Exhibition, Saturday April 20th.

Will be having a small exhibition with my brother at The Green Frog Cafe at Honey Street in Bodmin on the 20th. featuring some of my latest pieces as stretched canvases and my brother's panoramic and landscape photography, we'll be having a licensed evening preview at 7pm on Saturday evening, with the prints all being on show at the Cafe until the 4th May.

It would be great to see anyone who is able to make it on the Staurday evening, and many thanks to John and Jane Lynch of The Green Frog for being such marvellous and welcoming hosts.

Click on the flier for a larger view...

Elemental series...

Here's the first two pieces for a series of 'elemental' prints I'm working on at the moment...hope to have these two up as canvases at the exhibition on Saturday and then available as for sale over in the shop. Will be getting into water, earth, air and ice  soon.... (click the images for a larger view).

New Steampunk 'recruitment' poster series

Just been putting the final touches to this new series of four steampunk styled recruitment posters in readiness for the exhibition at The Green Frog Cafe in Bodmin on Saturday. These are all available to buy over on my shop, either as A2 sized giclee prints or as stretched canvas prints.

Recent projects...

A quick selection and sketchbook, work in progress bits from some of the current projects I'm involved with or working on at the moment; a one shot monster comic for Hellbound Media, a two page strip for PM Buchan due in Starburst magazine in June, and some new work I've put together for an small exhibition this Saturday 20th at The Green Frog Cafe at Honey Street in Bodmin.

For Hellbound Media:

 

 For PM Buchan and Starburst:

Steampunk 'recruitment' posters (there's a series of four of these currently available to buy from my print shop at The Bigfoot Studio site):

Cog-it-o ergo sum

I encountered the fascinating blog of The Boffin's Bunker today after it's creator dropped me a line via Twitter, very sportingly looking to give my work a mention. Based somewhere in the heart of darkest Cornwall (I suspect a tad further down from where I am) it features some of the most strikingkly beautiful and, at times, hauntingly eerie steampunk creations, from baby lamp lamp babies, to arcane devices and 'found' jewellery, to the contents of eldritch trinket boxes and the kind of weaponry no self respecting ethernaut would leave home without. And all it would appear, crafted by the 'Boffin' himself, or perhaps with the aid of a minion or two in the bunker, who can tell? Details are rather vague and sketchy as the Boffin remains, like some Old Time Radio hero, shrouded in a steamy fog of mystery, brass and intrigue.

The blog itself is a veritable wunderkammer of objet de vapeur, with cogged up Main de Morts side by side with augmented lobsters fresh from the workshops of Captain Nemo's Nautilus. It's the kind of emporium that Carnacki would visit for spare batteries for his electric pentacle, where the arcane, the mathemetical, the occult and the engineered come together in a compelling body of evidence for a world  that might just have been.

 

Viewing recommended! Once you've checked out the video tour above, click on the image beneath to visit The Boffin's Bunker:

That Friday feeling....

Here's summat to keep you occupied over the Easter weekend. Forgive the lack of dotted lines but I think you'll suss it out!

Click the image for a full size version.

Ms Elizabeth Eldritch, Ectoplasmologist...

Another in an occassional series featuring the alternative fauna and flora of Bodmin Moor, as well as the various characters who manage to exploit their living from studying, farming, hunting or clearing up after it.

(Click an image for a larger slideshow view).

(Re) Introducing Albert Cropper, Monster Stopper...

I'm not a great one for reworking old images but this is one I've intended for a while to do more justice to than my initial attempt a couple of years ago, with the intention of beginning a series of limited edition art prints for sale on a vaguely steampunk-cum-monsterish theme. I used to live right on the edge of the notorious and folk-lore fuelled Bodmin Moor in Cornwall, and still walk out there at least a couple of times a month. Not infrequently I come across semi-devoured carcases and the weathered remains of livestock, and often speculate how they met their demise and if by another creatures hand or maw, then in which mine shaft, quarry pool or bog did that particular carnivorous beasty slide back into once its belly was full.

I'll be setting up shop pages on my main website soon and offering this print, on 310gsm heavy art media, approximately 24cm X 45.5cm.

ALBERT CROPPER, THE LEGEND:

During the late1800’s in Cornwall, the ‘bug’ hunter Albert Cropper was a familiar figure tramping the byways and cliff paths of the county, peddling his services in much the same way as itinerant knife grinders or mole catchers of the time.

His father operated a night soil collection business in Redruth . As an offshoot to this already dangerous work, Albert became the family firm’s parabiologist, specialising after a couple of grim encounters on the early morning collection round, involving a Devonian tape lizard and a pair of giant stool grubs.

Seeing the potential for travel and the occasional balloon ride out to the Scilly Isles, Albert went freelance in 1879 with the aid of a sponsorship deal from Sir Richard Trevithick, the famed Cornish inventor, mining engineer and monster trap designer.

This particular image was made as part of the 1885 Eldritch Expedition to Bodmin Moor and its interior, to which Albert was co-opted by local magistrates as native tracker to Lady Elizabeth Eldritch, famed ectoplasmologist. It shows Albert presenting a captive grockle mite after an emergency roadside extraction from a Belgian tourist, who had unwisely visited the shire without first taking the right inoculations.

Re working...

Re working an image from a while back now I've wrapped my head around inking by computer...

Latest Private Comission...

This one's a special portrait commission for an old and dear friend of mine who has gracioulsy allowed me to display it as a portfolio piece, and I'm putting it up here so that she can have a first glimpse of the finished art before I take it down to the printers later in the week. So here's hoping you like it 'N'!

The brief was to try and present her as a Granny Weatherwax style character, so I'm hoping Ive managed to do her justice here. Done in Manga Studio as all my current pieces have been, finished about half an hour ago and took about 26 hours from first pencils to final coloured piece.

Click the images for a larger view...

The golem on the moor...

A brief glimpse of the wildlife up on Bodmin Moor....
(Click for a larger view.)

For hit is Ȝol and Nwe Ȝer...

"Forþy I craue in þis court a Crystemas gomen, For hit is Ȝol and Nwe Ȝer, and here ar ȝep mony..."

"Therefore I crave in this court a Christmas game, for it is Yule & New Year & here are many gallants..."

(Sir Gawain & the Green Knight)

All the best to everyone for the Yule-tide season and the New Year!

Boating weather...

Fun times in Cornwall again this week as the rain and the floods return. We've been lucky here so far, with a good 12 feet between the back door and the reach of the water when the river surged over its banks briefly in the early hours of this morning. Here's a suitably nautical character sketch to keep in the mood...

...but which probably has as much to do with having just been enjoying the first pilot episodes of Dad's Army from 1969, featuring a fairly youthful John Laurie.

I will have that box...

"What you doing Abner Brown?"

Abner Brown (Robert Stevens)
"The Box of Delights"

The Wolves are Running...

Dum diddy dum-dum dum-dum da-dum,

Dum diddy dum-dum dum-dum dah...

Cole Hawlings (Patrick Troughton)
"The Box of Delights"

Characters and Histories of Old Cornwall...

Stellar Solstice tidings to space cadets everywhere!!

On an Arctic roll...

Seem to be sketching a sleigh full of Santa's this week, partly in anticipation of getting my hands on a copy of the 'Rare Exports' movie. Have yourselves a very Ninja Christmas!

(Click the image to view)

God Jul!

This year's card for the Solstice Season...I know it's a tad early but best wishes to all for the season anyway! And it's a good excuse to show a little development sequence...(click the images to view)

Samhain Scissoriness

Just a quick post to say I've got around to posting my Grim Reaper and The Mummy 3D paper toys over on my Bigfoot Studio site in time (just) for Halloween. Have fun!.