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I've a new book out for Christmas! The title kind of gives away who it's about!

Most people will think of L. Frank Baum as the author of The Wizard of Oz, but he was an incredibly prolific author who created many other wonderful and classic titles, one of which is The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, first published in 1902.

Hesperus Press, which focuses on publishing neglected classics, has just released a new paperback edition of the book with interior pen drawings by me.


Released on 1st December in paperback,  I contributed 22 black & white drawings (note: the cover however is not my illustration).
Book details are here: http://www.hesperuspress.com/santa.html

ISBN 13: 9781843915904

Here's a taste of some of the interior drawings:


The blurb from the publisher's site: Who is Santa Claus? We all know he is real, but where did he come from, and how does he deliver presents to all the children of the world? In this wonderful book, L. Frank Baum, author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, tells the true story of Santa Claus, from being found as a baby in the woods to making the first toy the world has ever seen (a carving of his cat Blinkie), to the invention of the dolly, the Christmas stocking, the Christmas tree, his battles with the evil Awgwas and being granted the mantle of immortality so he can keep bringing joy to children for ever. Beautifully written, and with glorious new illustration by John Shelley, The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus brings the magic of the Oz books to the life of Father Christmas. Introducing unforgettable characters like the Master Woodsman, Necile the Wood-Nymph and little Mayrie, who just wants a toy of her own, this is a book for children of all ages, and is as immortal as Santa Claus himself.


You'll have to buy the book to see more!

This was a fun book to illustrate, the narrative rolls on quickly with many scene changes that could have been illustrated. With limited space for illustration though it was a struggle to decide which passages to illustrate and which to leave. Inevitably I drew more than were initially commissioned, thankfully the publisher found room to include all.

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Poor Children. Day 28 of #Inktober2016.

Today's Inktober is a little different - an extra illustration for a current book project, a new edition of Frank L. Baum's The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus. This was a 'warm-up' drawing to get me in the groove and test nibs, so a little rough and ready, though often first drawings have an energy that re-draws somehow miss! Unfortunately, although there are several sections featuring children it doesn't quite fit with any specific passage in the book, so I've not submitted it to the publisher with the other cuts.

I can show it here though!

The book is in production as I write, more news on that to come.

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Fast

Collect

Sad

Lost

Rock

Broken

Jump

Transport

Nervous

Scared

Tree

Wet

Battle

Escape

Flight

Squeeze

Big

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For the seventh selection in A History of my Archive in 10 Objects here are some surviving sketchbooks from my 3 years on the Illustration course at Manchester Polytechnic.

Collection of sketchbooks, 1978-1981

Okey, so this is cheating a bit - these are clearly more than one object! But the contents are pretty consistent and were all bundled together in my father's loft, so I think I can safely lump them together as a single item.

Actually, very little remains of my work from the years 1978-1981 while I was at Manchester, as previously mentioned on this blog I ceremoniously threw almost all of my course work out of the 4th Floor window of Chatham House on the final day of the last term, keeping only my degree show portfolio work. It was an act of bravado, but also a statement of the frustration and disillusionment many of us sensed at the end, I felt I'd somehow lost direction during the course. So I was pleasantly surprised to find these sketchbooks still in existence in my dad's loft.

Unfortunately there's not much I want to share, most of the pages are testament to a struggle within confines I'd placed myself in as a pen and ink illustrator. Some time during the First Year I was told by my course head Tony Ross (yes, that Tony Ross) that painting wasn't really my thing, I shouldn't worry about colouring and would be best served by concentrating entirely on pen and ink drawing, with just a splash of colour. I took this advice rather too much to heart and pen drawing was pretty much all I did for most of the 2nd and 3rd years. When I wasn't galavanting off to punk gigs I spent much of my studio time illustrating some of my favourite novels in black and white - The Wind in the Willows, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Treasure Island, Tom's Midnight Garden, Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH... all really imaginative books for an illustrator to explore.

College project: Treasure Island, pen & ink 1980. This drawing survived as a degree show piece.

I saw myself as a black-and-white specialist in the manner of E. H. Shepherd, Mervyn Peake and Edward Ardizzone, it didn't occur to me that in the late '70's fewer and fewer publishers were actually printing novels with text illustrations, that my heroes were all of their time. Most surprisingly of all (and this is something I was to particularly wonder about later), I either wasn't given, or chose to ignore, any guidance to study, write, or dummy picture books, the stock-in-trade of any would-be children's illustrator!

Years later when I met Tony Ross again at Bologna I questioned him about this, and was told, "you have to remember John, it was a commercial illustration course, not a children's book course"... which only partly answered the question. Tony was the head of the course and a children's illustrator, I was the only children's book illustrator in my year (all the others working towards the broader illustration market). I'd set myself very narrow constraints, my pen and ink drawings were still clumsy, the sketchbooks are full of marginalia, doodles rather than dynamic ground breaking work. Maybe I'm being rather hard on myself, but looking through the sketchbooks now from a professional point of view, of the illustration work there's very little I would want to share, I'm not surprised I wanted to throw most of my course artwork out of the window!

College project: Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, pen & ink 1981. Another degree show survivor.

However, mixed in with the heavy-handed experiments (which I'm NOT going to show!)  the sketchbooks also contain lots of drawings from life, sketches of those around me which bring back very clear memories of the time. As a break from struggling with pen and ink I drew fellow students, the things around me... it seems the more I tried to be a 'proper illustrator', the further away I was drifting from inspiration, yet the sketches from life have an authenticity and lighter touch I was somehow missing in my course work. Here are a few.

The most ready-to-hand subjects were the other illustration students on my course....

Fellow student Shirley Barker sketch mixed in with a page of course work on The Wind in the Willows, 1979

Melanie Dabbs, 1980

Bob Wood 1980

Jean Yarwood, 1981

Tammy Wong, 1981

... even occasionally the course teachers...


...then there were the places I lived...

A scruffy room in Didsbury, 1980. That's my Corona typewriter on the table.

The All Saints campus from the Halls of Residence, around 1979. Student Union on the right, Oxford Road in the distance.

...and there was the Thursday afternoon life class (regretably stopped half way through the course), which was a wonderful escape while it lasted as it was purely observed drawing.


My eyes were greatly opened by my time at Manchester, not least thanks to the Manchester indie music scene and my friends. The course itself though had narrowed my output and possibly development, but I don't exclusively blame the tutors, I've a tremendous respect for Tony Ross. We must have been a tough bunch to teach.

Tony Ross drawing in my sketchbook margin, I think he was  encouraging me to make my animals fatter.

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I used three black Polychromo pencils on this one. Almost - two are total stubs, and one has a little life left in it, barely. This was a lot of fun to do! Its all colored pencil - no digital at all. All I did at the end was use Photoshop to clean up around the outside edge (erase the paper texture), and a weird blob that's on my scanner that I always have to clean up on everything I scan (sigh). This stayed remarkably clean, otherwise. I resisted the urge to 'nudge' a few values here and there, because I figured I'd end up redoing the whole thing once I get started. That's the good and bad of being able to fuss with things digitally - you can go on forever. No, I decided this was done, and left it alone. Onto the next one!

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This week we celebrate the artwork of comics legend Paul Smith! The 600th issue of Uncanny X-Men hit the stands this week and I was very pleased to see that Smith contributed one of the variant covers for this landmark issue. X-Men was really the reason I got into comics as a kid. In fact the very first comic I picked up and read(besides the Bob’s Big Boy comics they used to give away when you ordered a kid’s meal..) was Uncanny X-Men #166 with that glorious Paul Smith cover of The X-Men battling the Brood!

A good friend of mine at the time(probably ’83/’84) had an older brother who collected comics and he had an big, old chest full of them(no bags ‘n boards, mind you..). So, when I’d go over there for a sleep-over, I’d get to rummage through his treasure trove of funny-books and then pull a few out for some late-night sleeping bag reading! Those Paul Smith issues of X-Men were truly magical, and always will be to me. There have been many great artists to work with Chris Claremont on his classic X-Men run, including legends like Dave Cockrum, John Byrne, Terry Austin, Bob Wiacek, John Romita Jr, Barry Windsor Smith, Arthur Adams, Alan Davis, Jim Lee, etc. etc, but for me, my favorite X-Men artist will always be Paul Smith. 

Smith is mostly a self-taught artist. He worked as an animator on Ralph Bakshi’s The Lord of the Rings and American Pop before working at Marvel Comics in the early 1980’s. After establishing himself on titles like X-Men, Doctor Strange, and Marvel Fanfare, Smith would go on to do more independent, critically acclaimed series like Leave It To Chance and The Golden Age, both with writer James Robinson. He continues to work in mainstream comics for special projects, and cover illustrations, while also staying very busy with private commission work.

The best place to get updates on what Paul Martin Smith(PMS) is up to and to see more art is on his website here.

For more comics related art, you can follow me on my website comicstavern.com – Andy Yates

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Happy Halloween, from the creepy demon children. I hope that you have candy for them, because they don’t look very friendly.

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Since this is Halloween Week, I thought how better to celebrate than exploring the intricately detailed work of Cursed Pirate Girl creator Jeremy Bastian! A graduate of The Art Institute of Pittsburgh, Bastian spent his years studying the works of the great engraving art masters and old time book illustrators. One of the inspirations for Cursed Pirate Girl was a children’s book called The Ship’s Cat, featuring illustrations by Alan Aldridge. It takes about a week for Jeremy Bastian to draw one page of Cursed Pirate Girl. Each page is meticulously packed with the smallest details; it’s fun to just stare at a page and let your eyes wander. You can read about Jeremy’s art process on this blog post here.

Cursed Pirate Girl follows the title character’s search for her Pirate Captain father on the mythical Omerta Seas, encountering many strange and wondrous creatures along the way. The first 3 issues were published by Olympian Publishing and are now highly sought after collector’s items. Much bigger publisher Archaia/BOOM has taken over on Cursed Pirate Girl and if you’re quick enough, you might still be able to find a copy of Cursed Pirate Girl 2015 Annual(52 pages), which hit stands this month. The plan is to do 2 more yearly specials to complete the 6 part story, but there could be more material set in the Cursed Pirate Girl world after that.

If you want to get the latest news on Jeremy Bastian & Cursed Pirate Girl, fell free to follow him on Twitter here!

For more comics related art, you can follow me on my website comicstavern.com – Andy Yates

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The story goes that legendary Uncanny X-Men scribe Chris Claremont discovered Malaysian-born artist Sonny Liew at a comics convention and got him his first big break into comics, landing Liew a gig illustrating Iron Man for Marvel. It was a small gig, just one illustration, but it set the stage for Liew’s bright future in comics! In 2004, Sonny Liew won the Xeric Award(an award for excellence in self-published comics) in 2004 for Malinky Robot. Later, he would go on to illustrate such titles as Slave Labor & Disney’s Wonderland series, Marvel’s Sense and Sensibility adaptation, and collaborate with artist/inker Mark Hempel on DC/Vertigo’s My Faith in Frankie.

Before studying illustration at Rhode Island School of Design, Liew attended college in Singapore(where he currently resides) and in the UK. His work has been featured in the critically acclaimed anthology Flight and he’s served as editor of the Southeast Asian comics anthology Liquid City.

Liew has been a celebrated artist at home, winning Singapore’s Young Artist Award in 2010, but recently he’s found himself in a bit of controversy over his latest book, The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye. The grant that supported the making of that book was withdrawn by the National Arts Council for containing sensitive topics. You can hear more about this story from the man himself at this book sharing session.

Right now is a great time to become a Sonny Liew fan, because he’s making some of the best comics art of his career on the newly relaunched Doctor Fate series with famed DC writer/editor/former-president Paul Levitz! I see that more people are catching onto this series, now that it’s up to issue 5, so hopefully that will continue to happen and we’ll get a nice, long Doctor Fate run out of Liew!

If you’d like to see more art and learn more about Sonny Liew, check out his blog here.

For more comics related art, you can follow me on my website comicstavern.com – Andy Yates

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I remember being really impressed by the shots in the original Matrix film back in 1999, but I had no idea, back then, that a little known Spider-Man artist first helped bring that movie to life with pencil & paper. Steve Skroce previously worked with Lana and Andy Wachowski on an obscure horror comic book called Clive Barker’s Ectokid, which was his first major work as a comic-book artist. Before his time as Matrix storyboard artist, Skroce worked on a number of high profile superhero comics, including Cable, Gambit, X-Man, and Rob Liefeld’s Youngblood with comics legend Alan Moore. 

Today, Steve Skroce is putting out some of his best artwork yet on the creator-owned series We Stand On Guard with superstar writer Brian K. Vaughan. The story takes place a 100 years in the future and follows a group of Canadian citizens(Skroce is Canadian) defending their country from an invasion by The United States of America. The 4th issue just hit the stands and it appears that the first volume will wrap up with issue 6.

Skroce has drawn many storyboards for movies, including many more with the Wachowski’s. Some of those films include The Matrix Trilogy, V for Vendetta, Speed Racer, and Cloud Atlas. He also found time to make more comics, with a memorable 4 issue stint on Wolverine(2000) for Marvel and the independent series Doc Frankenstein(2004-present), which he co-created with artist Geof Darrow, for Burlyman.

Steve Skroce apparently doesn’t have much of a social media presence(he’s probably just too busy drawing!), so here’s a link to his wiki-page, if you want more information.

For more comics related art, you can follow me on my website comicstavern.com – Andy Yates

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There once was an old woman who possessed a remarkable “green thumb.” Flowers bloomed, trees bore fruit, the  grass was always green on her small half an acre lot…. and yet the land that surrounded her oasis was barren, dry and void of life. The only interruption in the landscape was the lifeless and cumbersome machinery poised to devour the small Eden she had tenderly cared for.

The man who spearheaded the conspiracy, had many times been dismissed. In his gluttony, he conceived a plan to torture the woman by detaching a part her anatomy each time she denied him access to her property. The intent was not to kill, but to terrify.

The first surprise encounter resulted in the loss of a thumb.

When the ambulance arrived to hasten the woman to the hospital for medical treatment, they found her drenched in blood still tending her garden amidst her great pain. Sadly, the woman died en route to the hospital.

While the villain in this evil ambush remained anxious about the woman’s death, the  glee in his victory absorbed any thoughts of humanity he  had left.

As he surveyed his newly acquired property, he became aware of a  sound.  A familiar mumbling, a quiet sing song voice of adoration. As he moved into the garden he found her… busily  tending to herself in the garden. “You see” she said  “Everything I touch grows…. even me ……..”

Adapted from a story first shown on the television series The Night Gallery, to read the original story, Green Fingers, which is so much better, by RC Cook go Here
Beware it’s a spooky one!

To view the Night Gallery Episode go HERE

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I love the character and attitude that artist David Lafuente puts into his comics pages! This week saw the release of the fifth and final issue of Marvel’s M.O.D.O.K. Assassin, which features another deliciously dynamic cover by Lafuente. David Lafuente is from Spain and currently lives in London where he’s working on his next big project, a creator-owned series for Image Comics called The Ludocrats with fellow creators Kieron Gillen and Jim Rossignol.

Lafuente first cut his teeth in the mainstream comics world on the 2008-09 Hellcat mini-series with writer/artist Kathryn Immonen, then worked with Brian M. Bendis on the Ultimate Spider-Man relaunch. Some of my favorite art by David Lafuente is his interior work on the All-New Doop series in 2014 with Doop’s creator’s Peter Milligan & Mike Allred; check out those beautiful pages above!

Other notable works include Batman Eternal, Batgirl, Neli Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book, and The Runaways.

You can follow David Lafuente and see his art process on his tumblr page here.

For more comics related art, you can follow me on my website comicstavern.com – Andy Yates

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This week we honor the work of Boston based cartoonist/animator Bob Flynn, who illustrated a variant cover for the latest issue of Kaboom’s Over the Garden Wall. Flynn has been contributing comics and covers to titles like SpongeBob Comics, ARGH!, Nickelodeon Magazine, and Heeby Jeeby Comix, which he co-created. I really like his bubbly, liquid-y, cartoon drawings; they really ooze to life on the page!

In addition to comics, Flynn has worked as a character designer for the animated series Bravest Warriors and he is the Director of Art & Animation at FableVision Studios.

You can read one of his self-published comics Brain #1 for free on his website here, and you can check out more of his art there while you’re at it!

For more comics related art, you can follow me on my website comicstavern.com – Andy Yates

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Since her beautifully delicate line-work graces the cover to the latest issue of Swords of Sorrow this week, we shine a light on the work of “renaissance woman” Tula Lotay! Working up her artwork in multiple layers of hand-drawn, hand-painted art, along with digital color/inks, Lotay spoils comics readers with an extraordinary amount of moody texture. She’s been contributing cover art and interiors to many books the past few years including Elephantmen, Zero, Rebels, American Vampire Anthology, The Wicked + The Divine, and Dynamite’s Swords of Sorrow.

Lotay is probably best known for her recent collaborations with writer Warren Ellis(Supreme Blue Rose, Blackcross; as cover artist, and their upcoming book Heartless), and her role as founder/organizer of the yearly Thought Bubble Festival in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England, which celebrates sequential art in all its forms.

If you like what you see, you should go follow Tula Lotay on her twitter page here!

For more comics related art, you can follow me on my website comicstavern.com – Andy Yates

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This week’s Island #2 comics anthology features cover and interior art by the great Emma Rios! I first noticed Rios’ art on Marvel titles like Cloak & Dagger: Spider Island, Osborne, and the Firestar 1-shot. Now, Rios is taking her artwork to the next level on her new Image series Pretty Deadly, with Osborne collaborator Kelly Sue DeConnick on writing duties. It’s a supernatural tale that follows Death’s daughter, as she rides through lush and horrifying lands, seeking retribution.

Emma Rios is a Spanish comics artist and illustrator who has made a name for herself here in the States as well as Europe and beyond! She broke into the American comics scene in 2008 with the Boom Studios series Hexed, then worked with writer Mark Waid on the Dr. Strange series “Strange” for Marvel. I see that one of her earlier works is a comic called APB, but apparently that’s not available here in the U.S.

You can see the latest art and follow Rios on her twitter page here.

For more comics related art, you can follow me on my website comicstavern.com – Andy Yates

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French born illustrator Marguerite Sauvage has been invading the comics world of late and she is wowing fans this week with her stunning interior art for the all-new DC Comics Bombshells series! Sauvage is a self-taught artist who actually decided to pursue a career in illustration after earning her degree in Law and Communication. Just some of her clients include such big names as Elle, Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, Louis Vuitton, L’Oréal, PlayStation, and Apple!

In addition to the interior art on Bombshells and Sensation Comics featuring Wonder Woman #3, Sauvage has been very busy as a comic book cover specialist for such titles as Hinterkind, Wolf Moon, Secret Wars, Howard the Duck, Jem and the Holograms, Thor, and Wayward.

With so much great comics work completed in such a small amount of time(1-2 years..?), I’m excited to see what Marguerite Sauvage has in store for us the next couple of years!

If you’d like to see more of Sauvage’s work and get the latest updates, you can follow her on twitter here.

For more comics related art, you can follow me on my website comicstavern.com – Andy Yates

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Nick Pitarra helps to kickoff the new comic John Flood this week with another one of his stellar variant covers. His intricate line work channels the work of comics legends Geoff Darrow and Seth Fisher, but at the same time Pitarra brings his own brand of mirth and mayhem to the stage!

Proving that artists should take art contests seriously, Pitarra was famously discovered from his submission to the 2007 Comic Book Idol competition. Apparently, superstar writer/artist Jonathan Hickman was so impressed by Pitarra’s work that he later offered him the job as artist on The Manhattan Projects, which would go on to be a multi-Eisner nominated fan favorite hit!

The Manhattan Projects, a satirical, mind-bending re-imagining of what happened after Albert Einstein and his team built the Atom Bomb, is still going strong today. The series just kicked off Volume 2 and Nick Pitarra’s work continues to get better and better. He’s also become one of the top cover illustrators for a slew of special variant covers for a wide range of titles including Red Skull, Weirdworld, And Then Emily Was Gone, Transformers vs. G.I. Joe, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

You can get the latest Nick Pitarra news & art on his twitter page here.

For more comics related art, you can follow me on my website comicstavern.com – Andy Yates

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Emily Kelley Website >>

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Nikola Kucharska Website >>

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Maggie meets her grandmother, and Oliver gets a scolding. (From MAGGIE & OLIVER OR A BONE OF ONE'S OWN.)

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Eva Cabrera is one of the exciting new talents to come out of Mexico in recent years, along with her Boudika Comics cohort Claudia Aguirre. I stumbled upon their table of comics a few years ago at San Diego Comic-Con. Boudika Comics has a few collaborative books available now, including The House of Dreams, Daymares, and the brand new Mavi.

Eva recently dipped her toe in the big publisher pool with two variant covers for BOOM! Studios’ Adventure Time comic and Bravest Warriors. She has also worked on various other projects like Esa Visita children’s book and No Entren Al 1408 Stephen King tribute anthology.

You can follow Eva Cabrera and see the latest art on her twitter page here.

For more comics related art, you can follow me on my website comicstavern.com – Andy Yates

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