just staring at it for anything up to an hour; energy that is badly needed for the important business of being awake in the world.
Saturday 8 August 2009
K. V. Jr.
Monday 3 August 2009
Let the Fish and Goose soiret commence
Sunday 19 July 2009
Abandoned marine comic
Nothing new to post as I'm using every spare minute I have on a new project. So... I'm posting some panels from a thing I was fiddling with just before I started the Windell comic. I didn't get much further than what you see here and it's very doubtful I'll ever pick it up again so I might as well just dump some of it here.
I'll try and post something original and done purely for this site asap, anon, post-haste etcetera... Please understand that my hands are tied until the new report by Dolmen Stockbrokers is published. Forthwith.
Saturday 27 June 2009
Saturday 13 June 2009
Sunday 7 June 2009
Wednesday 27 May 2009
Tuesday 26 May 2009
Stipple Head
My first attempt at stipple rendering (this is a technique where you add form by tapping lots of dots in with a fine nib) and it's not great, but even with a small sketch like this I felt like I had to put in as many dots as there are stars in the milky way. A bit of a pain in the arse. Instead of dots you could also render the lighter and darker areas with lots of small lines. To view a more subtle and dextrous demonstration of this technique go HERE
Friday 22 May 2009
Sunday 17 May 2009
Wednesday 13 May 2009
La Strada
These are some of the main characters from a 1954 Italian movie called La Strada. I copied them out of the free booklet that came with the dvd. At first, I was just going to do a simple sketch of Zampano doing his rubbish circus act but I ended up making it more of a poster type thing with the other characters too.
Monday 11 May 2009
Cheers
Just a quick post to say THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU to everyone who turned up for our launch on Friday night. It was a genuine pleasure to both catch up with some folks I hadn't seen in a while and to also meet some other folks for the first time. I hope it won't be too long before we can all meet up again... probably whenever and wherever the next strategic investment conference is being held.
LOVE
Sunday 3 May 2009
Saturday 2 May 2009
Jimmy Cagney
Oh yeah, to anyone reading this in Dublin: there are now some copies of Windell Classics Compedium available to buy at Liam Websters comic shop at the corner of Crow St. in Temple Bar. It'll be available at other emporia beyond the official launch date.
Sunday 26 April 2009
Nosebleedman
Tuesday 21 April 2009
Everyone has Mindpuss...
Wednesday 15 April 2009
cock-a-doodly-do-be-doo-wap-wap-wap
It's perpetually pissing rain in the midlands today. Maybe I'll start doing weather forecasts alongside the doodle posts. It's pissing rain. Perpetually.
I bought La Strada for 6 euros yesterday. I've never seen it before but I'm sure it's worth 6 euros.
The Windell Showcase is at the printers and should be finished before the end of this week. There'll be a cabaret to launch the book with Noel V. Ginnity as compere. He's already promised me he'll do his WEE-WAW routine so it's gonna be a fucking great night. More details soon.
Thursday 9 April 2009
Wednesday 8 April 2009
The Old Crew
Wednesday 1 April 2009
EXP #0
Tuesday 31 March 2009
The Black Rider
Today I finished all the nib work for the windell book so to celebrate I naturally decided to do this drawing of The Black Rider. This ended up looking way more cartoony than I wanted. I just slapped it down without stopping to think what I was doing and this is what I got. I think I hate it.
Windell will be printed next month and available to buy around late April or early May. More info as soon as I know.
Sunday 22 March 2009
Promo Portraits
Wednesday 18 March 2009
M
Monday 9 March 2009
2 New drawings
I've been awake for about... oh, twenty odd hours straight. I did these two sketches in the wee hours this morning. I don't know what the hell is going on in the first one. The second one was sketched straight from a photo of Christopher Lee in a book I bought years ago called "Who's Who of Horror."
Last night I finished the centre pages for the Windell showcase. It's a Ms. Ice Skates story (not that that means anything to anyone yet) and its in colour. Only three pages to go and its finished.
Tuesday 24 February 2009
Funny Fugue
Friday 13 February 2009
Finished cover
This was finished by putting acrylics down over the pencils and then inking the outlines and other details over the paint. This is actually a scan of a laser copy of the original and the colours have come out identical to the original so there's zero need for any correction.
Oh yeah, and just for future retrospective reference, today was the day when the citizens of our fair isle (Eire) learned the full extent of our banking sectors GUBU status. It's history in the making folks.
Wednesday 4 February 2009
Thursday 29 January 2009
2 more panels from Salvo's desk...
This panel again sums up the way I want to keep doing things (for now at any rate). The lines have to be clear and absolutely consistent so I use nibs (edding 1880, no. 1 and no.3) to build these lines up very tightly around the pencil lines. Obviously it takes a bit longer than making a single brush stroke but I'm fairly certain the results are distinctive enough to merit the process. It just means you can steer the line directions with an extra level of precision and steadiness. I like uniform grey tones created either by parallel or cross-hatched lines. I also like creating these busy ground textures like you get in the desert landscapes or on the patio tiles in the above panel.
Pencilling out the composition is the most enjoyable part of this way of working because it's the only real creative part. The inking process is always a fairly dull and protracted process of just executing on what's already been decided.
I'd like to think maybe this time next year I'll have completely switched styles again, but chances are I'll be sticking with this approach for a while.