Barbarian Kid

More pulpy nonsense with this Barbarian Kid character sketch. I'm trying to find a fast workflow for inking and colouring while maintaining the energy of a rough sketch. Sketchbook Pro is my software of choice at the moment, but will be trying some other approaches in the near future...

Dinosaurs and Lovecraft Monsters in Colour

So, I've completed the colour pass on this Dinosaur and Lovecraft Sea Monster scene. I've very much drawn from another heavily Lovecraftian influenced work in Mike Mignola's Hell Boy and the colour work of Dave Stewart. As simple as his colours are, they capture the tone of the strange, weird and pulp influences on that work. It's fairly simple (after trying about 10 different colour combinations) Pinks, Purles and Greens work well for Horror images!!!

Dinosaurs and Lovecraftian Monsters

Here is an inked drawing I did of some of my favourite 'pulp' iconography - Dinosaurs and ancient Lovecraftian Monsters. I was very much inspired by the illustration work of W. Francis Phillipps. These illustrations where far from anatomically accurate but had a great sense of drama, atmosphere and strangeness. Some of the images were terrifying to look at.

I was also looking the work of James Harren and Ryan Ottley, two excellent contemporary comic book artists. I love one of the images by Ottley from their blog 'The Bog', which depicts a cross section of a monster sea scene. I love cross section illustrations, were the viewer is shown more of the story than the victim!! I also love the sense of scale.

I plan on doing a colour pass on this image, exploring some lovecraftian colour palettes that will hopefully enhance the strangeness of the subject matter. 

Professor Abronsius

A concept sketch of the character Professor Abronsius played by Jack MacGowran in Roman Polanski's The Fearless Vampire Killers. Like all the best films I discovered in my teens, I first saw The Fearless Vampire Killers on late night TV, either on Channel 4 or BBC 2. It joins a list of secret gems found on late Friday or Saturday night viewing like Blue Velvet or even Akira back in the early 90's. Anyway, I was always taken by the rich set design, cinematography and cartoonish nature of Vampire Killers and have been meaning to do some character designs based on the film for a long time.