Right under my nose all this time..

Isn't it amazing the things you can find when you aren't really looking? I was running out of inking pens last week (Celtic Knights is my first fully black & white comic and I'm going through pens like crazy lately) and I thought I would have to go into town to get more as there is no decent art supply shop near where I live. Since we have six kids and my wife works pretty much most hours that I dont, going into town is not as simple as jumping on a bus. As with most things in the life of people with large families, it's a massive organisational operation with the type of split-second timing you would be hard pressed to find at a NASA launch. Needless to say, it seemed like a lot of trouble for some pens, so I wasn't looking forward to it, but you gotta do what you gotta do. Or so I thought.

My wife was in the local school book shop (another bane of the large family, but thats for another blog) buying a book for our son that the school told us we din't need and then changed their minds. As she was waitng for the book, she noticed they sold my inking pens! Cheaper than the art shop in town too - and literally ten minutes walk from the house. I'll have to pop in there soon and see what other goodies they have...

I've had a bit of a slow week on the drawing front. For some reason or another I haven't been able to put pen to paper as much as I would like. Hey, I'm allowed an off week once in a while, right? It wasn't really even an off week, as I have been photoshopping & lettering the pages I have done so far. I have every intention of getting fully back on track for next week (touch wood!).

For those of you reading this who haven't already, you should join the Facebook group. Stephen will be doing a good chunk of the promotion from there, and I'll be adding in a few goodies too, so its well worth a look.

Two preview pics for you this week; Rubinette's slinky entrance and a little bit of General Blake, just cause I thought it looked cool. Enjoy!

Tick tock, tick tock...

Its dawned on me that Monday is two months away from the convention. I'm starting to panic now. Not about the comic, but I haven't decided what to wear yet! Since Stephen has been making a worrying number of refrences to bikinis & evening dresses lately, I think I need might need to set him straight & let him know I'm strictly a jeans & t-shirt type of artist.. I wonder if he is giving Barry this type of attention too?
On a slightly less disturbing note, things are working out quite well at the moment. Apart from the usual chaos that is my life (as any other hard-working comic artist who also has six kids and a full time job will tell you) I havent had too many disasters with the comic front. I did a big scanning session during the week, so I have no excuse not to post up a few previews over the next couple of weeks. I'm planning to do a couple over on the Facebook group too, so make sure & go over to check them out! In the meantime, here is some freshly scanned Junker goodnes for you. Enjoy!!

You know you have no social life when....

My wife and I realised that the only times we have been out lately is to go to christenings! (None of our own though, had enough of them thank you!) So we managed to organise a babysitter & got out to the cinema to see the Dark Knight. Finally. And I have to say it was well worth it. It definitely lives up to the hype. I didn't even mind the "growly" Batman voice that everybody seemed to complain about, but I did have one little thing that bugged me (that nobody else seemed to mention at all) - why was the Mayor of Gotham alway wearing mascara?!?
And by the way, a little tip for you all - if you do forget to turn off your phone before you go in to the cinema, just make sure your ring tone doesn't sound like a dog barking. That just freaks everybody out!!
Well, enough of the stuff I said I'd never talk about here & on to business. I'm just about at the half-way stage in the Celtic Knights comic & things are going relatively smoothly. No doubt that now that I've said that, some disaster is bound to happen & I'll end up panic drawing at the end, but for now, its still all systems go. I've just finised Junker's big scene, and I have to say that Iv'e really enjoyed doing it. He is probably my favourite of the Knights to draw, there is just so much potential with a smelly vagrant crime fighter...
We have also realised that Celtic Knights will be doing something of a worlds first with comic book super-heroes (we think). At some point in the comic one of our heroes will do something that I'm pretty sure no comic book hero has ever done before. What is it? I'm not telling, you'll just have to buy it in November & find out!!

No Celtic Knights previews this week, I wanted to show off a Transformers: Mosaic piece instead. I gave a little preview of this a couple of weeks ago and IDW forums have launched their TF: Animated project this week so I can post the whole thing up now. Click on the pic below to see it all nice & big and readable-like. Enjoy!!

Yay! I'm famous!!!

I've finally made it! I have an entry on the Irish comics Wiki! Granted it doesn't say much bar the fact that I exist and am doing Celtic Knights, but still, there I am. Enshrined for all eternity amongst the great Irish comic book creators. Suppose I'd better start producing something so....

On that note, the art is coming along nicely. Its looks like the comic is going to end up being a few pages longer than originally intended, which is no bad thing for the readers I suppose. And only one & a bit splash pages (so far) to boot! (for those of you who might be reading this who are not up on comics terminology, a splash page is a page with a large "pin-up" style picture that takes up most or all of the page).

My lovely wife bought me a proper portfolio case thingy the other day (up till now I have been keeping all my stuff in a wooden art box that doubles as my drawing board). In the process of moving all my stuff from one folder to another I came across a couple of issues of my first self-produced comic, Hybrid. Its very, very old (I think I did the first one when I was about 17), and very amateur-ish. Its coloured in markers & colouring pencils because I'm pretty sure you couldn't colour pictures on a computer back then!! For some reason though I'm still quite fond of it and over the years I have always intended to re-draw the whole thing using all the tricks I have learned over the years. I did at one stage manage to re-do the first three or four pages before something else got in the way. I'm half thinking of posting it up as-is as a web comic, if anybody would be interested in having a read. Let me know & I'll see what public opinion is like before I litter up the internet with any more of my rubbish. In the meantime, here is the cover I did for Issue 0 (2006 ish, still pre-photoshop) to whet your appetite.

Dont judge me on the fake tan look there, I blame the limited resources at my disposal at the time.....

Another Celtic Knights Preview for you too now; this is Fallout's impressive entrance into the comic...

Till next time!!