The task from Mr. Ellis this week:

You are an artist/designer.

You have to put together the cover for the winter issue of something called WEIRD TALES.

You have been told that WT is the long-running magazine of Strange Fiction in the world. It published HP Lovecraft. It published Robert E Howard. Tennessee Williams. Ray Bradbury. Ramsay Campbell. Tanith Lee. Michael Moorcock. Its illustrators have included the wonderful Margaret Brundage, Virgil Finlay and Hannes Bok. Spooky stuff. Mysterious stuff. Strange stuff.

Weird Tales publishes The Weird Shit. And now you must design a cover for the most venerable and yet modern magazine of The Weird Shit.

Well I took that, and from where I went you’d never guess I don’t actually like calamari:

Mr. Ellis has another remake challenge for us, while I wait for my attempt to dry here’s what I was up to:

Because I really hate this sheet of paper I attacked it with a compass point before I started.

Splash on some water, then some colours. Put down my paintbrush and forget where I put it.

Draw in a man, make the tentacles more disgusting.

Pow! It’s done. Little man doesn’t look too happy about this.

I got around to finishing something! Action shot:

and this is the result:

I’m liking these shopping bags, it’s a temptingly huge print area to play with. If anybody’s interested in one, you can see the other colours here:

So that’s the difference between daylight and my desk lamp, eh? Cross my palm with five shiny pounds and one of those tasty bags will be yours, complete with your choice of lino cut. It’s a win-win deal!

BREAKING NEWS:

I love Oompa Loompa season.

Right then. I’m away to visit my parents for a few days in the Far Distant North, when I get back on Friday I’ll be trying once again to work on things that are Waiting instead of things that are New. Till then here’s the start of the second instalment of Pizza Ninja:

It worked! I’ll be working this into a t-shirt design in the very near future:

I’m now a contributor at The Great and Secret Thing. What the hell is that?

The doors of The Great and Secret Thing have been thrown open.

We’re no longer a repository of old libraries, hidden tomes, and secrets. We’re  a dusty, traveled letter, read, reread and passed through many hands. We’re still The Great and Secret Thing, but we’re no longer gnostic in our secrets. Now it is all about sharing each of our secret talents with the world.

I like this idea, I think I’ll be spending some time there.

I just had a nice day cutting lino and I’ve got this (thankfully) reversed photo for you:

I’m pretty happy with these so far, I’ll be inking them on Monday if everything goes to plan…

This fell out of my brain over a couple of breaks at work:

I’ve got to tell you, the last couple of weeks haven’t been so good on the drawing front. The dayjob’s been getting me more worn out than I’m used to, and I’ve just come off a set of early early shifts that would have left me plenty of time for drawing if they hadn’t also turned my brain to mush. Well, I’ve just got my first decent amount of time off since March and I’m using it to go on my holidays. I’ll be back in a week, with any luck my brain will have had a chance to un-mush and I can get back to the stupidly long to-do list I’ve built up. Till then, here’s a couple of sketches and work-in-progress hints as to the things I’m halfway through just now, as well as what’s been happening in general:

First thing that’s happened is my boots have died. Big deal, yes? Yes! They were about four or five years old, with nice hard toes for the many times a day I drop heavy things on my feet. I’d even managed to stop them smelling too much like there was something dead in there, and then the soles go and crack on me. I can put up with a lot, but boots that squeak like somebody’s squeezing a hamster with every step just have to go. RIP boots, you were awesome. Next up:

These pictures are all from my camera, on account of my scanner getting really shy all of a sudden. Now here, I’ve been mucking about with Zombie Kitty, there’s gonna be some news about the miniature bastard soon. Next!

Drawn watching an old Hitchcock film the other night. Lastly!

I probably shouldn’t have watched Batman Begins in quite that state of mind…

See you all in a week!

I really love this book by Cory Doctorow, which as I just found out from the link there is being published in the UK in a week’s time – I’ll have to get a proper version of this cover made up soon:

The main character has a set of Russian dolls for brothers, his mum is a washing machine and his dad is a mountain. What’s not to like about that?