Sunday 13 May 2012

The Princess and the Pea-Pul (Colour Version)!


I don't read ERB, or much Science Fiction at all, to be honest, but I do like a lot of Sci-Fi illustrators.

This comic strip "came to me" in a dream. I don't usually dream up ideas in this way. I do what most of us do. Lock myself in my work room and hit my head against the wall until I think of something. Or sometimes I just use my imagination.

The gaudy colours on this are inspired by Jean-Claude Forest's brilliant Hypocrite series.

Not much else to say about this one. Like the lady says, "All the people need is tits and integrity"...

Thursday 10 May 2012

Original Sinners - Flyer


Original Sinners is one of the dozen or so short comedy plays that  I've written over the last year or two. It's also the most performed (See the video link on this Blog and there are some stills if you want to scroll down a few pages...)

I don't usually do designs or flyers, etc for my written stuff as I tend to keep my writing and artwork (Comics excepted of course!) separate. I don't know why. Just stubborn, I guess.

Anyway, here's a rough (Markers on tracing paper/vellum) for a projected flyer next time we perform this. I'll do more designs if this one works out, as one o'these days I'll gather my writings together & inflict them on you in a little book.

With drawings.

Saturday 5 May 2012

Emile Kodva IV - Thingy Hunter!


This is from the same "series" as the Frankenplug strips that I sometimes post up on this Blog.

A few years ago I wrote about 50 1-page strips,all unplanned and spontaneous, into a moleskine sketchbook. I did about one a night for fifty nights. After the first few the characters started to interlink and the "stream of conscious" way of writing was kind of interesting. To me, anyway.

I later drew a few of them in ink, but for some reason I drew them out of order. So, this is the fourth of the Emile Kodva - Thingy Hunter segment.

Emile isn't in this section, but, The Thingies, a family of monsters, ruled over by a demonic tree, have hired Bigfart (The guy in the green coat) to kill him. Being stupid (And a part time cannibal) he kills practically everyone but Emile.

I know, I know... I'm fifty years old and I can't believe I'm doing this either...

The Black & White version is on my UK Underground Comix Blog for those of you who don't like staring at too much blotchy green. Enjoy.

HUMOURfest "New Needles"



I did this painting in 1992 for the (then) annual HUMOURfest exhibition/competition held in Foligno (Northern Italy) and taken around Europe. Back then you could draw or paint any size and send in about 4 or five entries. There was a different theme every year. The competition was open to cartoonists worldwide and they attracted a lot of entries.

The theme for this was Arms and Disarmament. One of the other pictures (Playpen of the Gobs) was put on permanent display at the Town Hall in Foligno and they made a beautiful black and white print of it. (It's on the Blog somewhere!)

I did around 20 or so pictures in the 1990's for HUMOURfest. They later switched the competition to bi-annual and ruled that all entries had to be a uniform A4 size.

But, I did get 2nd prize for 1995 cinema themed competition, which co-incidentally also featured Mickey Mouse. This time not as the embodiment of capitalism corrupting his neighbours, but being fingered by a buttery Marlon Brando in Last Tango in Disneyland.

Sweet dreams everyone.

Sketch/Colour Comp for Painting


Those of you who know me probably have suspected that as an arteest, I have occasional pretensions of mooching my way into a gallery somewhere and inflicting my sophisticated and worldly yet humbly optimistic visions upon the greater public.

However, I don't have any sharks that need pickling and I can't be bothered paying assistants to do my work for me. Plus, I can draw, so I've no fucking chance.

  Maybe I'd best stick to cartoons...