too tired to sketch

So...I walk through the front door after a gruelling shift at the "proper job" and the phone's ringing. It's me old mate Shane Oakley, all concerned and stressed. Concerned that we haven't had a chat for a while and stressed about this 16-page comic he's in the middle of. So we chat about this and that, mostly about comics and films (and speaking of films I thoroughly recommend Feast to everyone. It's a crackin old fashioned monster movie with laughs a plenty and loads of gore) and I listen on how his drawing is affecting his life, and I try to make some helpful and positive comments.
Shane does produce some of the most extraordinarily fine pages of comic art that you're ever likely to see, but he does suffer for his work. He's stressed when he's working and he's stressed when he's not.
Anyway, our talk gets around to this little blog and why there hasn't been an update for a while. So I tell him that after a full day at the proper job I'm too knackered to do any drawing. I sit in front of the TV and I'm nodding off. So he tells me of a neat little technique that he uses whilst watching the TV, and I'll be trying it out later, cheers mate.
But it got me thinking, when we'd said our goodbyes about doing a few new sketches.
So here we are, I got a bit carried away, it's amazing what you can do when you're in that zone.
Some I like, some not so much and others, I'm thinking where the hell did that come from.
I' don't have an idea what I'm gonna sketch at first, it starts with that first line and we could go anywhere, and even then it could change halfway through. but that is the beauty and joy of sketchin'.
So Mr Oakley, I hope this satisfies the art craving for a little while at least.

sketces from down under

Although I didn't do much in the way of sketching and such while enjoying the delights of Oz, I wasn't completely lazy, I did do a couple, so I've put the better ones together fer you all to have a look at

more zombies

And here is the cover to the Mammoth book of Zombies. See you know you want a copy.

Can't keep agood zombie down

Woke up to a pleasant surprise this morning. A copy of The Mammoth book of Zombies landing with a mighty whump on me doorstep. Edited by a very nice and talented man David Kendall it reprints my 4-page Zombie strip I did for Accentuk. A cracking book it is too. with stories by Vincent Locke, Scott Hampton, Steve Niles and the legend that is Robert E Howard. I'm made up that I'm in a book with one of my favourite authors. If'n you love yer Zombie tales then i suggest you check it out because it is a corker

business as usual

Hullo
I'm back. refreshed and ready to do some more of this here bloggin'.
Unfortunately I didn't do the amount of sketchin' I hoped, 'cause I was too busy being a tourist and doing touristy things. but i expect you all be seeing some stuff of mine real soon.
Keep on a visitin'.

Cheers
Gary

out to lunch, back in 3 weeks

Not much to say really, other than I'm off on me hols for three weeks, so it'll be a bit quiet around here, but don't let that stop you making those comments. The more the merrier.
So I just say bye for now, see you soon and hope you enjoy the sketches.

some more western a pencillin'

Some more sketchin' and such.
Sam Costello that terrific writer of all the horror stories on"Split Lip" (see my links) tells me that his site is 2 years old, and to commemorate the fact, there will be four short stories published all through October. Oh yes, a short self contained little tale of terror every Sunday, and yours truly has done the art on one of these little tales. The first one is on line now and it is a little corker with some fabulous art (and not mine I might add) by a talented artist named Nelson Evergreen.
There are over 200 pages of little horror gems, all written by Sam. So if you're not too busy why not click on over and have a read of one or two of these tasty tales.

jest a few more sketches

I'm off to BICs tomorrow, hopefully see a few old friends, make some new ones.
so not much to say. So I'll just post some more sketches instead

a fistful o' sketches

just some more sketchin'. I'm not really gonna get stuck into anything
big until next week.

Barbarian ahead

I've had a day off work today, and felt like I got a bit of time to sketch.
My story for Accentuk western anthology is finished and posted off, just in deadline.
I've got something else to finish, but wasn't really in the mood to take it up, so I did a bit of sketching.
Now I'm a big fan of Robert E Howard. I've got all, or nearly all of his books
and I loved his Conan and Kull characters, so I thought I'd have a go at doing a Conan illo.
So here it is. a bit squarer than I wanted but not bad. Some nice pencil shading.
I haven't decided what to do with it yet, ink it or leave it.
Might just use a bit of wash on it.

dragon queen

just another sketch using wash and dry brush
to test my new scanner.
It seems to pick up a lot of the tone.
Enjoyed trying this out. I don't usually work in
wash, but I'm pleasantly surprised on how
it turned out.

old miser

I thought I'd see how good my new scanner is, in picking up subtle dry brush and wash and I'm pleasantly surprised. here's the sketch to prove it. Almost a self portrait as my boys would say

bloody scanners.

So, I've got this deadline for the western book for AccentUk. All the pages, well the majority of pages are pencilled, and I scan them in. The first four pages scan in perfectly, no problem, hence page 1 all inked up, then disaster. There's a bloody great black line down the middle of the page. Can't seem to shift it, so there's no alternative but to buy a new one. I trawl around the net and decide I may as well get an A3 scanner. I had an all- in- one A4 size scanner/printer, I'd scan in the two halves of a page, then I'd stitch the artwork together in photoshop. Matt Brooker has an excellent tutorial on how to do this, I've been following his wonderful advice for years.
So I find one that I think will do, and one that I can afford, they don't come cheap these things. Order it and wait... a week later it arrives, so I can get on with the strip, but more disaster, it arrives broken. bugger. So I pack it all back up, send it back and wait for the replacement. Two days later it arrives and it's great. got all the pages scanned in and now I, working every hour I can to catch up.
So that's my scanner sorted, now I just hope I can get this strip finished in time.
And here are some sketches for this western strip of mine.
Cheers
now back to the drawing board.

some older stuff

A couple of older pages to show. I'm working towards Accentuk's deadline so nothing new to show yet. The hard country strip was co- written by a cracking mate of mine, Andrew Elliott, who used to dabble in the wacky world of comics, but gave it all up for a stable nine to five job. (Comics loss). I will hopefully finish it one day, I'm halfway through it, got about 35 pages done, but I keep getting side tracked. The Lure page was a short I did years ago. I even sold it, but the book it was going to appear in folded, ah well the joys and disappointments of the comic business.
Maybe one day I'll get all my short stories together and print them in a one off special.
Anyway I'm off to me drawing board to finish off me other western strip.
bye fer now

inked up and such

here's the fist page inked with added tone and a smattering of letters, but not the dialogue, 'cause that is fer the actual book

work in progress

On the last post I showed some sketches of the western I'm working on for Accentuk, well here are the sketches laid down on page one ready to be inked, just to show how it all comes together.
I used to ink with pens and brushes, but was always too nervous about making a mistake. You can use white opaque but it was always too messy and with me there was always too much on the page.
So that's when I decided to ink on the computer.
Thank goodness for the delete button. No more mess. great!
At the moment I'm inking in illustrator, but I'm learning to use painter, and with the free rotate tool it's almost like inking in real paper.
It'll never replace the feeling I got when I was holding a finished piece of artwork, but I'm a lot less stressed on the finished look.

Western pencillin'

Where does all the time go, you leave a blog for a few weeks, and when you get back, its full a weeds and squatters.
Anyway, just to show you'll I'm still here I'm gonna show you some early sketches and pencils for the next epic Accentuk book I'm working on.
So sit back and enjoy, and I promise not to go away for so long next time.

I was sorting out an old box of comics, as you do (or as I do all the time, to find old gems that I'd forgotten I owned) and I came across the four issues of Killing Stroke. Now, Killing Stroke was the coming together of the best bunch of friends a person could have. It was a follow on from Andrew Yoxall's wonderous fanzine Hardware. Shane Oakley (a crackin artist, click on the link to the left if you don't believe me) and I approached a small company called Eternity (part of the Malibu comics line) in the early 1990's to produce a four issue black and white anthology comic called, you guessed it Killing Stroke. Shane and I were in it, but people like Mark Buckingham (he of fables and Spiderman and Batman fame) Matt Brooker (D'israeli to those in the know) who's done oodles of stuff from The Kingdom of the Wicked to Leviathan and Stickleback for 2000Ad, Den Dilworth (what an artist-excellent-Ben where are you now, eh mate?), Andrew Elliot writer in Steve Bissette's Taboo., Dave Henney (What a funny guy and a good writer to boot.), Chris Przygrodzki (no one draws bendy people like Chris, apart from Frank Robbins) and Andrew Yoxell hisgoodself. We even managed to get an introduction from Jamie Delano (a proper writer). We had a great time putting all this together, and the pleasing thing was that, for an anthology title it sold reasonably well. So, a bit of nostalgia. Right, I'm off to have a cuppa and slice of carrot cake and to read these four musty comics.
cheerio

killin' western style

I forgot to put another page of the western strip yesterday, so here it is today.

Along with the pages of "Homemade Hero", the robot story I did for Accentuk, I did a couple of sketches for the sketchbook and here they are. Just a lot of cross hatching of pencils and inking around the outline with a brush pen. It was a bit of a see how it turns out moment. And they came out Ok.
Also "straw men" is coming to an end, and the creatures have been seen.
Go on pop over and have a look. you know you want to. The top image is the pencilled version of one of the creatures.

nuts and bolts

I thought I'd show all of you lot, a page of the robot tale and a page of Straw men. Just to wet your appetites. Different styles, but I enjoyed doing both of them.

abit of this and that

Here's the cover to the Robots book from Accentuk, just so you know what you're looking for when you visit your local comic emporium. So there's no excuses then, is there.
Also I've told you about Split Lip, but haven't told you how to get there. Follow the link to webcomicsnation, scroll down the categories to horror, and Bob's yer uncle, Fanny's yer Aunt and there you are.

some stuff and doings

2nd post of this blogging lark, so I thought I tell where you can see some of my art.
Accentuk have the follow up of last year's popular book-Zombies (180 pages for 6 quid. What a bargain and what a crackin' book it is too). The new one is Robots, slightly more expensive at £8, but it's got a massive 200 pages.Loads of absolute corking tales in it. You can get it on the Accentuk site. So whatcha waiting for, go order a copy now, and I'm not just saying that because I'm in it.
I'm also on at Split Lip. A horror site run by a thoroughly top notch guy by the name of Sam Costello. He writes these crackin' tales and gets artists from around the globe to illustrate them.
My tale is being serialised at the moment, called Straw Men. Really enjoyed drawing it.
When you've finished here why don't you wonder on over. There's over 200 pages of various stories for you to enjoy.
Also showing the 2nd page of a western I'm working on. when this is finished it should number about 70-80 pages.
So not bad, eh for the 2nd Post.

dippin'me toes

Hello, Hello?...is this thing on, testing, testing..
Oh well,deep breath...
here we go.
hello wor....oh bugger...I've got cramp in me fingers..
Hurrumph.
Hello.
My name is Gary
welcome to my blog.
is that all there is to it?
Bit anticlimactic, if'n you ask me.
oh well.
I've started now, might as well carry on.
I'm here to show some art, have a chat and chew gum.
(spearmint if'n your wondering what flavour).
so here's some art