This is what I've been working on lately, a commission for a lady I work with, of her daughter, as a child, and now.

©2012 James Mathurin

Feedback is always important...

This is a little comic I knocked up the other week. To reinforce it's truth, my wife looked at it, and opined on her faces:

 The first one's normal, the bottom one looks scared. The middle one looks like a boy.

©2012 James Mathurin

Pistol Pope finished inks!

So, after the pencils from yesterday, here are the inks for Pistol Pope.

Also, here's a version with the pencils under the inks.

©2012 James Mathurin

Pistol Pope pencils! (inks to follow)

SO here is the piece that all of those research sketches were for. Once you see it, it all makes perfect sense: When a new Pope is chosen, he must first prove himself.

How, you say?

Simple.

He travels back in time to the Old West. To catch outlaws? No. To forge a new frontier? Pah!

No, he fights vampire Nazis.

At least, that's the idea my friend brought to me, and here it is, as the cover for what would hypothetically be Pistol Pope #1.

©2012 James Mathurin

Nazis in the Wild West?

These prep-pictures are connected to my last one, but I'll explain when I put up the final piece. But yes, there is a link.

©2012 James Mathurin

Who is this Pope, and why is he packing heat?

So, first of all, let me assure you that, despite the joint images of a pope and Nazis, this is not a dig at Ratzinger. It is, however, research for a piece that will be up here in a while, after a bit more research. 

The gun-totin' Pope? 

Well, you'll see...

©2012 James Mathurin

Irish Setter

Just a simple one, this, a drawing of a Red Setter I was asked for by someone at my day job.

©2012 James Mathurin

Nelly Furtado

I haven't posted anything in a while - been working on the last Acquisition page, and doing a couple of little commissions (which I'll put stuff up from on here in a bit), so I thought I'd just break the silence with a sketch I did of Nelly Furtado recently.

Back soon with more!

©2012 James Mathurin

Acquisition, Page 5, inked

So, the finished inks have been sitting around my living room for a couple of weeks, but I've been too busy to scan it. So here it is:

This is actually the first time I've seen it without the pencil lines, so it's always looked like the version below. I've still got plenty of work to do on it, but again, that was the point of this, to try some new things.

©2012 James Mathurin

Acquisition, Page 5 - I hate backgrounds

Here are the pencils I promised yesterday. I partly put this up to show how convoluted the composition and background got. It's my own fault - I wanted long streets and high buildings, so the perspective gets pushed to extremes. I think it came out well though. The inks will hopefully make the image a lot clearer.

©2012 James Mathurin

Acquisition, Page 5 (Rough Sketch)

I'm posting this rough sketch because it took me ages to get a workable idea for the composition of Page 5. After a lot of bad ideas, this popped into my head, and I had to frantically scribble it down before I forgot it. It's not the easiest composition (this page is taking me ages), but I think it's the best for what I needed. The pencils for this go up tomorrow, and I hope it still has the energy this sketch has.

©2012 James Mathurin

Acquisition, Page 2, black & white

So, I'm working on page 5 for Acquisition, but I thought I'd quickly go back and put page 2 in black and white, like I did with page 1. I like the look, and I'm thinking ahead to printing it when it's completed. So, here it is. Pencils for page 5 shouldn't be too long.

©2012 James Mathurin

Recent deisgns on t-sirts, etc.

So, as promised, I've been back on the old Cafépress, so here are some examples of products you can buy with my Summer, L'Ermitage and Voodoo Bloke designs on.

Summer T-Shirt

L'Ermitage T-Shirt

Voodoo Bloke flask

©2012 James Mathurin

L'ermitage, finished piece

So, I have finally finished this one! It's taken a few days to get from the shaded version to this, but here we are:

I've tried to keep some of the colours similar to the original (which you can see in this post here), but it was always meant to be its own thing, and I'm really pretty happy with the end result.

Right! Off to Cafépress to put this on some t-shirts, etc, and then I'm planning to get to work on the last few pages of Acquisition!

©2012 James Mathurin

L'ermitage, shaded

I've been working on the L'ermitage picture, and the colouring is coming along well, but I was also happy with this black and white version with shading and text. Anyway, here 'tis:

©2012 James Mathurin

Voodoo Bloke

So, I said I'd put a colour version of this up, and I did. Here is the Voodoo Bloke in his techicolour glory. Glory at the blue of his pants.

Oh, and I've already added it to the Cafépress shop, so if you like it, stick it on a t-shirt or a mug or something!

 ©2012 James Mathurin

Voodoo man

This is a reworking of this piece from a couple of months ago. While I liked the image I did find aspects of it... disturbing. Sex, violence, and female bodies are factors which do appear together more commonly than they should. It made me want to rework the image with the genders swapped, to see what the end result was.

So, here it is...

Coloured versions to come.

 ©2012 James Mathurin

L'ermitage, inks

This one's taken a while, but I'm really happy with how it's coming along. I used the inking stage to fix a few things I wasn't happy about in the pencilling stage, and I have a few things I want to try out in the colouring.

©2012 James Mathurin

Cyber-Art Nouveau - Summer

So, after a couple of colour experiments, here is an inked and coloured version of the sci-fi'd version of Alphonse Mucha's Summer, which I posted previous versions of here and here.

©2012 James Mathurin

A new logo for my t-shirts

I already have a logo for this blog, which is basically my business card (which I should really get printed up one day), but my Cafépress shop was sadly lacking one. Now my HTML skills are clearly not so great as to make it look as great as it clearly is (see below), but it's an improvement. Here, go have a look and buy something!

 ©2012 James Mathurin

Art Nouveau Cyber drawings continued...

Continuing to work on the drawing I first shared here, my update of Summer by Alphonse Mucha, it has reached the inking stage. I had a busy weekend...

©2012 James Mathurin

New Art-Nouveau cyborg drawings

This is another piece I started working on at the same time as this one. Colour work will follow...

This image is based on the Paul Emile Berthon poster for the revue L'Ermitage in 1897.

©2012 James Mathurin

Twisted Romance t-shirts!

I nearly forgot to mention, but I added a range of products with the Twisted Romance design I did for Electric Sheep magazine last year.

Click on the picture for a larger image, and click here for a link to the shop.

©2012 James Mathurin

Childcare logos

Again, while I was on my tonsillectomy break, I also worked on a logo for my cousin, Jane, who provides childcare (something there's a shameful lack of, certainly in the affordable sense), and she also graciously said I could share them here, so here they are (click on them for larger versions):

©2012 James Mathurin

Cyber-nouveau! Or something like that

So, I had some time off, and actually don't seem to have anything to show for it. Time to fix that!

What is it? Well, my wedding reception was held at the awesome Belgian Brasserie at Merton Abbey Mills in South West London. As well as fantastic food, they have beautiful Art Nouveau prints up on the walls, and I was struck by how graphic-arty and comic-booky (and other adjectives which do exist) they looked. It got me thinking about those poses being updated to a more sci-fi style. This is the first reach a finished pencil stage, although another is close. When they're done, I'll be sticking them on t-shirts and other items in my shop!

The drawing's based on the image below, which I unfortunately don't have a name for. If you recognise it, please do let me know.

©2012 James Mathurin

Voodoo T-Shirts!

I nearly forgot to let you guys know about the third T-shirt I did! Here it is, using the voodoo lady design I did a while back for Callan Maloney. You could buy it maybe?

©2012 James Mathurin

Another t-shirt!

I have done a whole bunch of images for the Apostles bar, and this was one of my favourites. It seemed like a good idea to put it on a t-shirt. So, I fiddled with the image a tiny bit, and here it is! If you like it, go right here to buy the t-shirt!

©2012 James Mathurin

T-Shirts!

So, I have got a cafépress shop, and I am finally getting around to putting some designs up on it. So, here is the first one, a coloured version of a design I put up on here a while ago.

So, if you like the design, go buy it!

©2012 James Mathurin

Acquisition, Page 1 (again!)

After trying the experiment with what I thought was a more effective black and white version of page 4, I wanted to go back and see how older pages looked with that different process. You can see how the old version looked here, and I think this comes out clearer and just generally more pleasing.

©2012 James Mathurin

Acquisition, Page 4, finished black and white shaded version

So, continuing the experiment with grayscale shading, rather than full-on colouring, here is page 4 of Acquisition with text.

©2012 James Mathurin

Acquisition Page 4 black & white colouring

So, I did do a couple of black and white colourings of Acquisition pages before, where I basically turned the coloured pages black and white. It worked, but it wasn't great, and it was helpfully pointed out to me that it was a bit too muddy and confusing.

Therefore, I tried out a different black and white technique here, where everything should be clearer (although I noticed a couple of drafting / pencilling errors about the page that are really bugging me). Please let me know what you think.

©2012 James Mathurin

Acquisition, Page 4, finished inks (or ARE they finished?)

So, here are the final black and white images of Acquisition page 4. I've done it in my normal style, but am already wondering if I might do whatever my next project is with a  style more like I had in the previous stage.

Anyway, this is my last post as an unmarried man! Excitement! This is also a good time for me to thank my future wife Tammy, as she encouraged me so much to do this, and I would have let my art fall by the wayside years ago if not for her. I will always be grateful to her for that, and I'm looking forward to our life together, and anything (art, kids, I don't mind) that I produce in that time.

©2012 James Mathurin

Acquisition Page 4, first inking stage

Just showing an inking stage I posted the other day, but without the pencils...

©2012 James Mathurin