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):

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...

Mundo Jazz in Manga Studio

Mundo Jazz in all their glory...the excellent and irreverant world beat combo on the hunt for the lost tomb of Quincey, or some other demi god of popular TV culture. Had real fun doing this and I'm including the pencils and a detail to show it more fully.

(Click for a larger view)

 

(Click for a larger view)

I've spent the last four days putting this together, stretching my wings a bit to see what I can get out of Manga Studio using it as a basic painting package. I'm not the greatest digital artist by a long chalk, all my previous work being done with a mouse and an ancient copy of photoshop bought for me when I was working on a big photo editing job several years ago. Tried working with a stylus way back then but it never really gelled and my first love always remained working with gouache over pencils...proper wet work. It's always jarred with me the way that photoshop as the industry standard barred a lot of people being able to compete in the illustration market or even learn the software due to it's prohibitive expense; day was when you could set yourself up with enough paper, pencils, brushes and paint for about £100 and set to. 

(Click for a larger view)

As someone who spent a way too big chunk of their life living outdoors without electric, I'm completely self taught in all things new fangled and still feel like I'm playing catch up, but with this latest piece using MS and a Bamboo pen and tablet I feel like I've finally got back to the kind of tightly rendered work that I was producing with a brush and gouache. 

A gouache piece from almost six years back,
based on Mark Gatiss playing Professor Nebulous.

Another gouache from around the same time,
featuring Ed & Will, the rambling song men of Albion.

I love the fact that I've regained all the expressiveness of real brush work again, able to work the way that feels right for me rather than the way I've been obliged to due to budget. Looking back at how dark my palette of choice was when painting in the past, the fact I can change my colours with a couple of clicks is also a real joy. I know none of this way of working  is news for all the lucky folk who've been trained and graduated using this kind of digital kit from the very get go, but for a reformed hedge monkey like myself it's a total revelation after dragging my heels with technology for so long. When I first walked out of the mainstream world to live under canvas, I earned my living as a traditional sign-writer, decorator, seasonal labourer in the orchards and woodlands and working the UK festival circuit; the domestic desk top PC was something of a rarity and an expensive one at that. When I emerged blinking back into the world of  slate roofs, hot running water and ultra connectivity 12 years later it was like landing on another planet (think Gerry Anderson's 'Doppleganger/ Journey To The Far Side of the Sun') so it's taken a while to get to grips with and be able to afford new ways of working. Now with Manga Studio there's finally no longer the need to have a small fortune to begin with in order to continue working and getting your stuff seen and out there. Just wish I'd come to it three or four years earlier!

PS: Still bloody hate that word Manga though in the way it seems to be applied by the world at large to practically all things comics!

Hop along to The Green Frog Cafe...

Just completed a portrait this week of the genial hosts of my favourite cafe and coffee hang out down here in Cornwall, over in the market town of Bodmin.

I'm now taking on portrait commissions in my own 'comic book' style and John and Jane Lynch of The Green Frog Cafe were kind enough (and brave enough) to allow me to depict them for my portfolio of samples. I'm offering simple head and shoulders portraits from around £80 up to large A3 fully worked pieces like this for around £300.  Clients receive a full sized digital copy of the work with the option to source their own printing or, for an additional fee, I can arrange prints and optional framing to the size of their choice. I can also supply the finished image as a rather snazzy stretched canvas print (via the services of Justin The Frame).

(Click image for larger view)

Thanks again to John and Jane who, I'm pleased to say, were more than delighted with my interpretation of them. If you're in Bodmin and seeking good food and coffee in a warm and welcoming atmosphere, then I really do recommend the Green Frog as a place to head for. All the staff are are wonderfully friendly and there's free wifi and, in the winter months, a crackingly efficient woodburner. It's a great child friendly venue too, as well as having handy rooms upstairs available for hire for meetings etc.

(Click image for larger view)

Time to go a-bothering

Portfolio piece featuring a couple of characters I've been mucking about with, a 1940's buckles and goggles hero called Lost Wing Peter, and his evil adversary The Time Botherer, stirring up the dimensions with his ancient spurtles of time... (click images for bigness).

Channelled Personalities...

The famous SF writer Teves Tsepal... author of dystopian classics such as "The Man in the Bouncy Castle", "Do Adenoids Cause Defective Sleep", and "Ask Anna Darkly"; there is also "Valise", his lesser known portmanteau work.

Check out these chaps!

Thanks to the beauty of broadband I've finally managed to get access, here in the Cornish wilds, to the great world of the UK independent small press comics scene. A recent delight has been the discovery of 'Lou Scannon' ("bounties hunted, cargoes smuggled, gains ill gotted") from Dan Harris and Kris Carter. A great comedy sci-fi ensemble caper grown on a diet of H2G2, Red Dwarf and Firefly, amongst others. Well paced and written with a real pzazz, and with gags that raised more than a couple of snorts into my first coffee of the day, these guys really love their characters and their universe and are obviously having great fun getting it all down on paper. Excellent value entertainment for £3.00 (inc postage), handsomely and professionally presented, and swift delivery to your very own isolated windswept doorstep. Roll on issue #2...buy #1 and find out more here.

I loved it so much I was inspired to this piece of fan art, which is the first fan piece I've done since I got a picture of Judge Dredd as a duck into 2000AD way back in 1978!

A HOUSE FOR THE STORY THAT JACK BUILT...

This one is for local story teller and enthusiasm dynamo Jack Fowler, who has been winning and wowing family audiences this Summer at (among other venues) The Falmouth Maritime Museum, here in Cornwall. After establishing a fairly free flowing mutual barter system of ideas and random inspirations, I've been laying out some ideas for new promo material for Jack's new season; this is a current work in development...

The Cunning Man: Green Professor

Click the image for a larger view

 

Jack and the Beanstalk...with a twist

Click the images for a larger view.
 

Farouk Ibn-Ignelh: Occult Angler of Old Cthornwall

Apothecary and purveyor of occult fishing equipment to the alchymists, trawlerman and big-game anglers of Mevagissey, Farouk Ibn-Ignelh was a notorious seafront character of old Cthornwall in the first quarter of the 1900’s. Full article here.
Click the image for a larger view.

Dr Fostux

Mad scientist and organ recitalist extraordinaire, Dr Fostux was a figure of some intrigue, scandal and notoriety in early 1900’s Cthornwall. Full article here.
Click the image for a larger view.

A Grave Instance...

Cornwall is a wild and mysterious landscape, with strange dark corners, lonely hillsides, arcane rituals and a reasonable amount of macabre and nefarious characters and doings ...
Click the image for larger view.

The Travels of Axel Pendogget, Science Ranger:

(Click the image for a larger view.)

Cornwall is a land of mystery and intrigue, big cats, sea beasties, weresheep, pasty spiders and giants…and cow eggs, those strange round black objects that appear mysteriously around the countryside at the end of the summer.
See here for the full article.
Poster & prints available over on Red Bubble.

Albert Cropper: Monster Stopper!

During the late 1800’s in Cthornwall, 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. See here for the full article.

Click the image for a larger view.

Poster and print available at Red Bubble.