A Horse of a Different Colour

The Fred the Clown story I'm working on right now is going to have a horse in it, so I thought I'd better have a bit of practice - I drew Barney Google's horse Spark Plug recently, but with that big horse blanket over him all the time, Sparky could look like a potato under there. Anyway, I thought this was okay for a first attempt - might make the head a bit smaller, it's a bit donkeyish here.

Double Humbug

More work-in-progress.

Boom! Town

I was asked to come up with a banner design for Boom! Studios' alt-comix imprint, Boom Town - something they could use at shows like SPX, with a slightly artsy-comix aesthetic. I'm not even sure I qualify, but they asked nicely, so I put my best foot forward.

First I submitted a few rough ideas...

They decided to go with the last one, so here's the finished result.

I think I botched the colour choices somewhat, looking back... colouring for me is such a trial-and-error process, I doubt I'll ever get the hang of it. The difficulty came from making the "Boom Town" logo stand out against all the other details – I had to make those rather muted in order to make the words pop, and I could never quite get it looking right to my eyes. In hindsight, I should probably have made the lettering light and the background darker... of course, the solution's always obvious after the deadline has been and gone!

The Great Man

One of my all-time comedy heroes. The sketch isn't quite there - it looks like the work of a moderately talented fifth former from here - but still.

Hawwy Potter

Young Thomas is right in to his Harry Potter at the moment, and he also knows his Tex Avery back to front, so this was only a matter of time. Cracks us both up.

The Stationery Ape

This image has been on the top of my letterheads and invoices for a while now - longer than a decade, I'm sure. Every so often I think about changing it, but by now I'm reluctant to part with him...

Big Feet

I tend to have a few stock sketches in my repertoire for conventions, and this is one of them - there are a bunch of versions of this floating around out there. I have no idea if Animal's feet are really that big, but it works for me.

Pencilling Popeye

Thought I'd show some of the process behind a cover today - specifically, Popeye #12. First of all I submitted a few sketches for the editors' consideration...

 

These were all drawn at about a quarter printed size - I like to make my initial drawings small because it forces me to think about the design and not get bogged down in rendering details too much, which is what I tend to do otherwise. Editor Craig Yoe favoured the one with Barney Google and Spark Plug peeking over the big newspaper comic page, and co-editors Ted Adams and Clizia Gussoni were both happy with that, so I then drew a more tightly-rendered version at a larger size - A4 in this case (or about 8.3" x 11.7" for the Americans in the audience).

Notice that I moved Popeye and Olive a bit closer to the centre and showed a bit more of Wimpy - these guys are the stars of the book, after all!

Then I scanned the pencils and blew them up to A3 size (11.7" x 16.5"), printed them out in light non-repro blue on fancy-pants art paper, and inked the printout with brush and dip pen. 

Et voilà! I've already posted the finished, coloured version, so I'll spare you a repeat of that, but it's here if you missed it the first time around.

History Lesson

Here's a little curiosity for you: the first time I drew Kermit the Frog for publication, way back in 1990 - and completely unauthorised, I'm afraid. We (my brother Andrew, who wrote it, and I) plead satirical intent. This first appeared in Art d'Ecco #2, published by Fantagraphics.

Silly

My son Tom and I do Scrooge and Marley in the voices of Henry Crun and Kenneth Williams, respectively. They're all basically variations on Scrooge saying how Marley has been dead these seven years and Marley popping up and saying "I was just having a lie down" or similar. We had to make our own entertainment in my day.

Cushlamochree!

Isn't Barnaby great? Yes it is.

Humbug!

Some work-in-progress.

Oh, and I got a shout-out on Lines and Colors today - thanks!

Mother in a Jar

Twenty years after drawing this, I cringe at this one a bit - mainly because of how obviously I was in the thrall of Chris Ware at the time, with the fancy calligraphy and all. Hasn't stopped me blogging it, mind.

Snarked meets Liberty Meadows

This piece was done as a fundraiser for last year's Baltimore Comic Con. The brief was to celebrate creator-owned comics... by getting cartoonists to draw characters created by Frank Cho. (Yeah, I don't think that one was thought through very well.)

I'm not particularly a fan of Liberty Meadows - I checked out a bunch of strips while gathering reference for this image, and I don't think I laughed once - but the character designs are pretty nice.

Anyway, Baltimore was a blast regardless, so I'll be coming back this September. Be nice to try and hit SPX on the same trip, which is just a week later - if I can register fast enough this year! (I'll be on a plane between London and New Zealand on the day SPX table bookings open, so I may be screwed already... we'll see.)

Captain Blackbottom!

More sketchbook tomfoolery. Here's Pinkbeard's enemy, the evil Captain Blackbottom. Grr.

Santa Is Alive*

*(Or is that Stan...?)

I did this piece for an anthology called Satan Is Alive, which was a tribute to the band Mercyful Fate, fronted by some fella called King Diamond. The book was put together by the handsome and talented Mr Mark Rudolph and featuring contributions by Mark, Kevin Cross, Tom Neely, Stephanie Buscema, Ben Marra, Johnny Ryan and many others.

I'd never heard Mr Diamond before Mark approached me, but the imagery was kinda fun to play with and I'm pretty happy with the finished piece, although whether or not it captures the essence of the gentleman I have no idea.

I believe the book is still available here.

Good Comics For Kids interview

There's an interview with me up at the Good Comics for Kids site - mainly about Popeye, though we touch on a lot of other things as well. Which reminds me, I turned in the final colour art for Popeye #12 yesterday - very proud of this one.

This sketch was done for Alex Bubenheimer, who looked after me so very splendidly at the Frankfurt Book Fair last year. (Forgive the blurry image; it was taken with my digital camera before I handed the piece over. You might be getting more of that sort of thing in February...)

Dreaming of Fred

I started making some notes for a new Fred the Clown story this morning - a big old monster of a story, probably, inspired by the work of Buster Keaton. Early days yet, but I like where it's going so far.

While you're here, I'd like to draw your attention to the "Buy Artwork" link at the top of this page - it's been lying fallow for some time, but last night I flung up a few pages and a couple of the recent blog sketches, so if you've been wanting to pick up an original, now you can. I'm trying out Big Cartel - if this wee taster works out, I'll expand the selection.

Sketchbook Larks 1

Here's me arsing about in a sketchbook in bed last night, just before nodding off.

He's Popeye the Sailor...

... and he's gonna muck you up!

Easy Does It!

This is a commission I did last year. I've read all too little Captain Easy - the stuff in the Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics, the first Fantagraphics Sundays collection - but holy cow, that Roy Crane was a bit good, wasn't he?

Billy Sandwiches

I do a voice called "Billy Sandwiches" for my son sometimes, which creases him up. Thought I'd find out what the little squit actually looks like.

Oh yes - there's an interview with me and J Bone on all things Rocketeer over on Comic Book Resources! It's right here.

Pinkbeard Episode 1

The first in what may or may not be an occasional series, depending on whimsy and/or desperation. Pinkbeard was conceived by my seven-year-old son, an aspiring cartoonist in his own right, God help him.

It's Adventure Time!

Your Mum

Ol' Google-Eyes

In case you've somehow missed it, I bloody love Billy DeBeck's Barney Google.

Style Test #1

I rattled this off this morning in order to try out a style I'd been thinking about. I've been wanting to get some more spontaneity into my drawings, and I thought maybe using my pencils as finished art might be a solution. However, judging by this test, the time spent cleaning up and the extra complications added to the colouring process are going to add far too much time to the process - so this is sort of a failed experiment. Might come back to it again if I have any flashes of insight on how to make it work, though. Meanwhile, here's the dregs.

Team Cul de Sac

Here's an illustration I did of Richard Thompson's characters Alice and Petey, the stars of his Cul de Sac newspaper strip. The illustration was sold as a print at last year's HeroesCon to raise funds for Team Cul de Sac, the fantastic charity project put together by Chris Sparks which used Richard's characters to raise funds for Parkinson's research. The fundraising book at the centre of that project is still available, and worth your time and attention.

And if you're not familiar with the strip, you owe it to yourself to take a look. It's really, really great.

The Master

Here's a piece I did for a Kickstarter reward a few months back - it's The Master from Doctor Who as played by Anthony Ainley. (I'm telling you who it is because my caricaturing skills are a bit rusty these days.) Not really my era - I went right off the show when Peter Davison took over, because there didn't seem to be any jokes at all - but I've no doubt it'll warm someone's cockles.

My Daughter's Birthday

Here's a comic I did in November for my daughter's tenth birthday. We walk to school together every morning and it's a special time for me, and I think for her as well - there's no competition with her brother, the fresh air seems to sweep her usual truculent mood away and we have a lovely chat together about everything or nothing at all. It's probably the time I feel closest to her.

Happy New Year

First post of the year... and I've got a resolution or two. First one is, I'm going to attempt to post something every day this year, even if it's just a sketch - I've come to understand that, in times when  cartoonists can't expect to have their own comic book series, a website is the nearest thing most of us will ever get to our own one-man anthology. So the goal is to post 365 posts this year, with artistic content in each post. If I skip a day, I play catch-up next day. No slacking! Hopefully I'll find time to do an original strip or two along with the sketches and miscellaneous illustrations.

Resolution Two: to at least write and thumbnail, and ideally complete, a personal long-form project, outside of the direct-market comic-shop model I've been clinging to for the last couple of years. Hopefully I'll still be working there a bit - it pays the bills , after all - but doing something personal that isn't compromised by commercial considerations is important to me, and I need to jump back into that with some urgency. The universe has been reminding me of mortality over the last couple of years in a big way, with serious family illnesses and so forth. Time to stop mucking about!

So here's the first piece of the year - the cover to Popeye #12, the final issue. It guest-stars Billy DeBeck's great strip star of the 20s and 30s,  Barney Google, who's a bit of a personal obsession - I'm really thrilled to be working on a Barney story, the first one not to feature that irritating little tick Snuffy Smith for about three quarters of a century.

More tomorrow!