Robert McGinness, the classic Bond illustrator.

I’m sure the illustrator Robert McGinness was at one time the most successful American illustrator, he seems to have been everywhere and done everything for everyone. His catalogue is replete with prestige clients, magazines, film productions as well as the bread and butter work, which is as what we all know, is what really pays the bills. He was at the top of his game, to my mind, in the sixties and seventies producing work in the painterly style that had been the look for illustration since about the fifties. McGinness’s work though, is stylistically rather more versatile, he seems to be able to wander across the line between stylisation and realism at will. It’s generally possible to put one’s finger on a particular talent an artist has and say I like this or that about their work, the way they paint flesh or pose figures. It’s harder to do that with McGinness because he doesn’t rely on style to sell the picture.

McGinness had quite a prominent association with the James Bond film franchise doing poster work and it seems from these examples, pre-production visualisations. In case you’re not familiar with the concept of pre-production visuals, they’re often used to sell a prospective idea to would be investors but they’re also passed around, shared between a creative team to get them working in the same direction. I have my doubts about these examples, especially the one with Bond perched on coral, it seems a little too after the fact to be pre-production but that’s just conjecture. It’s also a slightly odd painting though, it’s odd because it’s rendered like a studio photograph. The figures look as though they’re standing in front of a photographer’s wall, even so far as the seamless junction between floor and wall. Illustrators are or were used for visuals because they don’t suffer the limitations of photography, they can make pictures up and draw or paint them. Oh look let’s give the Pharaoh lots of gold ornamentation, let’s make King Kong reach out at the plane, that kind of thing, so what purpose is there to painting a dreary studio wall, you might as well take a snap. I suppose though, Connery being a star, wouldn’t be available for photo shoots without some stiff financial incentive.

There is also some eroticism here, Domino in the midst of hoiking her knickers off, or on but she has a strange and asymmetric face that reminds me of a kipper. She stares perpendicular to the picture plane with a vacant gaze. Bond though is attentive and alert, what’s that a would be assassin amid the palms – no it’s just a mouse peeking through the photographers skirting board. He definitely looks as though he’s finished but she’s caressing that phallus as though business still needs attending. What is that thing anyway, don’t tell me that it’s a spear gun harpoon, since when did they come gold plated. It seems like I’m being critical doesn’t it, which is odd because I’m a McGinnis fan and fans are supposed to regard the object of their fanishness with uncritical fascination, oh well – bill me.

Although a somewhat less finished effort, the other picture, the one with the couple cavorting in the ocean, is more satisfactory. It doesn’t seem to me to be realistic, I would expect more angular and contorted tangle of limbs for a pair sinking in the ocean. Then there’s the myopia of the aquatic environment that would make staring into your lover’s eyes or even in their general direction – quite difficult. It’s a fantasy though, so these things don’t matter, the water is there just to give context. The foam and spray evoke a sense of motion as well as a lend a suggestion of passion, while foreshadowing the culmination of their union.

McGinnis gives great extremity, hands feet, legs arms there’s always some elegance and poise about them, sometimes his figures remind me of birds, the structure of their limbs being delineated so finely. Here he’s opted to use the background colour in Domino’s legs giving them a feel of translucence or iridescence. Of course, she’s a fish in her element not the cold kipper served up on a slab in the other picture. Interestingly, although Bond’s figure is more solid, more in water than of it, this translucency is also present in his torso.

There you go I hope you enjoyed the pictures, I know it seemed like I hated the one with Bond seated but I don’t really, I actually quite like it and I think it’s a fine piece of technique, it’s just that my thoughts on it tend towards the critical.

I'm wondering...

Does yellow work as a colour for an undercoat?

Red -- not pink

So a while ago I found a collection of representations of the Edgar Rice Burroughs character Deja Thoris by various artists. One of those artists being Bruce Timm who did a quite lovely little number in colour. Well it is lovely, except that the colour's wrong, she's supposed to be red not shocking pink, Burroughs generally describing her as copper coloured.

So I re coloured her as, making her coppery as all red Martians should be rendered. It was just a quick thing, so the eyes need some attention, probably some highlights on the eye lids and under the brows along with some general tidying up. While I was colouring it, it was interesting to note, that despite Timm's highly abbreviated style, his anatomy is pretty accurate. The only deviation from my interpretation of anatomy being the straight clavicle he gave Deja Thoris in this picture, which is open to some discussion. Women can have very curvy clavicles or slightly curvy but rarely straight ones, although when dancers take up first position, it looks as thought they're straight.

The doodle files

That head took on a bit of a life of its own, getting redrawn on the desktop over a few days, probably as I was drinking tea. Slightly odd perspective, I think maybe because I was slouching back in the chair or it could be the camera, probably a bit of both. I keep meaning to make up a drawing surface that emulates the texture of the desktop it has a nice tooth that gives a good stipple with the pencil, although I think it could do with being a bit courser.

The cat, well his head's a bit of a cartoon, I think I might have another go at that one.

Dirty Helmut

This one's a littler further than a doodle, I even did it on paper. It's for a single page comic strip I've been pondering, I'll probably wont take any further than the pondering, but who knows. If you take a close look at the image you might spot one of the disadvantages inherent with graphite pencils, the metallic sheen that is usually apparent to some degree, it's conspicuous here because I snapped it with a flash.

Sind hier sieben Schüsse raus oder nur sechs?

The doodle files 6

Some doodles again, these were all done on the my desk top again, which is becoming quite grimy with the residue from the various pencils I keep scrbbling on its surface with.

Just some crazy chick.

Steve Zodiac, a doodle executed while pondering an alternative illustration to Fireball.

This would be a sketch of Robert, again for the Fireball story.

This one is a real crazy chick but her left eye is a bit wonky, cos it's really supposed to be covered up.

Fireball (fiction)

About this: A very short story, it's could probably be categorised as fan fiction I've included an updated version of that xl5 illustration and should offer a warning it does throw up some fruity language, mostly confined to the start though.

Fireball

'Z'dayak -- Steve Z'dayak!' Steve enunciated firmly into his communications mike, an image of girl a smirking at his contrived pronunciation wormed through his mind as he waited for a response. Sure enough the girl's tone attested to the amusement she's gleaned during the few seconds she'd stolen to, not quite effectively, quell her chuckling.

'Ehem yes Mr. -- Zed - ay - aher -ak! -- we're waiting for your clearance to the enter the outer traffic control zone. If you can hold your present pattern, we'll give you clearance shortly, control out'.

'Bitch!' Steve Zodiac wasn't sure if he closed his mike in time to mask his petulance as he threw his headset at the console, 'it's Captain Zodiac - you fucking cow!'.

'Now now, you know that military designations are optional for civilian flight control, Captain -- Z'dayak,' said Venus as she stepped into the flight deck. Steve didn't have to turn to witness the smirk on his female colleague's face. The fact that she'd caught him out pronouncing the name he'd been baptised with would certainly have accentuated that expression which seemed to be permanently stamped onto her fizog.

'What is it?' he inquired, he kept his face turned towards the flight console with faux attentiveness.

'Oh I've just come to ask Robert if he'd like to watch a movie in the leisure suit, we are holding for flight control -- aren't we?' Venus made it perfectly clear she was aware that Steve's apparent preoccupation with the flight controls was a pantomime.

'MOVIE -- MOVIE!' Robert piped as he sat in the copilot's chair.

'I need the robot here, clearance will be through in a few minutes!'

'Captain, with all due respect...' does anyone use that phrase, thought Steve, when they have an ounce of respect for the person they're addressing, '...according to Space Patrol guidelines, Robert...' she pronounced the name with deliberate emphasis '...should be afforded the same working practices as human crew members, to ensure optimum effectiveness. He's been on the flight deck for four hours, which mean he's due for a twenty minute break'. Yeah twenty minutes with which you do what together, thought Steve, watch a movie? Venus's and Robert's relationship was a source of constant ire to Steve, Robert was a true Robot, a synthetic human of sorts but with a rather limited personality, a limitation imposed by the current state of the art of robotics. The state of that art though, was advanced enough to endow Robert with the full complement of human physical characteristics.

'I've been here six hours!'.

'Yes Captain, I'm aware rank does come with certain commitments,' said Venus 'but I really must insist, we don't want to make an issue out of this -- do we?'.

'ISSUE -- ISSUE, DON'T WANT TO MAKE ISSUE!' Robert bleeped, somehow I don't think that'll be a problem, thought Steve.

Steve festered inwardly at Venus's veiled threat, his reprimand for his conduct with her predecessor had already put a break on his career. He was stuck on this rust bucket XL5, known by the name Fireball by the rest of Space Patrol, an ironic reference to its reputation as being the slowest ship in the fleet. He was going to put his foot down this time though. 'No -- we're not going to make an issue out of this, he's needed on the flight deck. Regulations give me prerogative to override scheduled breaks when there's a clear imperative for a crew member to remain at his station'.

'REMAIN AT STATION!' Steve thought he could detect a hint of disappointment in Robert's metallic synthesized drone, 'REMAIN AT STATION!' Randy bastard.

'Fireball, Fireball, Fireball XL5' the communicator rattled with the voice of the female flight controller, abruptly interrupting the discourse.

Steve fumbled for his headset, 'What?' he barked into his mike a he placed it on his head, then his gathered his composure quickly, 'Er, Xl5, Xl5, Xl5 -- responding, control'.

'Please observe voice communications protocol, Fireball'.
'The call sign's Xl5 control' Steve was eager to reciprocate the supercilious tone.

Undeterred the faceless controller continued, 'We have a delay here -- FIREBALL, you need to hold for another two hours, can you acknowledge?'.

'Roger -- two hours delay,' he said with a grunt that betrayed his exasperation.

'Thank you Fireball, control out'.

'So -- no imperative then, Robert's free to come with me,' Venus smirked.

'FREE TO COME -- FREE TO COME,' yeah I bet you are.

'Yes -- you go, just leave me here' Robert jumped from his his flight seat with something too akin to eagerness for Steve's comfort, then they left the flight deck together. 'Have fun,' he uttered when he felt sure they were out of earshot.

'Two hours,' Steve moaned to himself, 'two hours of staring into bloody blackness, why did they make the observation canopies on these bloody flight decks so huge? what the bloody hell is there to look at. That bloody robot better be back here in twenty minutes,' he said as he checked the chronograph on the flight control panel. He started to absent mindedly strum his fingers on the instrument panel, as he did so he accidentally flipped the cover of the main retro switch, 'Oh bugger!'. He folded his arms and sat silently for a few moments, then lapsed into daydream.

To pass the time on such occasions, Steve had fostered a elaborate but a rather unimaginative fantasy life. He was Colonel Zodiac and no one laughed at his name in his world. Somewhat incongruously for someone of such advanced rank, he was still an acting Space Patrol pilot, an inconsistency he never bothered to reconcile. Instead of exercising his imagination to explore The Lost Planet of Nubile Nymphomaniacs, he'd concern his meandering thoughts with petty revenge on those who frustrated him or drew his envy in reality. Venus was a compliant ingénue, attentive to his every word, Matt his able chief engineer, a myopic scatterbrain, Robert a grotesque android constructed from waste perspex and yoghurt cartons. This time though, the inadequacies that plagued his reality permeated his subconscious and the strings he'd tug to manipulate the characters of his fantasy coalesced into a physical form. His characters turned into marionettes and inside his mind he couldn't stem the transformation, it continued until his entire world was populated exclusively with caricatures hopping around on strings. When he looked into his fantasy world mirror and saw the comically furtive eyes of a puppet staring back at him, his fantasy concluded abruptly.

Startled by this exit from his fantasy world, he tried to think of something to take his mind off the experience and pass the time. Then it occurred to him that he could review the Space Patrol bulletins, the last thing he normally choose to occupy himself, although he was supposed to attend to that task daily. 'Let me see,' he said as he thumbed through the bulletins on his clipboard, 'new procedures for engine maintenance, Oh I'll have to tell Matt about that. Nutritional guidelines, blah blah, Oh what's this -- product warning for XK2ooo robot personnel'. After a few moments reading Steve flipped on the internal communication switch, 'Venus, call the flight deck please'.

Moments later Venus's voiced broke in over the communications system, 'Yes!' she didn't sound too pleased.

'Look, I don't need Robert here for an hour or so, tell him to take an extended break, Oh and by the way, I've released the lockout on the zero g facility for the leisure suite'. Steve knew the prospect of zero g gymnastics would ensure that Venus and Robert availed themselves of that facility, his face broke into a wicked smile.

--*--

ITEM 9 PRODUCT WARNING XK2000 ROBOT PERSONNEL

As a result of a notification from the manufacturer, Cyberdrone Systems Inc. The following additional operational parameters for the XK2000 robot have been set:

1. The XK2000 should at no time be operated in zero g environment, doing so can seriously compromise the XK2000's operational effectiveness.

2. Crew members, should refrain from certain: recreational practices in the presence of the XK2000 while there is a risk of encountering a zero g environment.

Note:
Failure to comply with the above will seriously compromise the fabric of the unit's dermal component, causing the chemical bonds of a constituent of that component to break down. Subsequent to component failure the unit's skin will revert to a gelatinous form. While this fault does not represent a hazard to crew members, several units have already failed in this manner and crew members report that the adhesive properties of the consequent gelatinous mass are such that it will adhere to human skin with a bond of indeterminate but substantial strength. This bond can not be safely broken until the skin's decomposition is complete, a process that takes approximately four days. This failure is accompanied by a strong odour, similar to that of decomposing herring.

ITEM 10 XK KIPPER

The following directive has been issued by the Space Patrol working practices committee:

1. The use of the, Term, "XK Kipper" in relation to crew members...

West Wittering

After my recent post of some snaps I thought I'd dig some more out of one particular location featured in that post. That would be West Wittering, East Head in particular. There's something unusual about the quality of light on the Sussex coast, I think it's because the cloud tends break up over that region, so even on days with no shadow the light can still be quite beautiful.

Dawn breaking the cloud cover.

Not a brilliant snap by any means and I'll have to be honest I did monkey with the colour here to try and convey the real beauty of this particular sunrise. I'm up early because it's a Sunday during the holiday season and I'm here to do some Mullet fishing and the crowds are not conducive to such activity.

Water on Mars? no just low tide at East Head.

It can get a little scary with tides at this location and they do have the flags out most of time. You're safe as long know what to look for but complacence can be the undoing of anyone so stay focused. The Weever Fish make waders a necessity if you're spending much time moving through the water and such encumbrances make you particular vulnerable to rising water and quicksands in such circumstances.

Isn't the sky pretty?.

Yeah I'm like that, I'll snap anything that takes my fancy. This is a different day, I think, I took the opportunity to settle amongst the dunes for a few monuments and soak up a little sun and noticed this.

Verrrahhgwoooshhhhhh!

Just leaving a bit early, partly because the crowds were turning up but also a local Bass fishing guide had turned up, who's quite well known, and had spotting me catching Mullet. I didn't spot him until he hailed me while I was playing a fish, we exchanged a few words, the usual cordial fare between anglers but his ignorance on Mullet was apparent. Unfortunately he compounded his ignorance by shadowing me and thrashing the water with his fly rod, probably in the hope he could tempt a mullet from my trail of bait. I tried moving but couldn't shake him off and he killed the fishing stone dead, shame really I was having a good day till then. Anyway I was just leaving and I heard this sound like the ground opening up, they were moving really fast and came out of nowhere, I was lucky to catch this snap

Interesting tree

On this day, I just took some time to explore the area. This is the other side of the inlet to the salt marsh. You can see that the prevailing wind evident in the shape of this tree.

The loneliness of the long distance angler.

This is an example of that Sussex light I mentioned, I call it silvery in honour of McGonnicall's first Tay Bridge poem.

A neddy and some explanation

You might recall that quite some time ago I sort of promised I'd post something on linear perspective and you probably also noticed that it hasn't appeared. Honestly I'm not deliberately teasing, I have actually bashed out some words on the subject but after reviewing the first attempts I found them  hopelessly anorak orientated and filed those drafts under B. I'm in the middle of my latest attempt which is better -- ish and was hoping to post something soon, only something's come up that need my attention, a prospect of some regular illustration work. Normally I'm pretty dismissive of these prospects, I've seen too many of 'em of evaporate but this one coincides with a focus of my interest, so I'm gonna give it a go. Meanwhile I'd thought I'd stick up a picture up for entertainment value, this is a very old drawing that I used reference gleaned from one of those pony mags for. It's the pencil drawing for and piece of ink work, which I don't have. I had the inked version pinned to the wall of my studio (bedroom) for quite some time, till a colleague took a shine to it, so I gave him the drawing, which he passed on to his daughter.

This drawing has also been submitted to one of those on demand print sites. I was a bit naive about how those sites work and kind of expected to do some business. After a while it became clear that they're not much more than an exercise in vanity publication, so prompted by disillusion I put ridiculous prices on the stuff I submitted. Anyway here it is for free, albeit in a reduced resolution although if you right click on the pop up a higher resolution file should be available as a lossless png.

The Doodle Files 5

Strictly speaking I suppose these aren't doodles, although the first one probably qualifies since it was inspired a hare brained scheme to pitch for a syndicated strip but that was Tuesday, so to speak. After a little pondering on the chores involved in churning out a Garth pastiche every week, I thought better of it. They're a little blurry I'm afraid, probably had the camera on daylight.

I've started using a black water soluble lead similar to that Stabilo that I used down to the stump a while ago but with a clutch pencil arrangement. This lead's not quite so soft, still good though and it has the advantage of not suffering from the glare you get from graphite, which is important at the moment cos I'm still working on my lap with a drawing pad and overhead light. The second one is a mixture of graphite and water soluble, the first is that rather gritty large diameter, 5 point something millimetres, water soluble lead, that works rather nicely on textured paper. Talking of textured paper, where did stipple board disappear to? can't find it listed in any of the art shops.

Gurn, fate's chosen man of destiny.

Richard the III for lettering practice, don't ask why.

Some colouring tips

As promised this my attempt to explain the colouring technique I use with image editing software for drawings. Back when I used to do this regularly I used Photoshop, which is an excellent piece of software but the full featured version is way too expensive to justify for personal use, so I've started to use Gimp which is available free to download. Using Gimp was a bit of a painful transition, the source of much tugged hair and yelling at the monitor but if you persevere with it, it turns out to be a very usable alternative.

Right, first things first, scan your image as a greyscale or RGB image, you can scan an eight bit indexed colour image but you'll need  to convert it to RGB or greyscale for the next step.

Clean it up as you feel fit, I use the Levels or Curves tool to adjust the blacks and whites. Once you've done that make sure your image is in RGB mode, if it isn't already. If you're working on a hight resolution image i.e. one intended for print there's a tip make life easier on machines with limited resources, see note 1 at the end.

Fig. 1

You should have something like Fig. 1, a greyscale image on a single layer. You need to perform an extra step before you can proceed. You need to separate all non white coloured pixels from the white, not as tricky as it sounds. You accomplish this by creating a new channel then copy and paste the greyscale image into that channel.

Now create a new layer on the image and use the channel to perform a selection .

Now perform a fill operation with black as your colour, you may have to invert the selection first, as black is normally the default mask colour for channels.

Now create another layer and move it beneath your outline, perform a select all and fill it with white.

Congratulations you've now separated your greyscale image into two portions, it's useful to name each layer as you go along, I suggest Outline and Base.

Fig. 2

Now create a new layer beneath Outline and above Base and name it Flesh or Skin or whatever name takes your fancy. You can use the the brush tool to fill in your base flesh tone or perform a poly selection with the lasso or pen tools.and perform a fill. Choose a somewhat darker tone of flesh than that which represents the finished tone. This step is analogous to a coloured ink wash, over line work.

Fig 3.

Fig. 3 shows the basic modelling, this would be analogous to using opaque body colour over an ink wash. To do this create a new layer above your basic tone then use the brush tool to paint in the modelling. It's best to ensure that the colouring on this layer remains within the area defined by your base flesh layer, I use a selection to ensure this but you could probably link the layers if you wish.

I generally perform this step using white and then set the opacity of this layer to some percentage.

Fig 4.

Now we want to perform the shaded part of our modelling and this where I normally cheat. Instead of faffing with a brush tool I perform some boolean logic to short cut the task. Since our shaded areas are the opposite of lighter areas we should be able to use the computer to do the task for us, and it turns out that, if we've done our job properly with lighter modelling, this is in fact the case. So...

1. First set the active layer to the one you painted in your lighter flesh tone on.
2. Perform an alpha or transparency selection so that coloured area is the selected portion, in Gimp this is: Layer/Transparency/Alpha to Selection.
3. Expand that selection, the amount you expand it depends on the resolution, some where between 5 and 12 pixels works for most screen resolution images, in Gimp this would be: Select/Grow for the appropriate dialogue.
4. Now Feather your selection, this step is optional but you'll probably want to do it, the amount of feathering is resolution dependent, something less than half the amount you grew it is about right.
5. Invert your selection.
6. Set your base flesh layer to the active layer.
7. Perform a selection intersect with the transparency on this layer, with your current selection, in Gimp this is: Layer/Transparency/Intersect with Selection
8. Create a new layer, name it Flesh Shade.
9. Perform a fill with your desired flesh shade colour.

The colour you use for your fill depends on the context of the image, for warm skin, use cool colours for the shaded area, blue or purple. For cool skin, warmer colours, something like a terra verte. In certain cases you may wish to create a reverse highlight, in which case you can ether use a lighter tone of your base flesh colour or a contrasting colour to compliment your flesh tone.

In most cases, I like to perform this step with a solid colour, in this case a blue, then use the layer transparency to moderate it. If you're using it for a reverse high light, you'll need to keep the colour solid.

Fig. 5

Highlights are optional, they're a different step from modelling because they represent reflected light at a coincident angle to the light source, therefore they're dependant upon your viewpoint. I generally only bother with them to indicate shiny surfaces. Keep them quite hard, on a separate layer, usually white on  skin but moderated on shiny fabrics.

Fig. 6

Fig. 7

 Figures 6 and 7 are included to clarify some of the steps described above.

Fig. 8

The image in context, funnily enough I'm not happy with the face on this so it'll probably be changed pretty soon.

Note 1. Human visual acuity is concentrated in black and white, so you can get away with low resolution colour as long as the tonal range is in high resolution. If you need to create high resolution images in can be easier to colour them at low resolution and then rescale them and add a high resolution black overlay.

Three pics.

Knocked this out a couple of hours ago, it took me ages to do the finished artwork and then I smudged the ink, what an idiot. Just goes to show how rusty I am, the inkwork was so bad I thought I'd better colour it, it was orginally supposed to be just black and white. The colour's not fantastic either, I'm using a mouse and it's a bit like drawing with your feet, I did the second panel first and by the time I got to the sea in the first one, I really rushed the highlights as you can see. I might tart it up a bit tomorrow.

Pencil sketch

A very poor ink job

The colour

The Serpents of Mars

Just a bit of fun here with a panel I found on Kid Robson's blog, from his Conflict on Mars post which features a story from a TV21 annual. The story is illustrated by that classic British illustrator and comic artist Ron Turner, unfortunately the colour isn't that impressive, British annuals from that period had rather acetic look to the colour, not that I want to bad mouth the person responsible because in some instances it's quite passable and he probably had to contend with unreasonable deadlines or rates assigned to the completion of the work. However Turner is rather well known for his versatility with colour and that's especially true for his illustrations for the work of John Russel Fern, AKA Vargo Statten, which are noted for their -- boldness. So I had a go at giving a panel the Statten look, with only marginal success I'm afraid, I lost some the line detail and the black outline isn't really a feature of the Statten look but I though it was worth a post.

The doodle files 4

Got a new pencil last week, it's a chunky clutch pencil that takes massive leads, it came some with sepia ones, which are a bit like the Steadler non-print leads in texture. That means you hafta do the drawing in one hit, the lines don't erase too well off soft surfaces but it seems as though this pencil has got a way with that emulation of the classic British comic style I was trying to do the other week. I've been much more successful with it, as I tried a couple of Ken Reid characters first.

First attempt, I used some of the Frankie Stein stuff I'd seen around on the web as a guide, I noticed some aspects of Ken Reid's hand, he had a way of doing sickle shaped curves that I managed to emulate a bit on the chin, nose is odd though.

Now it the turn of Frankie's "dad", used some reference again, hasn't quite got the right look, the mouth isn't expressive enough, in fact it looks a bit like my dad, I dunno if I should admit that.

First try without reference, looks more Baxendale than Reid but that's ok, he's good too. I think I went a bit too far with the adam's apple as well.

Doodle files 3

There's quite a famous depiction of The Riddler, I think it's the first time he appeared in print. The drawing could be a character study of Frank Gorshin and might explain why he was cast in the sixties TV series. In the entire history of casting characters from popular fiction was anyone more perfectly cast than Frank Gorshin? The only one who comes comes close is Telly Savalas as Blofeld.

Burgess Meredith does a good job as the Penguin largely because he doesn't push the character too far, I suppose that's a legacy of his acting background. Danny DeVito is an excellent character actor but his Penguin has been monkeyed with to such an extent it's barely recognisable. His physical deformity and disgusting sanitary habits are too an overt depiction of corruption, The Penguin should have a facile veneer of manners and sartorial sophistication afforded by his Morning attire that contrasts with his wickedness.

The doodle files 2

A couple of those desk top doodles again, together with two I actually bothered to put on real paper.

John Malkovich as Julian Karswell

Things going a little Manga

I found the original Naughty Boy Island pencil rough

After deciding my NBI rough (see above) was too prosaic I sat down an tried to draw inspiration from the classic English comic illustrators with rather appalling results as you can see.

A tiny piece of history.

I've just found this, the first drawing, I'd coloured with Photoshop, ooh ages ago. I'd been working producing 2d computer graphics for a  for a while, mostly kinda flashy backgrounds and fancy do das for early versions of AV software produced with things like Macromedia. Those were mostly done in software but in a spare moment I decided to exercise my traditional drawing skills and see if I could colour something up. Thinking about it, this was probably a doodle, it' wasn't inked or anything just drawn in pencil and scanned. It's not particularly impressive, it kinda breaks the colour rule about reversing the heat of the hue in the shadows. You know, the one that goes: warm highlights/cool shadows or cool highlights/warm shadows, but it was done very quickly and I quite liked that aspect. Oh yeah, the subject happens to be a naked lady, it was probably spring, that's my excuse anyway.

The doodle files

Doodles they're kinda interesting but they most often get get assigned to oblivion pretty instantly, I admit some of mine have hung around a lot longer than that, not getting thrown out till they've been virtually obliterated by assorted beverage stains. I'm not labouring under any delusion that these particular examples are noteworthy to any degree but I fancied documenting them because I'm interested in doodles:

Some doodles are doomed to an early extinction because the urge to draw something is so insistent that you pick up the nearest implement, in this case an aquarellabe Stabilo and doodle on the most convenient surface at hand, the table top adjacent to my laptop.

Let's not forget the all time classic, the back of an envelope. I obliterated the return address here, I've no idea who it was, it's a PO Box number but I'm wary of the risks of inundating some poor sap's post with trash spawned by internet pranksters.

This one demonstrates a nice aspect of doodling, it's not constrained by convention, so if you get something wrong, like the nose and lips here, you can just draw them somewhere else, who say's they havta be in the right location?

Hair? let's make her? him? (a bit andronginous this one) mostly bald cos I wanna draw an ear. Another example of translocation, got the hand wrong? just do another one in the corner.

Let's try out this ink I found on in the back of the cupboard to see if it's any good? The answer to that would be no. I masked out my name here, not because I'm concerned about DeadSpiderEye's secret identity being revealed, you can track that down in less than a minute with Google, but it's almost the same as my signature and publishing that on the web might be -- um foolish.