Old Artwork #4

Continuing the theme of 'blasts from the past', here's a thing I did back in 1988. At the time I was producing comic strips & short story illustrations for an independant role playing magazine. The editors offered me a half page spot to run a promotional advertisement piece... I think as a 'payment in kind' sorta thing, since they didn't pay that well.

The piece shows a bunch of the characters I had drawn for the magazine, & a couple from another side project I was working up with a writer friend, Paul Hayes.

Amazingly this didn't generate any new commissions whatsoever..lol

The other pieces are various charater 'spot' illustrations I did for fanzines, between '84 & '87

Old Artwork #3

Back in the late 1980's I did the cover to a record by British heavy metal band Excalibur. Sadly I dont have a copy of this work of genius to show you. However, the fact that this album sleeve featured a painting of a female back side in a thong did mean that a few other bands came to me & asked for 'a cover like the one you did for Excalibur'.

Around 1988-89 I was asked to do a cover for a record by another British heavy metal band, this time called Wraith, & guess what.. they wanted something like the Excalibur thing. I completed a whole series of color roughs, all of which were based on the original premise provided to me by the band, via their record company. The record was to be called either 'Control Yourself' or 'Scarred for Life'. In the end, I didnt do the finished art, & as I understand when the album finally surfaced, the band had opted for a photograph of themselves as the sleeve image. As was typical.. I was never payed for the roughs I did. Here's a few of them, all done in a mixture of ink, colored ink, some colored pencil, conté crayon & gouache.

BTW... like I sad.. it was the 80's.

Old Artwork #2

Back in the early 80's, when I was 'working' (I use the term losely, because no payment was involved, but it was superb practice) fairly regularly producing strips & illustrations for fanzines, I decided one day that I needed to try to work the way the 'pro's did.... that's to say.. working fast!! So I set myself the task of producing a page of pencils & inks per day.. as an exercise, to see what standard I could ahieve with those time constraints.

So I took an episode of Rogue Trooper, & reverse engineered it to come to a reasonable approximation of what the working script may have been, then gave myself a week.. Monday to Friday, to produce the five pages of art... just like I knew my primary artistic influence (Dave Gibbons) could do & did.

Truth is, I didn't complete the full five pages. There was bits & peices on all that needed finishing up. A backgound that needed inking here... a face that needed redrawing there etc. But despite that it was a useful exercise, & a good learning experience.

Here's one of the pages from that experiment.

Old Artwork

I havn't posted anything in a while, so I've decided to show you a bunch of old stuff. From the 80's & early 90's. Starting with this piece.

This was a character design thing I did for a RPG back in '92-ish. Painted in acrylics. If I remember rightly, I was turned into a lifesize standee for store displays... not that I ever saw one.