Black Adam

For many happy years I had a regular spot in SFX magazine (with Nick Setchfield the writer) illustrating films that were in the making or had just been announced. Some of these films didn't appear at the cinema for years and Black Adam is a prime example. The film has just come out and I did the drawing at least two years ago. All we knew at the time was that The Rock had been cast as Black Adam and that was it. No idea of the plot or costars. So Nick suggested a fight between Black Adam and Black Adder which was fun for me to draw so that's what we did. I have no idea if the film is any good or not but I've always loved Black Adder.

Old drawers

i've been rumaging through my old drawers having a clear_out and I found a few blasts from the past. There's a drawing i did for the original Spitting Image showing celebrities of the time.

and a cassette cover for a bunch of celebrity answerphone messages.

also, a drawing of George Formby for an album cover.

and finally an idea I had for a kids book about a nurse who is a cat called First Aid Kitty. yet another failed arrempt at hitting the big time! hey ho!

Failed films!

I worked for several years on SFX magazine illustrating films that hadn't yet been made but were in development. Here are two that never saw the light of day or the dark of a cinema- The sequel to the failure that was Green Lantern although it did make a lot of money in Asia apparently. Which might explain the announcement to make Green Lantern 2
but alas, taht particualr lantern was never to shine its light.
Another unrealised project was to make Stan Lee an arse-kicking spy in the 70s when he was still a spritley chap (and alive!). I don't know whether the intention was to have a younger look-alike play

Stan or do one of those computer youngifying effects on him. But anyway, it was another unfulfilled project. There were many more examples of this which I'll post up in the future.

 

Rondo!

 My brother gave me an inspiring book for my birthday on the drawings of Thomas Fluharty in which this great American illustrator used a dark blue crayon to make wonderfully loose and dynamic sketches of people. I thought I’d have a bash so using a double ended red and blue crayon I drew this image of the fabulously ugly Rondo Hatton. Originally a tall and handsome athlete as Rondo got older he was afflicted more and more by a genetic illness called acromegaly which gradually distorted his features and inflicted increasing pain until it killed him at the early age of 51. When his facial features became distorted he was embraced by Hollywood to appear in a string of films including the one I first saw him in- The Pearl of Death starring Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Doctor Watson. The film was based on one of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s short stories with an element added by the film studio- The Creeper (alias The ‘Oxton ‘Orror!) who was a terrifying brute who could snap men’s spines, played unforgettably by Rondo Hatton. He was such a hit in this film that he went on to appear in 6 more before the disease claimed him. He has since become a horror film icon. What a fizzog!

Blast from the Past!

 As I've been working as a free-lance cartoonist since the eighties I have a large backlog of stuff floating around out there and occasionally an old job is washed up on the shore of my desert island. A couple of months ago I was contacted by a chap (sorry, I can't remember his name) who is the owner of twelve pieces of my cartoon artwork. He wanted to know who they were originally drawn for and unfortunately, I have no idea.

After so many years of drawing for many different clients there are gaps in my memory and this is one of them. Looking at the 12 drawings they seem to be for a calendar for a computer company or maybe a computer magazine. Any computer nerds out there may be able to pinpoint the year from the models of the computer equipment depicted. Anyway, here they are. I hope you like them!

Save the Med colouring book

There's a charity based here in Mallorca called Save the Med and they're producing a colouring book for kids so I've done three drawings for them. This was great fun and a good excuse to draw some mermaids and octopuses!

AOIO (Astral Objects in Orbit) a new instrumental by 2BC