Feast or famine

Here's an advance preview of my final Watch-Hog strip from next week's Beano, on sale Wednesday 4th September. (Although subscribers will receive their copies before then.) I've nothing else lined up to replace it in the comic at present but I'm continuing to send The Beano ideas for new strips so if or when something comes along you'll hear about it here first. 

I've enjoyed producing the 33 Rasher strips and the 6 week Watch-Hog sequel these past several months so for his final send off I thought I'd treat him to a traditionally exaggerated slap-up feed! 

It's not quite the end of our porcine pal though, as I have four Rasher mini-strips to draw soon for The Beano Annual 2015, although you won't be seeing those in print for another 12 months or so.

Anyway, back to work on The Smasher pages for The Dandy Annual 2015, then the return of Combat Colin for Aces Weekly, and hopefully a Viz strip soon too! Stay tuned to this blog for future news.

Keyholes in the can

I'm still working on the strips for 2015 annuals so I probably won't be updating this blog for a few days as deadlines are looming. All of the Keyhole Kate pages for The Dandy Annual 2015 were completed a few days ago and are now with DC Thomson, and I'm currently drawing several Smasher pages for the book. I'm doing all the creative work on the strips; writing the scripts, pencils, inks, logo design, lettering, and colouring, so it's a lot of work but very satisfying.  

After that, four Rasher mini-strips to draw for next year's Beano Annual. Anyway, back to the drawing board! 

Rarities: My very early work

I thought I'd share a few scans of my very early comic art with you today. Well, I say "art". Some of these are embarrassingly bad, but here goes, starting with the image above of the sort of comics I used to draw when I was a young lad. 

I used to put together numerous comic strips like this about my family and my pets in the 1960s, fairly hastily scribbled out in biro. The only people I ever showed them to were my immediate family and my best pal (all of whom are sadly no longer with us). This particular one above was about how my Grandad used to take me a walk on Sunday mornings with the dogs. Happy days. I'd have drawn this in 1967/68 when I was eight years old. Influenced my Marvel Comics it was a tad more melodramatic than it needed to be.

I drew over 100 comics when I was growing up, usually 8 page efforts ranging from any size, depending what paper I could lay my hands on. This one, Captain Thunder, is from 1973 when I was 14. Terrible work, showing no idea of anatomy whatsoever. (The figure was a bad crib of a Gil Kane Warlock cover.) At this stage drawing was purely a hobby and I had no ambition to work in the industry professionally at the time, so basically I wasn't trying as hard as I should have been. 

I'd actually given up drawing by the time I'd left school. (I'd dropped art as a subject before then too.) Living in a small Midlands town seemed too remote for any hopes of drawing for comics. (I naively thought all artists were on staff, working in London or New York.) Besides, our comprehensive school's career teachers had encouraged us to either join the army or consider factory/shop work, so I went to work in an office at a local mining tools company. 

I never enjoyed the office work or the daily routine, and was looking for a way out after a few years. In 1976 I discovered comic fanzines, which gave me the inspiration to draw again. I started contributing to various 'zines, and creating my own. Here's the very first Brickman strip (when he was called Brick-Person) from my fanzine After Image No.3, published November 1979. An early attempt as inking with Rotring pens...

I quit my job in 1980 and decided to focus on finding a career in comics. At this stage I didn't know what kind of comics I'd like to do. I tried my hand at superhero stuff, but as this 1980 cover to Alec Chalmer's fanzine Mirage proves, I hadn't advanced a great deal since the days of Captain Thunder...

I preferred creating humour strips so I started developing a humour style that might be appropriate for UK comics. I still wasn't anywhere near ready, as this Dawg strip from Paul Duncan's 1982 stripzine Short Fuse demonstrates...

At this stage I was inking with a dip-pen and not mastering it at all. Here's another 1982 drawing; the cover to Dick Domar's fanzine The Owl's Effort Summer Special...

I think I was starting to find a style in 1982 that I could develop. Here's a Fandumb mini-strip I did for the fanzine Chain Reaction...

That same year I switched to using Rotring pens again and the change in style was immediate. I found them far easier to control than dip-pens (although over the years I've switched back and forth). Here's one of several Fandumb At Large pages I did for The Owl's Effort. Still not pro standard, but an improvement on what I'd done before. (I'm embarrassed at how cynical the humour is here, although I did include myself in a later edition.)

I sold my first professional cartoons in 1983, and later worked as an assistant to Mike Higgs which helped me develop my style considerably. Here's a 1984 stripzine I published, - Brickman on Toast. By this time I was inking with Tombow fibre-tip pens which were very similar to the UniPin pens I use today.

Finally, here's a drawing I did in 1988 that some of you may not have seen before, featuring Tom Thug and Pete and his Pimple. It was done for the Birmingham Comic Art Show booklet for that year. Inked with Rotring pens.

I hope you've enjoyed this trip through my archives. If my crude, clueless early drawings could eventually lead to paid work then anyone can do it. All you need is practise and imagination, so for anyone out there with hopes to become a professional artist: keep drawing, keep learning, and never give up!

Thanks Folks!

Art by me, script by the Viz editors.

A big thank you to all the people who have bought artwork from my eBay auctions over the past several months. I've been very pleased with the bidding, and I'm sure the taxman will enjoy his cut too. 

I've put a few more items up for sale today, and bidding will end on most of them next Sunday. 
http://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/graphite47/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1&_from=&_ipg=&_trksid=p3686

Yesterday I read a comment on someone's blog who sneered that I was selling off my old artwork to try and make ends meet. My first thoughts were: 
a) What if I am? It's a harmless way to earn a living/boost my income. Lots of comic artists sell their pages.
b) As I have no surviving family of my own why should I hoard it? Surely it's far better to give the readers a chance to buy an original piece of comic art?

Anyway, thanks again to those of you who have bought pages, and for your nice feedback. I hope upcoming pages will also be of interest. 

Sonic for Sale!

Scan of the original artwork.

As I mentioned on my old blog a while back, 20 years ago I submitted some art samples for the then-new Egmont title Sonic the Comic. I didn't get the gig as an artist (they wanted more of an adventure style) but I did become a regular writer on the comic.

The other day I found the original artwork to my sample black and white page (it must have been returned to me years ago) and now I've put it on eBay for auction. I'm quite pleased with the original monster designs I had Sonic encounter. 

Scan of the original artwork.

The size of the page is approx 37cm x 47cm. Black ink on Bristol Board. Excellent condition with no creases or stains. 

I'm also selling a few other items, including a Tom Thug page and a Pete and His Pimple strip (co-starring Mary Lighthouse and Uncle Pigg) from Oink! You can see all the pages on my eBay site here:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/graphite47/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1&_from=&_ipg=&_trksid=p3686

Photograph of the original artwork.

Bidding ends on Sunday. Good luck!

Raptus promotion, 2003

Here's something most of you won't have seen before. It's a full page ad I drew to promote the Raptus Comic Festival in Bergen, Norway, in 2003. It appeared in a tabloid newspaper giveaway promoting the Scandic Bergen City hotel. The illustration was also printed on the plastic carrier bags for that year's Raptus convention. 

As well as my interpretations of Batman, Flash Gordon, Conan and the Hulk, you may spot Modesty Blaise having a drink with Nemi, The Phantom partying with Wonder Woman, and other comic stars. Although as this is a convention scene they're all fans in costume of course so I could take a few liberties. I also added one of my Suburban Satanists, Benny, about to be flattened by the Hulk, and Jonas Darnell's Herman Hedning looking on grinning. 

I was asked to include a few real-life attendees too, so festival organizers Arild and Frode make an appearance, along with Rodney Ramos on stage, Dave Windett and I at the back doing a signing, and Mike Collins in the foreground sketching Judge Dredd. 

An enjoyable commission which, I hope, captured the fun of the event. I've been a guest at five of their festivals over the years and have always enjoyed them. (Language is no problem as most people there speak English as fluently as they do Norwegian.) I haven't been back to Norway since the 2003 show, but the event is still going strong every year, with the 2013 one coming up next month. For more details see their website: http://www.raptus.no/

Watch-Hog: Pencils and finished art

It's Wednesday so there's a new issue of The Beano in the shops today. Here's a glimpse at my contribution; the fourth Watch-Hog mini-strip. (Only two to go after this one unfortunately.) There's how it looked when it was in the blue pencil stage on my desk (above) and below is how it looked after I'd inked it with UniPin fineline pens and coloured it in Photoshop, ready for the lettering to be added after I e-mailed it to Beano HQ.

Never Be Without A Beano! Out now, with free Roger the Dodger and Walter Turbo Battlerz figures.