Mark Making #7: John Hicklenton; part II

Back on the 'Mark Making' odyssey James Newell; http://meanwhiletv.blogspot.com/ contacted me as he has some original Nemesis artwork by the late, great John Hicklenton. James was kind enough to send me a high quality scan of the piece so I am showing it here in glorious detail.

 The real plus here is that the level of detail is so high that we can see the techniques used, different pen line qualities, varying inks, the use of photocopies and white paint. All these things are normally hidden, married into one smooth two-tone, black and white, high contrast image.

It is only when you see the original artwork that you can get a real sense of the artist at work.


As usual I have cropped a load of close-up images but this time they are in pairs so that you can see the original art, warts and all; then the finished high-contrast print version.

Enjoy!

This week I took 23 students to the Bristol Encounters short film festival. It started the usual way...

 

...and as always Bristol is a great venue. We were overlooking the harbour, into which no-one fell...phew.

 The first night ended with another trip to Bombay Boulevard, which is how I finished the festival last year. We left at about 1.00 am. Great start.

 The next three days saw many highlights, most of which were experienced while enduring truley awful seating, but never mind.

The standard of animation seemed even higher than last year and everyone had their favorites.

The major highlights all came on Thursday. I met John Kricfalusi, creator of Ren and Stimpy, and was lucky enough to get a caricature by him. This is to be framed and put in pride of place at home.

 John is an animation legend and has been corrupting people with his 'crap' for too many years to mention. A true, uncompromising, and utterly undiluted, artist.

 Close on the heels of John K. I was listening to Amanda Darby from Aardman Animation talking about 3D printing and rapid prototyped heads used for the new Aardman film; Pirates. Fascinating stuff and incredibly informative.

 We got to handle tons of replacement heads...

 And ones of the pirates himself. This had to be one of the best puppets I have ever held, and that is saying something.

Another great festival comes to a close. Same time next year.

I took one of my Steam Punk Engine designs and tried to age it a bit. It only takes a few seconds to find aged paper backgrounds for Photoshop online. Add some free grid lines, play with the opacity and add a bit of noise. The grid was knocked back with an eraser at 50% opacity. Not bad for a quick test.

A quick sketch; brush pen test.

Finally done some drawing. This is a quick sketch to test my new brush pen. Could make a nice tattoo though.

Lovin' the brush pen!!!

Mark Making #6: Mike Dory

Mike Dorey started in 1979 on the short lived Tornado and 2000ad. He instantly struck me as being apart from the other artists in his ability to portray muck and grime. Hence he was the natural choice to draw The Ro-Jaws Memoirs.

Dirty marks, rough brush stokes and stippling.

Mark Making #5: Simon Harrison

This mark making blog looks in close-up at the line work of Simon Harrison. When he started in 2000ad his work stood out clearly from everyone else by the mark making alone. His use of delicate wispy lines in contrast to the stark uncompromising subject matter creates a visual contrast that pulls the viewer in to a very organic and phantasmagorical world.

Take a closer look...