Hell of a Colour.

I tried, I tried really hard today to get this up as some sort of zoom-in-able PDF thing or lovely flash flip-page book complete with crinkling page sound effects so that you could actually read the damn thing, but... well, it just didn't happen.


After many wasted hours this afternoon, I was about ready to chew through the desk in  frustration, but a week ago today I fell off my bike on an icy patch and gave my ribs a proper good crack, and I've just taken two of the wonking great painkillers that the doctor gave me yesterday and I'm a lot more relaxed about it all than I was a couple of hours ago. So I thought what the hell, just get it posted. You can at least look at the pictures. Look at all the pretty colours. Wow.


Anyway: it's a technical exercise in learning how to colour (and letter better) but also a sincere tip of the hat to Mr. Mignola for creating such a great character, and to the likes of Duncan Fegredo and Richard Corben for all their fantastic and inspirational illustration. I dare say it's a copyright infringement festival, but it's not for sale, just a big doff of the hat.


(Right click & 'open image in new tab' lets you zoom in and read.)

 Sing and readalong here:

Draw Hellboy

A quick Hellboy sketch for @themooks 'drawhellboy' hashtag thing on Twitter. Get me.

And a quick colouring job I did on Christmas morning. I woke up thinking about it.

The Devil is in the Detail.

Some details taken from the Hellboy strip.

It's odd drawing something - a character, a whole world - that is so firmly locked in with someone else's style. I wanted to achieve something that would fit in with this world and without being just a copy.

I made the devil look like Mr Punch because Mr Punch is the creepiest thing ever to crawl from a human mind. It's like entertaining children with a Denis Nielsen puppet.





I can't tell you how much trouble I had drawing the approach to hell. I had it nearly completed, all inked up and 98% done when I decided I didn't like it so I started the whole page again from scratch. That page is now patched all over with pieces I re-drew on top; I don't think there was a section of it that I didn't re-do two or three times. God bless GIMP and what it covers up.

Let The Train Take the Strain

The only way I'll ever get to draw a Hellboy strip is to just draw one, so I have. It's like the joke, "My Grandfather whistled the national anthem for Queen Victoria. She wasn't there, but nonetheless that's who he was whistling it for."

I've always been interested in the old blues legend of the singer going to the crossroads to make a bargain with the devil, exchanging his soul for musical talent. Likewise I've always had the notion in the back of my mind of illustrating folk songs or blues songs; one of my favourites is the diabolic, close-shave-with-damnation vision of 'Down Bound Train', particularly the riotous version by Steve James but written by Chuck Berry, of all people.

The idea of a bluesman going to the crossroads and meeting an unexpected sort of devil seeded the whole thing and it crystalised into this story. Besides, steam engines and hell and so on seemed to fit nicely with Mike Mignola's vision.

I'll do a post sometime about just why Mike Mignola's artwork is so good (lots of black, for one thing - proper black black)but for now here's my pale imitation.

With a tincture of Bo Diddley for flavour.

The fonts are Letter-O-Matic, and Duvall Outline for the title.















Legal, please-don't-sue-me disclaimers: 'Down Bound Train' lyrics copyright Chuck Berry. Extracts from 'Who Do You Love' copyright E. McDaniel. Hellboy character copyright Dark Horse Comics and Mike Mignola, and I dare say I've infringed rampantly all over you. Sorry.