Museum Cover Story!

On a recent London visit, Scott visited the National Army Museum in Chelsea where he proudly reported that my 'comics installation display' was still there which I was delighted to hear. The project is a few years old now but the fact it has been retained following a re-modelling of the original gallery it was commissioned for was welcome news.

The original brief was to show how Society's portrayal of the military had evolved over the years in various forms of media and following a successful tender exercise, I was selected to write and illustrate this aspect for the comics medium from Victorian story papers through to the popular 1960's & 1970's boys comics, adapting my storytelling and art style accordingly. I worked with the museum curation team to identify relevant publications from each era to feature and the ever talented Matt Soffe coloured my approved artwork. The outcome was a multipaged 'flip book' on display in the museum gallery for visitors to read and learn from.

I've previously written about various parts of the process, including here and here so thought I'd briefly share my rough sketches for what would become the project's cover. I'd already conceived that the story content would be viewed through the eyes of a news vendor, so having a newspaper type masthead seemed a logical fit, 'thumbnailing'  a couple of options.

The central paperboy figure option was selected allowing soldiers from different eras to be featured 'bursting' out of the comic pages within and away we went. I also sneaked in a couple of my favourite Zulu War combatants in although they don't feature on the era spreads within! Matt's dramatic colours really add drama and a period feel to things to give everything a polish for the finished article.

Here's Scott in the re-modelled gallery a couple of weeks ago and I'm hoping to visit again myself before too long. 

You may be interested to know that after consultation with the museum, I recently adapted my artwork and content to form a new short booklet to provide an affectionate and nostalgic view of the war comics of yester year and take a brief look at recent modern graphic novels dealing with themes of conflict entitled, WAR COMICS 'A Memento'. Only a short number of this publication are available directly from me at my convention and festival appearances.    

Watercolours Two

Here's a few more watercolour sketches to brighten your day? :)

All roads lead to Leeds!

Aaah, busy, busy had a wonderful few weeks touring round Scotland (twice!) taking in MCM Glasgow then Stok-Con-Trent, a pit stop at The Lakes, then Dundee Ian Kennedy masterclass (wow!), The Broons, down to London for the MCM behemoth and, as they say, much more! I honestly don't know if I'll get a chance to properly write these events up as we're again preparing for a show this weekend, the delightful Thought Bubble in Leeds which celebrates it's 10th anniversary and we've been lucky enough to be at every one!

So, hopefully more details to follow, along with an update on current comic projects but in the meantime here's a wee pic of some of the character sketches I've done for Leeds, together with the handy annotated map of where to find us in New Dock Hall, right, more later but must dash!

 

 

Looking to the Future!

Happy New Year (Godt Nytår Danmark!), we made it to the future, well 2014 at least!

It's always quite exciting at New Year I think, making plans, looking back and (hopefully) feeling positive about things or at least taking positive steps to change what you weren't happy with in the previous year. Hopefully this positive attitude will last beyond the winter chills that January always seems to bring.

I'm fortunate that I'm really pleased with the way that 2013 went both personally and creatively with Accent UK venturing far and wide on our comic travels with sales, on the whole, better than before. Only real regret was (again) not completing a comic project of my own, despite having several 'in-progress', so that is something that I have to fix this year - honest!

I've made a decent start, deciding to settle on only one of my projects which is already researched and plotted so just need to draw it which is both the fun and hard part; hard to start but fun when you get into it, so we'll see. Once I'm a little more into it, I'll post more information, with the above image, one of my first of 2014, possibly being a clue but possibly not!

Accent UK have of course a few more definite plans for release this year which will be posted on our blog but I understand that our most recent title, Missing: Have You Seen The Invisible Man? has completed its distribution by those fine folks at Diamond and is in store now at your favourite local comic shop worldwide, look out for it, and see the full list of new releases for this week here!

❏ SEP130828 MISSING HAVE YOU SEEN THE INIVISIBLE MAN ONE SHOT ................................ $5.00

We've also put together our preferred 2014 schedule which is again shaping up to be a busy one with at least 11 shows, matching 2013's total, but with several new events and venues to keep things fresh. More on this once confirmations are in place and I may still squeeze in a few blog mentions of the moments of adventure time from last year, have fun this year whatever you do :)

Happy St Andrews Day

 

 

Well I thought it would be good to do another wee sketch of David Livingstone for his bi-centenary on this St Andrews Day but while I did this last night unbeknown to me sad events were playing out in Glasgow, so I think any celebrations will be somewhat tempered.

 

Our thoughts with all who are affected.

Looking To The Lakes?

 

Here's another of my recent sketches, again I see showing someone looking wistfully into the middle distance! Well this was inspired by the old Victorian book covers for boys adventure stories that became very popular leading to the likes of (of course) Boys Own magazine, Union Jack, Chums and many, many more leading up to the popular range of boy's adventure comics from the mighty D.C Thomson!

Maybe though our friend above is looking for the way to The Lakes International Comic Art festival  this coming weekend in sunny Kendal, Cumbria. Getting quite excited about the show now and will be catching up with good friend, Garen Ewing (he of the wonderful Rainbow Orchid) later as he makes the trip up for the show, so an ideal chance for anyone not yet  acquainted with the adventures of Julius Chancer to purchase a copy and maybe, if you ask real nice, have it sketched and signed by the man himself!

The Complete Rainbow Orchid Collection

The Very Special Rainbow Orchid Supplement



Oh and  I would be remiss not to remind you that you can of course also catch up with all the latest Accent UK titles at The Lakes show including the recent Missing:Have You Seen The Invisible Man? which has just received another fine review thanks to Jeremy Briggs and those good folks at Down The Tubes. 

 

A fine example of Joe Campbell's artwork from the Dave West scribed story

 

Looking For Livingstone?

I do still enjoy sketching and have done a few recently in between writing stories, planning and attending comic shows, (and of course work!) so here's a wee bit of one featuring my favourite explorer David Livingstone who's bicentenary is being celebrated this year with several events still to come.