Holiday Snaps

It's overcast and drizzling, I have a rotten cold.
I hope it's a proper summer somewhere and
there's an alien on holidays.

This week is Irish Comics Appreciation Week, a celebration to mark the first birthday if Irish Comic News.
Check out the site for all sorts of fun stuff.
Part of the aim of the week is to get the comics out there. To that end Hilary has posted downloadable pdf copies of Longstone Comics last two volumes on the longstone blog for you to download and read for FREE!!

This is a page from a 2000AD script that I had pencilled a while ago.
Recently I've been experimenting with colouring directly onto the pencilled artwork, leaving out the inking step altogether. I like inked work but there's a very different feel to the finished piece.
So, I remembered this page and decided to use it for my ongoing colour experiments.
I'm liking this so far and having a lot of fun with it.

2d doodles 2012

Some doodles from the 2d Festival this year.
I did remember my camera this year, but then forgot to actually use it. Nevermind, I managed to take these in the midst of the day long doodle-frenzy.
So here's Nightmare from Soul Calibur V and Deadpool.

New Foldy Comic

A new Foldy Comic called CAKE will be peeking out from under the covers at the 2d Festival in Derry this weekend.
Really looking forward to a superfluity of comiky goodness thanks to all at the Verbal Arts Centre.

Hellboy

Got onto a bit of a Hellboy buzz after drawing him for an
Irish Comic News noodle post.
So went doodling again... and here's the big guy about to pound on some very shady looking characters.

Conan-pencil sketch

This is the pencil sketch I did for a drawing of Conan for the Noodlers section of Irish Comic News.
Always interesting to see how pencils are transmogrified into a finished pic, and not always successfully.
Need to get better at flowing through the whole process instead of it sometimes feeling like trying to walk through a waist deep lake of cold lumpy porridge.

Ninja Girl - detail

This is a detail of a pic I did for the Longstone Comics blog.
The full pic and accompanying Haiku (: p) are there.

Bibliophiles

This is a recent commission for a book loving, perpetual student who loves photography.
I've discovered as well as reading them, I like drawing books :)

Dublin City Soul Festival - Instrument Art

One of the events in this years Dublin City Soul Festival is an exhibition called Instrument Art. Everyone involved was given old, even broken instruments to go wild with and do their thing. I got to see some when I was dropping in my effort.....Mind-bogglingly amazing. Go check it out if you get the chance.
This is the guitar I got to paint, my 'Guitar Comic'. Really fun to do since I don't often get to play with paints and a brush these days.

Sketch 10-05-12

Another experiment in line.

Sketch 04-05-12

Been playing around with some sketches trying to pair them back to just black and white with a minimum of fussiness.
Then of course once they're scanned I can't resist playing with a bit of colour and pattern :)

More Spaceships

I had so much fun drawing the ships for the background of the Shakara pic that I went and did another page of spaceships. Then, just because I can, went and reversed the drawing and then threw in a nice sludgey warm grey. It might be just me, but I really like letting my eye wander over these, very restful.

Noodle Doodle - Shakara

This weeks noodle on ICN is of Shakara, created by Robbie Morrison and Henry Flint.
First is the wonderfully grubby pencil drawing of Shakara. Then the background tech stuff that might be ships or a space station and finally the inked version of Shakara.
Then throw it all together in the ol' digital melting pot, simmer for a few hours and out comes the finished pic.
This noodle was a tremendous amount of fun to draw.
Damn, I wish the Shakara story arc wasn't done and dusted.

Zombies, zombies, zombies....

This months theme on the Collective Thinking Blog is Zombies.
Here's the pencil drawing which was digitally transmogrified into black & white and then coloured with the ol' digital crayons.
So there's yer man, he's been battling through the hoardes for weeks, maybe months. What happens if that 'why bother, why not give up, it's all too much' thought happens at a ridiculously inopportune moment.
OOPs.

Noodle Doodle - Captain America

I've just recently joined the illustrious ranks of the Irish Comic Noodlers on Irish Comic News.
Our posts are initially exclusive to ICN, but I thought I'd show some preliminary steps to the Captain America post here.
In the interests of space-saving I mashed the messy, overworked pencils and the nice clean inks together.
Now that I look at it... it's a bit like some slightly deranged Cappy cosplayers are doing some wildly enthusiastic dance routine of some deep significance to them.
The finished pic makes much more sense :)

Beatrice for Creator Owned Day

This is Beatrice.... she's been rattling around in my head for a while.
There's a story here. I'll let her wander about a bit more and who knows, maybe she'll appear in the pages of a comic someday.
This is her first appearance in the world especially for Creator Owned Day which is today :)
Creator Owned Day is, I think, the brainchild of Stephen Downey
People can join in and tweet their stuff, check out his website for details.

New Comic

 This is a panel from a story I've just finished, written by Gar Shanley. Gar had the notion to gather as many interested participants/willing fools to contribute to an anthology that he's putting together called Romantic Mayhem. The project is nearing fruition and I'm looking forward to getting my mitts on a copy.
Oh, and in case we all got giddy and decided that we'd do more themed anthologies, Gar figured we should have an imprint as it were, that we publish under. After many nutty emails the general consensus was to go with the name National Tragedy and below is the logo I designed.

Next Tour

I was halfheartedly thinking of tidying all the files on the ol' hard drive.
Never happened because I found this drawing, done late last year,  that I'd forgotten about. Thought it would be way more fun to colour it, and I was right. So here's the drawing and the coloured version.
Colouring is always more fun than filing :)

Envy

This is my contribution to this months Collective Thinking Blog, the theme being any or all of the Seven Deadly Sins. I went with Envy after reading that in Dante's Purgatory, the punishment for the envious is to have their eyes sewn shut with wire because they have gained sinful pleasure from seeing others brought low.
Hmmmm, fun times :(

Space Sk8r

Wheeee... this months post for the Collective Thinking Blog.
This months theme was Pimp my Ride...Started doodling one thing but went off on a tangent. Not sure where my head was at for this, though there has been a bit of an over indulgence in things Sci-fi for the last while.... Space Sk8rs are Go!

Some Panels

These are some panels from some pages I've been working on from a 2000AD script called Pea Patch Podlings by Arthur Wyatt. I thought I'd post up the process from pencils, through inks, to finished panels with grey tones added.
I'm off to Thought Bubble in Leeds this weekend...some of my favourite comics artists are going to be there, wheeee, really looking forward to it.

Zombie Boy or Zomboy

This is my post for the Collective Thinking Blog this month. What with Hallowe'en an' all that, the theme was all things gore and gruesomeness. I know zombies are a bit obvious; but there's no denying, they are fun to draw.

'Holed Up' pencils

I keep forgetting to chuck stuff up on the blog, so while I'm actually sitting in front of the ol' computer, here's some other work.
This is a page of pencils from a 2000AD script called 'Holed Up' that I downloaded from their site. I'll eventually get this inked and then post the lot, fait accompli.

M & J

This is a card that a friend of mine asked me to do for her niece, Maria, who's getting married to John next friday. It's hand rendered and painted. Had to scan it, though a photo would probably have been better. I've a new camera but haven't taken the time to figure out how it works, such a technological luddite.

LotRO doodles

The young fella and I are a bit mad about Lord of the Rings Online.
There's a new raid fighting the dragon Draigoch and it's kinda nutty trying to find your way around.
So between the two of us, his spatial  cop-on and my doodling, we made a map to help his kinnies :)
A fun project1

Corvus

I'm ahead of myself for the Collective Thinking Blog this month.
September's theme is Birds Birds Birds.
Crows are one of my favourite birds.

Anakin, Obi-Wan & Ahsoka

This started out as a request for a sketch of Obi-Wan,
but the recipient is the coolest comics fan kid I've met so far, so I got a bit carried away.
I hope he'll get a kick out of having hard copies of three of the steps that go into making comics.

The Morrígan

This is my post for this months Collective Thinking Blog .
This months theme was mythology with a modern twist and this is my take on The Morrígan.

Blink

Had a great day at the Dublin Zine Fair yesterday. Big shout out to Sarah Bracken for doing a great job organising the whole thing. Did this short strip while sitting at  my table for the day.
Had recurring moments of regretting the amount of leaves in each panel, but persevered anyway. I'm glad I did in the end :)