Wednesday, July 17, 2013

Wedding bells

My brother is soon to be thoroughly wed to a very good friend of mine, which is a wonderful in and of itself and is also one less address on my hypothetical Christmas card list. They asked if I would do something for their invite and inspired by Sarah Mcintyre's sublime prints of a Greenwich Park tree I set about my first lino cut since I was a school boy.

Well as you can see from the below mine turned out to be a fair bit cruder than Sarah's. One of my errors may have been to buy the traditional lino rather than the easy cut stuff. I did so under the false assumption this would grant me instant artisan status. Instead I sat for hours in my freezing Edinburgh studio, hunched like Bob Cratchit, attempting to soften up that lino with a hair dryer. Novices be warned!

Guns...Lots of guns

I was lucky enough to get to illustrate a story in the hallowed pages of 2000AD earlier this year. A high octane blend of heavy metal and horror, it was written by the excellent David Baillie and was just the excuse I needed to dust off my Maiden, Megadeth and Metallica records.

Below is a short sequence from the story, which appeared in Prog 1836 and can still be procured here.



To get the opportunity I took part in the 2000AD Portfolio competition, which takes place annually at the excellent Thought Bubble festival. Under the scrutiny of 2000 AD greats Rob Williams, Simon Fraser, Peter Doherty and Frazer Irving I was fortunate enough to get the thumbs up. Anyhow here's a few panels from that submission.