Just Say No.

Blasted Monday nights. It’s the time I’m most likely to order stuff I shouldn’t online. I’ve had my eye on the DVD boxset ‘Video Nasties’ for the last couple of weeks and now I find myself, late night, with my finger hovering over the buy button. On one hand it’s pricey and I could do with saving my money. On the other hand, it might help kick-start my limp horror mojo, which has been lacking of late. I’ve already got a book on movie horror posters in my Amazon basket. A stronger man would just stop there… Hmmm, but it does look all kinds of awesome.

Need to start posting more Issue #2 panels when I can. I’ll start with this nice headshot. Also Marine Cuisine 3 can now be found on Deviantart.

Marine Cuisine 3.

More Dinosaurs Vs Soldiers, this week, with a little True Grit flavour thrown in (not that I’ve seen either movie, sadly.) I had been meaning to do an all out action picture lately, I think this might be the most thunderous thing I’ve ever drawn. I thought my portfolio lacked a good action scene, hopefully this pin-up makes up for it.

Truth be told, I hadn’t planned to do any more Marine Cuisine pin-ups for a while. After the second one, I plan to put the idea on the backburner for bit. What I really wanted was to go in a different direction. Go fishing in my subconscious and try and come up with a really good horror image or something. I spent days doing pages of thumb-nails and nothing was working. I think I said in a previous post that I felt “as creative as a brick”, which pretty much sums it up. After a while and so many, many pages, I had to have an honest look back over all these ideas and see if there was anything decent in there. I realised the only good ideas I had was early on and were two follow ups to Marine Cuisine. I decided just to go with my strongest idea and draw the first idea (I’ll try and save the second idea for down the line.) My theory is I’m a little burnt out on the horror genre at the moment. After drawing a horror comic for the last several months. Watching tons of horror flicks and reading books on Stephen King and David Cronenberg, rather then being inspired, my brain is maybe a bit dry on all things ghoulish. Hopefully that will change. I’d like to think I’ve got a couple more good pin-ups in me before returning to do issue #3. What’s up next…? not really sure myself yet.

In other news… I wish it was Easter right now.

Puffing Away.

This week is being a bit kinder to me, art wise. I’ve still got some stuff to do that‘s keeping me away from the drawing board. But hopefully there will be time to get some artwork done this week. I have something underway, let’s put it that way.

Until then, here a new panel. Why is it so fun to draw people smoking? I’m not a smoker, or really a fan of smoking, and yet I kind of enjoy drawing people smoking. I think it’s the body-language people fall into when they’re smoking, I like to try and capture. It’s a strange little act with its own little movements and look. The idea that you just stop dead and go through this little, unnatural performance. Sometimes in comics, there’ll just have it hanging out of a characters mouth like he\she doesn’t even know it’s there, maybe trying not to draw attention to it. Whereas I’ll always try and have whoever’s smoking it, look like they’re getting something out of it. At least enjoying the act a tiny bit. I guess the danger is that people will say it’s bad advertising or some bollocks, but people smoke because they enjoy it. To show it any other way would be a lie. I don’t draw people smoking a lot or try and make it look cool, as it’s not. It just niggles me when I’m reading a comic and I see smoking portrayed like that. Takes me out of the story for a second. Especially if it’s a ‘mature adult’ comic, too.

Hmmm, that was dangerously close to a rant, then. Maybe I need to take up smoking to chill out a bit.

The Lair Of The White Worm

Someone really needs to put this movie out on region 2 DVD. I hear people go on about this film and it’s annoying I can’t get my hands on a copy and watch it for myself. If someone could just put out an uncut version on DVD, or even just make it available to download. I know it’s got pretty average reviews, but I’ve got to see this film. I’ve got a nasty feeling this film has never been released on region 2, so there isn’t even old second-hand copies floating about, I could try and pick up.

3 For 1.

Not looking like I’m even in with a slight chance of finishing a Pin-up this week, even at the eleventh hour. So I thought I’d post a bumper size set of panels this week (well…3.) I’m still a little drained from doing Marine Cuisine 2 last week. That and I’ve got a lot of boring day-to-day stuff to do this week that can’t be put off any longer. Plus right now, I feel about as creative as a brick. It’s a perfect storm for not doing anything, or rather anything exciting, that is.

Here one of the best things I’ve read on the web in a long time. Charlie Adlard going through the process of making a page for The Walking Dead. I love reading stuff like this. When reading The Walking Dead, I always wonder how he goes about putting a page together. It’s depressing when you see guys who are so quick and so good at putting out pages. Only way I’d ever be able to go monthly as an artist, was if I unlocked the secrets of cloning and cloned myself about six or seven times.

Marine Cuisine 2.

I don’t usually do sequels, especially to Pin-ups, but I’ve been thinking for a while it’d be nice to do a follow up on Marine Cuisine. Do some more Soldiers vs Dinosaur action. I may even try and make a series of Pin-ups on this theme down the line. But for now here’s my latest. I wanted to draw someone getting as messed up as they could in a fight and still being able to walk (or rather hop) away from it in the end. I just wanted to give the feeling you’ve missed one hell of fight if this is the end result.

This image took a while to put together. I really wanted to get it right and wanted to get the background to really feel like a Jungle in the middle of nowhere. I’m pretty happy with the way it came out (more or less.) Things fell into place a bit better, then a lot of stuff I’ve drawn lately. Where I go from here, I truly do not know. I need to get thinking and doodling.

Was a bit of a race to get this up before the end of the week, but here we are. Hope you enjoy. A copy is already up on Deviantart HERE.

Don’t You Hate It When…

I’m trying to work out if I’ll be able to finish the current Pin-Up I’m working on before the end of the week. I was a tiny bit disappointed with my last two efforts and wanted to up-my-game, as it were. The downside is this image is taking me ages. So I’m gonna post this panel from issue 2, just so I have something art-related posted this week if I fail.

Don’t you hate it when you order two graphic novels off the same company and they send you an E-mail to say they’ve been sent at the same time, yet you always get them on different days? Maybe to justify not packing them together and making more on postage, they’ll post one a bit before the other. You wait all week for your books to come (in this case Volume 4 and 5 of B.P.R.D.) and then you get Vol 5 turn up before Vol 4. If they are shipping one slightly before the other, couldn’t they be kind and let you have them in order? That and there doesn’t seem to be a decent price copy of Vol 3 of B.P.R.D. in the whole of England. At this rate I may have to sell a Kidney to buy a copy. But anyway, a great comic if you’ve not read B.P.R.D., worth a read... but is it worth a Kidney?

Shut Up, Crime.

Everyone will call this a Kick-Ass rip off when it comes out, but I am really looking forward to seeing this film. I think I’ve probably said before on here that Rainn Wilson is sublime in the US Office. If you usually see him in a film, it’s usually kooky friend or something like that. It’s good to see him in his own flick. Plus I like James Gunn movies, too.

Also put Sand Thing up on my DeviantArt page over the weekend. Anyone wanting to check that out go HERE.

Sand Thing.

Well… I’m officially back in pin-up land again and here’s my first offering. I went through a period a couple of weeks ago, when I was slightly obsessed with the idea of doing a horror story about Sand People. Creatures who appear from the sand and attack, then disappear back into the ground. For some reason whenever I tried to hammer this idea into a story, it was always set in the Wild West. Sadly, no really good story came from these ideas (…yet), but just to keep the fire burning, I thought I’d do this image. Some times an idea is so good you’ll get a graphic novel out of it, some times there’s maybe only enough for a single pin-up. I think this shot has some cool elements about it. I really tried to make the Monster look like it was made of sand and give it a sand-like texture. I can’t decided if having the Cowboy being faceless and anonymous works or not. Is it scarier if you can see someone in the image reacting to the horror? I also wonder if I should have pulled back and shown more of the Horse being held above the Monster’s head or not? That said, I do like the layout of this shot. I think I got The Monster\Cowboy ratio about right.

Being crushed by your own horse. No Cowboy wants to go that way. The murder weapon being your own horse. What a way to go.

This next month is all about trying to get my Portfolio into decent shape. Sequentially I’m ok, but I could do with some new pin ups to try and dazzle any potential editors I can get it in front of. Jury’s out on if Sand Thing will make the cut. The joy of having to second-guessing editors, huh? “groan, mumble…”

Catch!

Feels good to be drawing Pin-ups again. I won’t be away from Project B.O.B. too long before I jump back into issue #3, but for the moment I need to do something a little different. Watch this space…

Until then, here another panel from issue #2. With some girl-on-girl Frisbee action.