Crime Triangle - Revisited

Merry Christmas!

Crime Triangle

Things I Love 001 - Jim Fitzpatrick - Thin Lizzy artwork

I've really got into the music of Thin Lizzy over the last few years, especially the period from the early slightly folkish stuff up to the Jailbreak album(1976). I also love record cover artwork and I've really enjoyed taking in the artwork created by Jim Fitzpatrick for the band in the 70's. You may know Jim's work without knowing you do, he created the iconic stark graphic image of Che Guevera in the sixties.

I love the mixture of clean Neal Adams-style inking, mixed with comic book sci-fi and celtic imagery in this stuff. I prefer the scrappy comic-book vitality to be found in these earlier examples of his work over his later, more refined work based on Celtic myths and legends.

Below are a selection of Thin Lizzy related artwork (hopefully) in order of creation:


Ink artwork for cover design of 'Vagabonds of the Western World'(1973)


Rough layout for full-page advertisement for 'Vagabonds'


Cover artork for 'Nightlife'(1974)




Exterior and interior artwork for 'Jailbreak'(1976). This was in the good ol' days of gatefold sleeves and die cutting.


Cover artork for 'Johnny the Fox'(1976)


Unused promotional work 'The Wizard'(1979)

Sketchbook 002

A page full of pen doodling weirdness. Is it obvious I'm reading the Judge Dredd Case Files lately?

Just around the corner...

Covered - 2000AD - Strontium Dog

Just had a cover re-interpretation shown on Covered.



The original was by the great Carlos Ezquerra. He's one of those guys that I wholly took for granted reading 2000AD reprints as a kid but now I'm that bit older I can really appreciate the sheer quantity of pages he churned out, especially for massive twenty-something Judge Dredd epics such as 'The Apocalypse War'.



If he was a movie director he'd be someone like Don Siegel, you may not see him up on the podium at the Oscars, but he's consistently knocked the ball out of the park.

Vlad

This is a recent piece I've finished. It's in pencil, watercolour and ink. Decided to really ramp up the bold outlines. Pretty happy with how it turned out though made a cock-up inking in the loops of the crown of thorns. Someday soon I'll get it all right.

The original artwork can be bought on Etsy here, go on, christmas is coming!

Vintage Wisdom

I've recently created illustrations for Vintage Wisdom. They offer original work from designers and illustrators printed on canvas and also silk scarves. These original works below were created at 100cm x 100cm so mucho mondo file sizes all round!

Soul Scream Queen

whale

Lazer Love

This is a piece I've worked on lately. It's in ink and water colours. It's hard getting a bit of weight with watercolours and I think I may have went overkill on the final black outlines. Though I think it's healthy sometimes to sit down at a blank piece of paper knowing you don't have the luxury of 'undo', especially with something like watercolours which needs a considered build up with no going back over your tracks.



Here's a few details from it:





This is a behind the curtains, Wizard of Oz tyle shot, while I was working on it:

Sketchbook 001

Here's a few sketchbook pages from a holiday in Greece in August.

They depict images from Meteora in Northern Greece, studies of passengers and sights on a ferry from Samos to Athens and also sketches from a visit to the National Archaeological Museum in Athens.

No Time For Tears

Below is a book cover I've recently worked on for young adults. It's got action/suspense elements to it so I've attempted to give it a film poster look and feel.





Here's the original hand-drawn ink scan...

Animal!

This is a cd mix I created as a birthday present for my brother who works in construction and who channels the spirit of Animal from the Muppets. I designed and created the sleeve to the j-card cd single format.









If you've got Spotify the bulk of the setlist can be found here!

The Corncrakes - EP designs

The Corncrakes are a folk/indie outfit from Belfast. Their Myspace page can be found here.

As I'm a friend of Helen Mahaffy (vocals/flute) in the band I've done a lot of design/illustration work for them, including the initial logo design and all elements of cd design and illustration for their two EP releases. Their latest EP is 'Lady Dixon's', here's the front cover illustration followed by the interior corncrake illustration.





Here's a shot of the finalised CD...



Also, here's the first EP I worked on over a year ago, 'Willow Tree'...

Country Girl

This is a recent book cover design I've done. I've tried to get that stylised/trashy montage look prevalent on 60s/70s paperbacks. Also, wanted to keep the colour palette muted and autumnal to fit in with the rural setting.



Below is the original pencil work of the main figure.

Music Video Storyboards - 'The Airloom'

Last year I created storyboards for a music video called 'The Airloom' by Brighton-based artist High Rankin. Below is the final video with storyboards synched alongside:



Below is a sequence which didn't make it into the final video:

First Blog Entry!

This is my first blog entry! Just want to use this blog to throw on bits and pieces and work in progress. Also, to highlight influences and general things i love.

Below are interior illustrations I've recently done for a kids book called The Magic Cornflake.

Had fun seeing how far I could go with the elongated limbs.