A boy and his pet...

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This is a piece created for a new artbook that my agent Advocate Art is releasing in a couple of weeks called 'Heads Up', featuring single characters from each of their artists. A little bit of "slugs and snails and puppy dog tails" from me this time. Thought it worth posting some rough/finished art samples just to give a bit of an idea of how I work...plus the fact my daughter always prefers my rough work to the finished article!

Farouk Ibn-Ignelh: Occult Angler of Old Cthornwall

Apothecary and purveyor of occult fishing equipment to the alchymists, trawlerman and big-game anglers of Mevagissey, Farouk Ibn-Ignelh was a notorious seafront character of old Cthornwall in the first quarter of the 1900’s. Farouk’s ancestry in the county could be traced right back to the 1st century AD, when his illustrious forebear first landed on these shores as helmsman to Aramis of Josephathea, the noted Syrian perfumier and spice trader.

Originally apprenticed as a stockman and squid wrangler to Lord St Leviathan’s oceanic farm in Mound’s Bay, Farouk acquired much preternatural piscine learning and arcane mollusc law. Expert in the art of eldritch angling and sea husbandry at an early age, Farouk’s keen nose for business soon had him trading his skills independently to fishing communities the length and breadth of the Cthornish coast, eventually setting up his famed emporium in Mevagissey in 1924.

As well as selling equipment for the capture and netting of the vast range of monstrous and other-dimensional aquatic life in the county’s waters, he also became a noted specialist in the breeding of such creatures for alchymical rites and processes, as well as their preparation for medicinal and recreational purposes.

A seasoned and proficient angler in his own right he was often to be seen skilfully casting rod and line at the farthest reach of the Mevagissey harbour wall where, as an equally noted raconteur, he happily told strange and hair shrivelling tales of the deep to the village youngsters. It is believed that it was in this capacity that he was ‘rediscovered’ by the unsettling Dr Fostux, who it is likely he first encountered during their shared youthful employ in the service to Lord St Leviathan on St Michael’s Mound in the period 1907-13.

As a small historical footnote it was Farouk Ibn-Ignelh, through selective genetic crossbreeding, who first developed the notorious mind warming sea-tobacco which local fisherman came to refer to as ‘the Meva ciggy’.

Dr Fostux

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Mad scientist and organ recitalist extraordinaire, Dr Fostux was a figure of some intrigue, scandal and notoriety in early 1900’s Cthornwall. He was rumoured by some to be the secret lovechild of Lord St Leviathan and an unnamed other. Raised by the family of one of the Lord’s boatmen, his stepfather was a keeper of the giant squid pool at St Michael’s Mound. It was here the young Fostux developed an early fascination and aptitude for all things monstrous and scientific, working as night-porter, and then later apprentice, in Lord St Leviathan’s oceanic genetic breeding programme.

However, following an unspecified splicing disaster involving a young child from the local foundling hospital in Penzance, and a rare strain of lobster discovered in a flooded pitchblende mine, Fostux was banished from his home in extremus opprobrium , and was not heard from again for some time.

It was not until 10 years later, in 1923, that vague stories began to circulate about late night deliveries and unsettling lights observed at an old lighthouse in Restormel Bay. Along with advertisements in the St Austell Gazette of that year, requesting “reminiscence, relics and old toenail clippings (cash price paid in genuine coinage on receipt)” it became evident that Dr Fostux had returned to the county and was embarked upon a new vein of scientific enquiry.

Within months the fashion for highly addictive distilled and bottled ‘narrative essences’ began to sweep the county, causing much social malaise and domestic strife among the general population. With much of the local workforce swiftly addicted to such “chymical experience and virtual living” the Stannary Parliament of the time demanded the source of the outbreak be quickly found and cauterised. Much suspicion automatically focused upon the activities of the newly returned Dr Fostux, but only circumstantial evidence was ever uncovered, and that in the form of a discarded packing case for Bunsen burners and a sea stained receipt from the Vatican, for the purchase of fifteen shin bones of St George and a pornographic snuff box once belonging to Pope Pious IX.

The Rainbow Stone

My cover design and a selection of illustrations commissioned as chapter headings for Nan Rudden's children's book The Rainbow Stone, published by 'Palores Publications' in Redruth.

As well as the internal illustrations and the cover artwork I also provided the cover layout and the blurb for the back cover, as well as finally pinning down a format for the barcode and publisher's logo which Palores then adopted as a standard across their range of titles.

The tale itself is a marvellous story of dark ages adventure. This was Nan's first publication for children and she was a total joy to work for, displaying a wealth of charm, dignity and intellect that was a breath of fresh air to encounter in these bustling and technologically overwhelming times. A seriously recommended read!
'The Rainbow Stone' on Amazon

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Dusting off Drew

I've been getting such a positive reaction from having posted samples of my kids' book 'Once Upon A Winter's Turning' online recently that I decided it was time to dust off the original black and white line art and give young Drew a new colourful lease of life. |It was originally published back in 2000 by Wooden Books Ltd, who are currently big in America right now and being handled by Walkers (...well done John!).

I'm in the midst of colouring up several samples prior to submitting it around various publishers both here and abroad, John Martineau's deal with his original authors and artists being that they maintained the copyright to their work. You can sample the first arc of the story over on my Red Bubble pages.

The Call of Cthornwall

"Lady Elizabeth Eldritch, displaying one of her discoveries on Bodmin Moor during her 1885 parabiology field trip. This little critter was harvested from an albumen sack found dangling from roof beams in the old pitchblende mine by Brimstone Tor..."

Been having fun with my latest steampunked views of Westcountry life under the growing umbrella notion of the Call of Cthornwall, where I can give free range to the pasty spiders and grockle mites of the county, with the safety of history between me and them! Publishing as posters, prints and cards over on Red Bubble, there may well be airships, test tubes and frock coats aplenty in the coming months...

Albert Cropper: Monster Stopper!

During the late1800’s in Cthornwall, the ‘bug’ hunter Albert Cropper was a familiar figure tramping the byways and cliff paths of the county, peddling his services in much the same way as itinerant knife grinders or mole catchers of the time.

His father operated a night soil collection business in Redruth . As an offshoot to this already dangerous work, Albert became the family firm’s parabiologist, specialising after a couple of grim encounters on the early morning collection round involving a Devonian tape lizard and a couple of giant stool grubs.

Seeing the potential for travel and the occasional balloon ride out to the Scilly Isles, Albert went freelance in 1879 with the aid of a sponsorship deal from Sir Richard Trevithick , the famed Cthornish inventor, mining engineer and monster trap designer.

This particular image was made as part of the 1885 Eldritch Expedition to Bodmin Moor and its interior, to which Albert was co-opted by local magistrates as Lady Elizabeth’s native tracker. It shows Albert presenting a captive grockle mite after an emergency roadside extraction from a Belgian tourist who had visited the shire without first taking the right inoculations.

Poster and print available at Red Bubble.

More from the Corps:

Another salvaged item of steam-memorabilia from the bottom of Great Uncle Norton's airman's chest. Dredd Bubblejet was first engineer aboard the H.M.A.S Jethro Tull when she was siezed upon by a visiting RSA: Air Corps publicity detachment, as the pin up girl for the services recruitment drive.
Poster available soon over on Red Bubble

 

New items from the coal bunker:

In a steampunkish vein I've dug out some old memorabilia from my great uncle's days in the Steam Flying Corps, from out of his old airman's chest down in the cellar. After tidying and restoring I thought I'd release a few retro items as prints and t-shirts, etc. This is the first of several in the pipeline: recruitment poster for Her Majesty's Science Rangers: Flying Corps. It features Major Tennessee Orville Monkfish, commander of the H.M.A.S. Reckless Endeavour. My great-uncle apparently served as his cabin boy for several months on first joining the corps. There were rumours of a copy of this poster that my uncle got the old major to sign, but we think it probably ended up at the bottom of the budgie cage, along with a stack of old fliers for corrective galvanic corsets.
Available as prints, posters and tees over at Red Bubble.

Character Studies:

Preliminary ideas for a character commissioned by Australian author and artist, Dilettanto, for his graphic novel, Nemesis .
More comic book work on The Bigfoot Studio blog.

The Pellar & The Raven

A new work posted to Red Bubble today, a tribute to the tradition of Cornish Pellars....Pellar is an old Cornish dialect term for cunning-men and women, wise folk or conjurors. This is my modern take on the likes of Thomasina Blight a witch/conjuror of West Cornwall who lived and practised her craft during the early 19th Century.

Phew!

Yay! Just completed the colours for Hairy Pothead #1. Been a bit of a marathon but it's been fun. Time to go to bed for a week I reckon...well maybe after I've finished off the text and cover!

Where are they now?

A sad fact of life is you tend to do a lot of speculative stuff for free to tender for jobs or pitch ideas and then never hear from the parties concerned again, never knowing whether they went bust, died, got arrested or just pinched a good idea and went to someone cheaper...here's one such I was pleased with recently. It's all good exercise tho...this one was when I finally cracked working with the pentool in PS, just prior to rendering the pages for Hairy Pothead.

Latest Hairy artwork

Learning a lot on this job...first mammoth digitally rendered project I've tackled and am pretty happy with the coloured results. Though pentool and cell-shading aren't my forte; I've always preferred to go badger trapping to make my own brushes, and mix my own paints up from roadkill and roasted beetles. But the world is off to CGI hell in a vector-based handbag...so if I want to eat...I'll save the paint brushes for the next time the world goes retro.

Latest comic page...

...and so the work continues. I've been spending the last 3 months pencilling and inking Dan Larsen's 32 page script adapted from his own novel, Hairy Pothead & The Marijuana Stone. Currently half way through colouring the final art pages I'm getting excited about seeing the whole thing layered up with all the speech and sound fx....so fingers crossed I'm hoping to have it all wrapped up for the publishers by Christmas!

Thought I'd post a link to some previews on Flickr. They're not particularly high resolution but give a good idea of how things are shaping up.

er...it was I that drew it...

Dig in...
Originally uploaded by Bigfoot Studio

This is really by way of leaving elcrificated bread crumbs on the e-waves. Occassionally I get a 6-degree forwarded email via a friend or contact from an academic in a dusty loft publishing a tome on the environmental movement, or the subversion of cultural archetypes (as you do) or such some...looking for the artist responsible for this rejigging of the WWII poster campaign.

So I'm happy admitting to it as mine own painted child...and gratified to have seen it emerge occassionally as an image of the moment, that seems to have meant enough to a significant amount of peope that it got used and remembered around and a-when the place.

I painted it some time in the middle of my years living up at King's Hill in Somerset, living in what was then an open windswept hilltop paddock, in my Flash Gordon rocket ship shaped bender. Now it is a forest with it's own clearing on the internet and as busy and thriving a hub of life and alternatives as ever.

So ... the breadcrumbs bit...for the mysterious Prester Michael who has been seeking me these past two years...and others who may come straying up my cob-webbed stairy-case in the ages to come....some fly-tied worming hooks of words for Google's remorseless mighty enjuns: "Trystan Mitchell" "Dig in for victory" poster "King's Hill"....

A Pipe Dream Come True....

I can now declare that I've been lucky enough to be commissioned as the artist on a new 32 page American format comic book, that should see production at the beginning of 2010. It's the serialised adaptation of Dana Larsen's cannabinated hempen pastiche "Hairy Pothead & The Marijuana Stone". His original novel has been a great hit, here in the UK and in his native Canadia, graced with the brilliant artwork of Gary Wintle.

There's a few early sketches I did at the beginning of the year to secure the job posted on Flickr, that I'm already pretty certain will bear little resemblance to the finished article....merely warming up. It's a big exciting chunk of work to swallow and will be my first 'proper' comic gig....I'll post occassional samples as tasters now and then

In the meantime, if you're any kind of comic or illustration fan then check out the free PDF edition of Wasted, a grand and worthy new comic helmed by Alan Grant of 2000 AD fame and general all round Comic Allumni. It's a crying shame that there are so few mainstream British comics alive (tho' the independent realm is strong as ever)...this is a step in the right direction.

Cornish Giants are in the air...

...in that I seem to have encountered numerous mentions of such beasties recently, or had mail from 3 tale tellers to whom they are staple and discussed a paper toy range of same, all in the last three weeks. Not unusual, one might think, considering I live in Cornwall. But giants are increasingly rare these days, I kid you not...I've hung around for days waiting for one to amble along without hope, sighting or packed lunch...and then you get three come barreling along all at once.

Posted here is a newly finished page submission towards a possible kids' book on the theme. I've posted a full gallery of the Evolution Of A Page from first rough pencils to painted artwork as a bit of a demo of how I work.

Maybe I'll tuck the year of the Ox in me back pocket and declare this the Cornish Year of The Giant...if you're going to take new steps, might as well make 'em big ones!

New illustrative work

A Walk Around Britain is the My Space page and online point of reference for Ed, Will an Ginger. If you've not met or heard of these guys then it's well worth a call for a taste of their ethos and incredible singing.

I lived outdoors for 12 years of my life (albeit under canvas, with a much cherished wood-burner), but these guys are are uber-hedgers in my book...often foraging as they go, undertaking great meandering voyages through the British landscape, connecting and enheartening most of the folk of they meet with songs and stories and favours bartered.

I really do believe that walking the footpaths and trails of the land as they do, that these guys are maintaining some vital function in the Great Matter of Albion....and their renditions of The Grey Funnel Line and John Barleycorn do raise hairs in that way that thunderstorms are wont to do......elemental and then some.

I was really flattered recently to be asked to contribute to the artwork for their forthcoming CD.

New pencil, gouache & Flash portraits at my galleries on Flickr.