22 Panels Comic Art Exhibition Poster

An image I have contributed to the 22 Panels Falmouth Comic Art Show's poster for this years exhibition, whose title is inspired by Silver Age comic artist Wally Wood. For those unfamiliar with Wally Wood he created a quintessential comic 'cheat sheet' known as '22 panels that always work', that contain various compositions of panels to make dialogue heavy scenes in comic books dynamic and engaging.

This leads onto the image I have done. The event organizer wanted exhibitors to create their own rendition of a panel, or more from Wally Wood's 22 panels sheet. These panels will be used to create the poster to help promote the show.

And so here is my panel...

Went for a 50's sci-fi-esque rendition as an homage to the type of comics Wally Wood drew back in the day, and the ones I adore most.

For this piece I decided to try something new, and went about inking this panel with a Rotring art nib pen. I have gotten very bored of using fine liners which often create dull lines, which is something I have known awhile and couldn't be bothered to try other things till now. I absolutely love this pen, and shall be trying it out more so I am more comfortable using it for my comic work.

Finally in case you are interested, other artists that have been working on this poster and will be exhibiting at the show are Lee O' Connor, Jack Teagle, Tiernen Trevallion, Henry Flint, John Spelling, Paul Grist, EdieOP, Steve May, Rob Cross, Phil Harvey, Keith Sparrow and Grayham P. Puttock.

22 Panels

It's time to dust the cobwebs from this site and give you people some updates. Back in October me and Diana attended a comic art exhibition in Falmouth, dubbed 22 Panels named after Wally Wood's 22 Panels.

We were neighbours to a wonderful quirky artist Edie who does dark, whimsical children's book illustrations. It was a great environment to be in, with so many creatives in one room and no traders in sight...well maybe one or two. I wish there were more events that really celebrate the art of comics and for artists to come together and talk, sometimes ideas or collaborations come about at these types of gatherings. 

Anyway here are a few sketches I did whilst at 22 panels.

One last thing to say is that I now have additional printed copies of issue 0 of "A Shadow of Steel". If you'd like a copy please feel free to contact me so we can arrange purchase and delivery.

Lots of posters

So once again it's been a good while since I've been posting anything, but that's because I have been very productive which is good news. Recently I have been asked by the Department of Work and Pensions to do some poster work for them to advertise to employers and employees and the unemployed of a creative employment programme. I think its a very positive step in trying to help struggling individuals get into the creative industry and this programme aims to do that with paid internships.

If you want to learn more about the programme you can read more about it here.

When it came to designing the posters I wanted to invoke a positive spirit and found much inspiration from old WWII recruitment posters. I know that there wasn't anything positive about WWII, but the posters often put a positive spin to joining in the fight. And I wanted to show that there is something positive in this opportunity for creative people.

So here are the posters:

This poster was to visually emulate a cover design by Michael Cho from his variant of The Minutemen comic series by DC Comics. Here is the link to the original image that I based the poster design on http://chodrawings.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/the-minutemen.html

The two above were heavily influenced by WWII recruitment posters, especially the font.

The illustrations were all hand drawn including the lettering, and were digitally tweaked and coloured.

And finally I have done yet another poster to help promote The Poly's Summer Exhibition. I also had to design a logo for their exhibition too. And here is the finished result.

The logo was very much influenced by the Aztec Sun Stones. I wanted a very distinct primal visual of the Sun to represent summer and incorporate The Poly logo too. The illustration of The Poly was done on a A4 sheet of Bristol board paper with gouache and ink.

Final Poster

Well here it is, the agreed final design for this year's 150th rail exhibition poster in Falmouth.