It Comes In Colours

Some modest publicity from the blog at Forbidden Planet, no less. The Nu-Earth fanzine with Matt & my (Matt & mine? Matt's and my?) Dredd v. Who in it, as mentioned below, and in pretty sharp company, I might add.

Dredding It

Since the whole fanzine thing is out and about and circulating in cyberspace and the real world, I've uploaded to my website the whole of the finished set of strips I contributed. This was, as I've said before, another collaboration with Matt Craig, who wrote the script, originally to star Tom Baker but I couldn't bring myself to 'off' the great man...

I like working on Matt's stuff, he's a real old fashioned love for comics, and there's a warmth and humour in his work. Even when blowing people's heads off.

The full fanzine can be found here* for downloading - it's slightly confusing to read as the layout is for printing out. There's some very splendid work in there.

I was looking at "Project X" the other day (my long narrative comic strip, which tails off from completed pages to a few pencil panels to a 'shooting script' to an outline to the ending which is vaguely in my head) and pondering whether it would ever be finished, how much I really want to finish it, what that means I have to give up for the time it takes, and generally felt like a faffing dilettante. Today I got the latest collected Hellboy through the post (art by Richard Corben, Duncan Fegredo, Jason Shawn Alexander and La Mignola himself) and ay chihuahua, some things make you feel you've a long way to go.

*I had a link for the download but it's been taken down. Ah, well.

Red Dan

Red Dan, oil on canvas, 10" x 9".

So, with my usual acuity, while dogs lie panting in the shadows, ice cream falls on sandals and seals come into the harbours on the mooch for mackerel titbits, I'm busy painting bleak wintry beachscapes sandblasted by cold gales.

On the one with the marketing, that's me.

Rust Never Sleeps 3

Registration of a fishing boat in Eyemouth harbour. LH
Oil on canvas, 20" x 16"

... It Is Now.

Horizon, slightly less wonky. People, a bit smaller an to the right. Line of sea-coal, moved down.

Finished...Probably.

...but possibly... not finished.

Hm.

Bamburgh Beach, Winter

Oil on canvas, 16" x 12"

Wonky horizon, for one thing.

Code Blue

I was reading earlier today about American hyrdogen bomb tests in the 1950s. They weren't always sure that the bomb wouldn't consume all the oxygen in the atmosphere, but went ahead anyway in that happy-go-lucky fashion that the military have. So you would think that the stuff inside the hydrogen bomb was the most powerful substance available to mankind.

I am here to tell you that it is not.

The most powerful, tenacious and insidious substance in the physical world is phthalo blue. It can turn an entire painting a shade of strong greenish blue simply by being present in the same room. It cannot be diluted with any other known pigment. Not only that but it transmits itself via your face and forehead to the soles of your shoes, your elbows (it can flow uphill), your laptop keyboard, objects outside that never come into the house, neighbours' pets and migrating animals.

Be careful, is all I'm saying.