Friday 7 December 2012

THE CHILD OF TIME review

Checkout this great review of the latest Panini Dr Who GN called The Child of Time! http://www.sfx.co.uk/2012/12/07/blog-doctor-who-the-child-of-time-review/

I drew the two parter Forever Dreaming and after a dreadful week this comes as a sorely needed tonic!

“Forever Dreaming” arguably has the best art in the book, or at the very least the most fitting. Adrian Salmon’s blocky, surrealist style is a perfect fit for both the quiet British lunacy of a seaside town and a deeply weird story that opens with Amy briefly trapped as a child in the past, features the Doctor turning to sand and at times wouldn’t feel out of place as an Avengers episode. Again, there are some nice characters beats here but the real star is the sheer visual invention of Salmon’s work.

Tuesday 4 December 2012

OINK IN SPACE !


I did this as a surprise for DWM editorial because I felt like it!

Monday 19 November 2012

CYBERTROPOLIS


The Cyberwoman from Torchwood has always reminded me visually of  Maria the  robot in Fritz Lang's Expressionist masterpiece Metropolis. I wanted to evoke an Expressionist movie poster feel for my piece. Here's the inspiration and stages of completion.





Monday 12 November 2012

ZYGON COMMISSION

Here's a commission I just completed. It was for an imagined Radio Times cover circa 1970s. Hopefully I'll get the lettered and titled art to share here soon. Anyone interested in commissions - please get in touch at adrian.salmon@btinternet.com



Monday 5 November 2012

DR PHIBES and COUNT YORGA

Pencils and inks for two pieces in the latest Little Shoppe of Horrors # 29. The Phibes piece was printed pretty small so shows the intended impact better. Robert Quarry stars in a Phibes movie but I chose to illustrate him as his infamous vampire Count Yorga for his feature. Phibes starred in two movies as did Yorga. Check 'em out!





Wednesday 24 October 2012

BERNICE SUMMERFIELD ART SALE Cont...

Following is all the original Benny cover art that is left.



CD Cover Art


Secret of Cassandra
The Green-Eyed Monsters
Dance of the Dead
Mirror Effect
The Bellatron Incident
Draconian Rage
The Bone of Contention
Something Changed
The Tartarus Gate
The Final Amendment
Beyond the Sea
The Adolescence of Time
Freedom of Imformation
The Greatest Shop in the Galaxy
Year Zero
                                          


Book Covers

The Glass Prison
The Tree of Life
Genius Loci
Old Friends
The Vampire Curse
Secret Histories
The Two Jasons




I also found the original interior art of the main characters published inside the Heart's Desire CD. Below are digital photos of both. All the Benny covers still for sale are  £60.00 each plus £7.50 postage . This includes the original art below.




Email me at  adrian.salmon@btinternet.com to see digital photos of any art you are interested in. Title your email Benny Art Sale.

Friday 12 October 2012

TAKING COLOUR COMMISSIONS

I am now doing b/w or colour commissions to brief. A4 B/w art around £80.00 and colour £120.00. Postage around £6.00 extra. Below is a commission I did recently of a Silurian redesign. Contact me at adrian.salmon@btinternet.com under email header Commission Ade , to discuss!


                                         Pencil drawing sent to client.


                                 Colour rough in Photoshop to determine colours.



                                  Final art painted in watercolour and gouache.

Tuesday 2 October 2012

ZETA ONE

From the film...


Sunday 30 September 2012

Wednesday 26 September 2012

DREDD : The Ghost of McMahon


Drawing Judge Dredd is probably the dream gig for many artists like myself who grew up wanting to work on 2000AD. The closest I've come is when Dredd briefly starred in the Judge Karyn strip Concrete Sky I drew - ordering a sun bomb be dropped through a manhole onto the vampire citizens of old New York. My other opportunity came through a number of fiction illustrations for the Dredd Megazine . See pencils below.

For me Mick McMahon's Dredd will always be the blueprint for the character design - big chin , big boots etc. Whilst Carlos Ezquerra designed Dredd it was Mick who refined and redefined the character for me so that whenever I go to draw Dredd it will always be  heavily indebted to McMahon's look. Perhaps it's not that obvious in the drawings below but that's because I was striving in naivete to be original with Dredd as much as one can and frankly that's an impossibly tall order. Like the Daleks you can't mess with the design at all without drawing a bad Dredd or Dalek.

 I'm off to see the new movie this afternoon. I like what I've seen and the costume design might be the way forward to exorcising the ghost of McM from our personal Dredd influence banks. You want to be original right? It gives us artists something new to work with and that can't be a bad thing even though McMahon's ghost will continue to haunt me...

A








Tuesday 25 September 2012

BLACK MUSEUM Pencils

Outgoing Dredd Megazine editor Alan Barnes hired me for this 5 page strip for the Black Museum series. The finished artwork was painted in B/W washes, below are the pencils I submitted. I was just coming off drawing The Faceless: A Terry Sharp Story which I drew in a similar angular way. I was hoping this might break me back into the Megazine fold and new editor Matt Smith seemed happy with the finished results ! This ended being the last thing I worked on for the Meg...






Thursday 13 September 2012

Me and Johnny

Me and Johnny Craig go a long ways back. I first clocked eyes on his comics work whilst I was at college. I'd got Russ Cochran's hardback reprint of VAULT OF HORROR and instantly had fallen in love with Johnny's work. He produced both covers and strips for this E.C. anthology title. His drawings had a wonderful considered clarity to them , nothing rendered to hell. His storytelling was considered and he wrote all his own stories too! He wasn't fast and therefore never hacked. He was all about drawing only what was needed and drawing things right within his style. I'm sure he idolised Caniff as he employed a similar brushstroke. To cap it all he was a genius cover designer - arguably E.C. comics' best.

The clarity I fell in love with bled over into my own work wether consciously or unconsciously. He had such grace and that was something I desired to replicate. Johnny died on 13 September 2001. My birthday. So every year I think of Johhny today and how much he continues to mean to me.

A


Tuesday 11 September 2012

TERROR OF THE AUTONS!

Whilst rummaging through some archive discs I ran across these images for the Terror of the Autons Timeteam feature. Below is a reasonably tight thumbnail layout which is why I most likely showed the editor! The usual practice was to discuss and go straight to pencils.




Next we see the submitted pencils. Obviously I've flipped the forground dead Autons and given the Master a more dramatic stance. This is very usual practice for me - always looking to tweak designs for maximum impact.



Finally the illo is coloured with the brighter colours in the forground and the pistol *shot* highlighted in comic style against the background tones.


Monday 3 September 2012

THE BIOCHEMIST

These two illustrations were done for a biochemical magazine. Former DWM editor Gary Gillatt roomed with the editor and passed on my name when he was looking for an artist. Most of the articles were aimed at the professional biochemist so I had no idea what they were on about. I had to come up with interesting images to brighten up the magazine. Before I went full time as an illustrator I worked for a number of artists agencies and briefed plenty of our artists on these type of commissions. I tried to recall how they would of approached jobs like these but I think I came up short. I did about 5 or 6 artworks for the magazine before I was shown the door.




Wednesday 29 August 2012

FEAR HER!

Pencils and inks for Fear Her Timeteam in DWM issue 451 out now. The father's angry face was drawn with a Derwent Tinted Charcoal pencil to give it a hand drawn feel whilst the rest was inked with pen and brush.


Monday 27 August 2012

The Sarah Jane Companion Vol 3


I was delighted to be asked to contribute illustrations to accompany the features on unmade Sarah Jane Adventures stories. Initially this was seven illos which soon doubled to fourteen! I was sent design layouts and since the deadline was fairly tight ( not to mention I was colouring a Dr Who strip for IDW at the same time) I needed to work out a suitably efficient style. Having pencilled I only inked in the lines before scanning. Then I coloured the art adding black only as a colour such as hair or somesuch. They gave the art a nice posterish look in places. The Sarah Jane Companion contains more of my illustrations and is on sale now! I'll be selling the original line drawings soon so keep an eye on the blog!