Comic convention

There was a small, 2 day comic convention being held in the city while I was there. Lots of publishing houses & artists exhibiting their 'bandes dessinees' - the hard-back graphic novels that are prevalent in French comic book stores. One table was encouraging people to sit down & make drawings for the wall so I seized the opportunity to shamelssly promote my blog & the Eurovision Art Challenge!
The guest of honour was Italian comic maestro Sergio Toppi. His style is like a cross between Klimt, Robert McGinniss & Bill Siencewicz. I bought one of his books & stood in line for 2 hours to get a drawing in it from him. However, he drew so slowly that he only made about 8 drawings in that time & I had to give up before one of us died of old age! The images by him above are copyright Sergio Toppi & Mosquito Publishing.

Kiraz

Picked up an extra copy of Kiraz's Jamais Le Premier Soir. If any London blogger is interested in buying this let me know - it'll cost ya 23 Euros!

Gay Paree!

Had a great time in the French capital - did a lot of drawing and visited as many sites & exhibitions as possible. Over the next couple of weeks I'll be posting drawings from my sketchbook & giving the lowdown on some of the big art shows over there.

Au revoir!

Au revoir my blogging friends - I'm off to Paris to visit this lovely lady. See you all in 2 weeks.

Skatoony!

This is a set-up I put together for a pilot at CARTOON NETWORK, Europe.

Another slice of Pi!

The TIMES newspaper is running an illustration competition to design a new cover & interior images for the next edition of Yann Martel's LIFE OF PI. Deadline is December & further details can be found here:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,923-1814288_1,00.html

ROCKETO

At last, I managed to find a copy of Frank Espinosa's ROCKETO at GOSH!Comics, London. I was pleasantly surprised that not only has Frank broken new ground with the stylish artwork in this book but he's even pushing the publication FORMAT! Check out the cool 'top' binding. This makes it the first LANDSCAPE comicbook I've ever seen.
www.frankespinosa.com

Wales

Back home in North Wales recently I visited the Slate Mine Museum in Llanberis. The old workshops are full of wonderful contraptions & tools & heavy machinery. Didn't get a chance to draw much but took some shots for reference. The place is a mine(!) of detail & texture, useful for future layout jobs or design.

Drawing on TV!

Everybody don't miss cartoonist Martin Rowson's documentary on Ronald Searle tomorrow at 9.40 pm on BBC4. Before that on the same channel is a film looking at Michelangelo's drawings & over on BBC 2 at 8.10 pm is Andrew Graham-Dixon's new series, The Secret of Drawing.

Picasso

These studies were made at a show of Picasso's sculpture at the Pompidou Center, Paris in 2000.

Goofy Animals

These were drawn in ink, tipex & white gouache on cardboard.

Latest sketches

More from the sketchbook.

Channel 4 spot

These are stills from a 10 second short I made back in college. It was one of 10 commisioned by Channel 4 to promote their 4-Mations season. It was all done the old-fashioned way with cels & paint, scraped back to give it that scratchy look. 9 other students from art schools around the UK were commisioned too, each in a different medium & set to a piece of classical music. Mine was set to Mussorgsky's 'Gnomus'.

More Edgar

Another development image from the Edgar project for Uli Meyer Animation.