Lego Dredd

I haven't updated the blog for a while, mainly due to a series of annoying ailments that have kept me from the drawing board. Flu, back pain and viral vertigo included. So as I have no new art to show I thought I'd post this sketch I drew at the Dublin Comic Con this year. James here was requesting lego versions of comic characters from all the artists, you can see a gallery of the others here. Thanks to Stephen Mooney for the 'Lego City 1' gag. 

The inks

Here's the inks for that panel. I'm trying to use a nice range of tools to give a variety of marks, as that's something I've always liked in other artist's work. Mainly it's calligraphy pen, brush pen and pigment liner. I'm also avoiding using a ruler to ink the straight lines, to give them a more organic look.

Today's panel

Every now and then I'll do a nice, simple panel that I'm really happy with. Nothing flashy, it could just be something simple, with good storytelling, an interesting composition, or just an image that turned out exactly the way i wanted it to. This is one of those panels.

The inks

Here's the final inks. I tried to eliminate as much of the white areas as I could, to bring it as close to a silhouette as possible. Mainly so it would contrast well with the detail of the background. I was tempted to just black the figure in completely except for the flame of his lighter but couldn't bring myself to do it...

Silhouette

In an attempt to add more clarity to my pages and strip away some of the unnecessary busyness I tend to throw in there, I've been looking at a lot of Alex Toth and reading some of his ideas on design and staging. I found a perfect page to try this out on (a man leaning in a doorway lighting a cigarette)......and then I completely chickened out and fell back on my usual schtick. Half way through drawing it I realised it wasn't working and when a friend of mine, Declan Shalvey, agreed it was a dud, I abandoned it and tried again. I'm much happier with this second attempt.