The Themed Art Blog are having a Harry Potter week. I'd been needing something to get me loosened up and relaxed. So here, are Hagrid and Harry, from the beginning of The Philosopher's Stone.

I didn't refer to the book, but I know Hagrid delivers Harry to the Dursley's house on his motorbike, and I've a sneaky suspicion that Harry is in a basket or something...

...but I've been (unsurprisingly) paternal recently, and couldn't help going all whimsical with a caring cradling pose.

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A bit slow on the up-take news-wise, but it looks like a cracking little Dredd strip I finally finished late last year will be out over the summer in Zarjaz issue 15.


Judge Dredd, The Taking of Mopad 456 by Lee Robson and myself.

Some stages for this teaser panel:


part of the bonkers amount of work I did in google sketch-up... in my opinion you can't really tell how much I did used models, for good or bad!




sketched over to add good old Joe Dredd in there. He's celebrating 35 years in comics this week! 2000ad was 35 last week...





here's the inks, see, most of that modelling was a waste of time, or certainly seems to fade into the background.





finally, the toned version ready to have some textures added.

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Just before New Year, my lovely wife gave birth to this little bundle of joy.

Ted Sampson Levell
Needless to say, things may be a little quiet on the blogging front for a while...
Please do check in every once in a while though, as I do have some other exciting projects I will be working on this year and normal service will be resumed as soon as possible!

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It's that time of year again.


I've just sent out my e-card to (hopefully) all of my friends, family, clients and collaborators etc.

En-masse e-mail delivery paranoia demands that I state here that if you haven't received the card, feel you should have or would like to receive it next year... please do that which is necessary to alert me, fix your filters and/or notify your e-mail provider that I'm not spam!

It's a truly awful pun, but that is, in-keeping with festive or seasonal jokes found in crackers...

The initial idea was just a horrible cardigan made into a card, like so many 'Christmas jumpers' of my youth - after sketching a perplexed and generic 'every-man' holding up said offending garment, it occurred that the real joke was in the misunderstanding. Why it became Peter Parker and MJ is anybody's guess, but my guess would fall firmly in the camp of "because I like drawing girls".

The usual 'stages' stuff follows:

digital roughs

sketch-up lounge guide

final digital "pencils"

inks

All the very best of the season to you all, have a good one!

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Yesterday was my turn to submit to the 2000ad virtual advent calendar.

A terrible, terrible pun drifted into my mind - but one that had to be done! Nikolai Dante is the swashbuckling lead character in the 2000ad saga of the same name, created by Robbie Morrison and Simon Fraser. For the uninitiated, Jena Makarov is his love interest (a frequently thwarted one).


here are the pencils and inks for those of you who are interested in the process.




I had a number of captions and dialogue options, some more smutty than others, and I even asked for some opinions, and they were as divided as my own... in the end I left the 'sack' jokes alone, despite the puerile joy of them. You are welcome to suggest any and all alternate options in the comments though!

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For the past couple of years, Pete Wells, charming host of the 2000ad covers uncovered blog has run an online advent calendar on the 2000ad forum.

This year is no different, and once again, my effort is early doors number 2. For those who're interested, and haven't seen them before, here are my efforts for 2009 and 2010.

Not wanting to spoil any potential surprises, here's a crop of my rough.

The final version should be up on the forum already, but if not it will be soon!

You can keep up with the wonderful entries each day until the 24th by calling in to the forum topic here.

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Jim Campbell should need no introduction, as a letterer at least, but what a lot of people don't know is that he is also a talented artist too.


Jim did the above illustration in response to my Judge Kev photo (see previous post of me in a Planet Replica's Judge's helmet) that was taken by Bolt-01 at Thoughtbubble.

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I was at Thought bubble in Leeds over the weekend. Thanks, first of all to Dave Stokes for organising a pass for me.

I met up with other friends too, some old, some new and had some great chats with them. Thanks go to, Rich Clements, Dave Evans, Owen Watts and Jazz, Judge Burdis, Lee Langford, Dunk Nimmo, Eddie and Jon at Com.X, Lee Robson, John Burdis, Pye Parr, Luke Preece, Stephen Downey, Vicky Stonebridge, Emma Vieceli, Conor and Liz Boyle, Nick Dyer, Pete Wells, Spirite 68, Matt Badham, Abby Ryder, Daniel Carey George, Guy (Large 48), Terry Martin, Matt Smith (Tharg), Mike Marshall, Nic Wilkinson, Mark Laming and Dan McDaid, sorry to any one I've forgotten in that list.

I also achieved a childhood dream thanks to Planet Replicas:

Judge Kev
There were some very interesting developments, but I want to wait to see how they pan out before blurting out what they might be!

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Cripes! A month between posts...


This was done as a very quick entry for this month's A Little Bit Bunny, pop on over there to see this guy as I intended to present him...

I vaguely thought he could be Wolverine's dad!

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...awry?


I was doodling, this is what happened.

What the hell is it?

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This was quickly sketched out whilst on holiday last week... used it as inking warm-up over the last couple of days.

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Following the 2000ad Lego commission, Ian Leonard asked if I could expand the concept by doing cover recreations of classic 2000ad covers. He had a number in mind, but first up was Brian Bolland's brilliant cover to prog 225.


For ref, I've included the original Bolland version below.


I missed a trick though, I should have edited in a 'Legoland' price... if Ian asks for any more of these, I will add that into the price list somewhere!

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A little while ago, Lee Robson, asked me if I'd be interested in taking part in a project to help promote his (and Bryan Coyle's) upcoming Graphic Novel Babble, furthermore, it would mean doing my own take on BlueSpear for it! Naturally, I was coy, and simply said I'd be delighted. What was more, he'd squared the way with Andi Ewington and Com.X and they were happy for Lee to use my depiction of BlueSpear on his promotional project! Excited? Me? You betcha!


Lee has some other top characters and creators lined up and the project continues this week with Dave Evans' Whistler.

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Here's something I did for Pete Wells of the 2000ad covers uncovered blog fame.



I'd owed him a sketch for a while, since HiEx 2010 in fact, where for some reason, I only did half a sketch for him.

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I've had this idea bumping around in my head for close to ten years now. Usually it would get paraded out when I heard about someone doing something stupid... the 'less/fewer' error was pointed out to me by my wife, Vicky, some time ago. Learning from the mistake (in the spirit of the comment itself) meant that I had to stop saying it, even though I still thought it was funny.


The blackboard and 'teacher's correction' idea hit me this morning and so I quickly put this together in photoshop. The idea, like me, is bettered by Vicky's input I think.

I doubt very much that the phrase was ever original to me but It's nice when an old idea finally comes to fruition and you don't see someone else who's made something of 'your' idea before you do.

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Another commission for Ian Leonard. Delighted to do this one after the Wizard of Oz one I did just a couple of months ago.


Hopefully it speaks for itself - I think it could really work as a series of Lego minifigures.

Here are my rough sketch sheets - yes, I cheated - I used a template figure printed a few out and drew all over the top them...

  
  

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Recently did this illustration of Emma Frost for Andi Ewington, he of 'The 45' from Com.X fame. Watch out for 'Blue Spear' coming soon from Com.X by Andi, Eddie Deighton and Cosmo White.


She'll wrap you around her little finger, so it's no surprise that here's a picture of a happy looking Andi with my interpretation of Ms. Frost!

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Here then, as promised in yesterday's post: Johnny Alpha, back in the land of the living.


If you missed it yesterday over on Scotch Corner, here's my Durham red piece mocked up into a prog cover.


And The Johnny Alpha one too.

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Well, last month I was delighted to be invited to contribute once again to Scotch Corner, the Caledonian Comic Artists Collective who're celebrating their blogging birthday this month with a series of guest slots. I'm am amongst some seriously talented folk contributing, too many cool people to name have already contributed - and there's more to come!

Previously, I've submitted Bat-world pieces to their guest slot: a Harley Quinn, a Joker, and a Catwoman, but no surprises, it is 2000ad that I have turned to on this special occasion. Specifically the world of Strontium Dog, and as is usual for me, I gravitated to the girl in the gang - Durham Red.


You can see the full coloured version of that over on Scotch Corner. Also note the edited hand... after I'd inked it, and saught the advice of trusted indivduals, I felt this version was too claw like.

If you like this, then please come back tomorrow as I'll be posting up a piece that celebrates the return of Johnny Alpha, in fact, the resurrection of Johnny Alpha and his imminent return to the prog - as trailered in prog 1742, see the prog or ECBT2000ad for the details!

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So a post on ECBT2000ad made me revisit something I did a couple of weeks ago.



Pretty simple as I had the graphics already sitting around on my computer. 30 minute spoof- lovely.

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Now that the new issues of Zarjaz and Dogbreath are out... (you'll have bought them already I take it!) I can share something more of the strip I did for the ABC Warriors special.


This is the first two pages as a taster.


As I mentioned in my "Black Hole" post, I was trying to get an essence of other artists, one of who was the BIZ... not sure I really like the finish to be honest, but when I showed it to Tharg at Kapow, he thought it had more energy...

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Last year, as a result of a recommendation by my buddy Dave Stokes, I was asked to produce a logo for a gaming book by a company that produces wargame figurines. Miniature Design Studio produces 28mm figurines for what I'd describe as role playing games...

The brief was to create a logo with a 'calligraphy bias'. The name of the game was 'origin'. This was the design that was settled on:


Recently, I was approached to do a further two logos. This time, in b&w and colour.


Again, there was a strong 'calligraphic' bais to the letter forms.

It's always nice to mix up things a bit and I do enjoy working on something so different from my more usual illustration work. Different challenges keep things fresh I think because coming back to drawing after these has been a real joy as well.

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