Glasgow Comic Con

Dan’s too busy to write up his visit to the Glasgow con so I, in my role as Best Girlfriend Ever, am doing it for him.

It’s a fairly small con but the guest list was excellent – Rufus Dayglo, Alan Grant, Jon Haward, Grant Morrison, Frank Quitely, Jim Starlin, John Wagner, as well as various small press publishers. 

Dan before the crowds

Loads of people came for sketches and poor old Dan didn’t stop all day – 40 sketches by 3pm! Suffice to say, he was knackered by the end of it, but still a happy bunny. We sold out of sketchbooks and met some very nice people - including Twitterfriends Mark Toner and Colin Bell. Here are some of Dan's sketches from that day:

Godzilla

Cthulhu

Commissioner Gordon

Dan, Rufus and Jon

Braveheart

Drawing Matt Smith

Man-Thing in progress

The finished Man-Thing

Hellboy pencils

Robin and Superman

Drawing the Hulk

Magneto

Penguin

Love that Joker!

Cosplayers - Scottish Spider-Man with Storm

On a break outside the venue and another sketch for a nice man and his son. 

Request of the day goes to Colin Bell for asking for Dan’s own character- Sky-Knight (watch this space!) 

Captain America

Last sketch of the day – Spider-Man/Peter Parker 

Thanks to everyone who came along to chat and who bought a sketchbook. Also to Sha Nazir for organising the event and inviting us.

Deborah

Optimist Prime

When I was a kid, the Transformers looked a lot less shiny than they do these days. John Ridgeway and Mike Collins' take on the big metal tramps was especially gnarly, with Ridgeway's looking almost like wood at times. I loved that - that extra bit of British texture made the Transformers mythos smaller, more mundane, but also somehow more magic. Anyway, with that in mind, I drew Optimus Prime:

Roll out!

D

RTA

A snippet of today's Time Share work. This is me trying to get away from the - to my mind - rather fey line I'm getting from my brush at the moment. I'll probably go back to the brush at some point - I've spent too long mastering it to give up on it now - but I'm very pleased with how this came out. This bit was made using PITT brush pens, PITT superfine pen, chunky black marker, crayon and zipatone. Blimey!

The rest of the page will be visible very, very soon...

VROOOOM!

Panel of the day, Time Share, soon from Oni Press.

Face On!

My favourite thing I drew today:

The Bat and the Banana!

The latest in a long line of increasingly bizarre crossovers from some weird alternative universe where all notions of good taste and sense are thrown to the wind, this sees DC Comics' and DC Thomson's finest united against the Clown Prince of Crime and, uh... well. See for yourself:

Yes, shark-infest custard. I can now die happy.

If you don't know who Bananaman is, here's the title sequence to his 80s TV show, moderately beloved by a generation:

And this is Batman:

The Brave and the Daft

A sneak peek of a VERY silly thing I drew today:

Open All Hours

HEY YOU! If you're interested in buying one of my prints or sketchbooks, but you can't be bothered arseing about with emails and what-have-you... Well, I can't say I blame you. So you might be interested to know I have a BIG CARTEL shop now. And here it is: http://danmcdaid.bigcartel.com/

You'll find this sort of thing waiting for you there:

And I'm going to be adding more prints and probably original artwork there in the months to come, so stay tuned. Hey, does anyone even know what stay tuned means these days? Like the record scratch effect (still ubiquitous in trailers for hack comedies), hasn't it become completely passe? How much "tuning" does one do on a daily basis these days? I'd argue almost none. That said, I bought a new TV recently and was surprised to find that extensive tuning was still necessary to find the channels (and I couldn't find *any* channels as it turned out, because Freeview is a f*cking joke). Hours - or it felt like hours - were spent staring at static, as my useless new telly tried to find BBC Four, ITV3... Christ, I would have settled for QVC. Nothing. When I was a kid, I called the static between channels "trash", and it scared the bejeezus out of me. It still creeps me out a bit, I don't mind admitting.

If there's a hell, this is what it looks like.

Gun n' Run!

Pencils, inks, colour etc.

Egg Hunt!

From the latest Doctor Who Magazine - here's a room full of treasures from across time, space and reality itself! How many can YOU spot?

Space Jockin'

Sort of influenced by all the Prometheus talk that was in the air a couple of weeks ago, here's how a couple of panels from my current Doctor Who strip worked out.

Dredd vs. Cap - the full works!

And... here's that Captain America vs Judge Dredd pic in full. Ooh!

Cap vs. Judge Dredd

A bit of a promo art I did for the Glasgow Comic Con. There's more to this, but if you want to see it... BE THERE.*

*or, like, wait a month till I put the finished piece up on my blog. That's fine too.

Buy Me!

In a couple of weekends time, I'm going to be at the Glasgow Comic Con in... well, in Glasgow. While there,  I'm going to be sketching, making nice and generally living it up. I'll also have sketchbooks and prints for sale, so look out for stuff that looks like this:

Even if you're not going to the con, you can still get your hands on my goods! I'm selling the sketchbooks and the prints for 5 UKP (plus 2.50 p&p). The prints are signed (if you like), and I'll do a wee sketch on the inside flap of each sketchbook.


If you want one, drop me a line danmcdaid@yahoo.co.uk Or you can Paypal me at the same address.

The Glasgow Comic Con is on the 30th June-1st July. Come get some!

PUNY HUMANS

All being well, this should be the cover of my forthcoming sketchbook. I'm getting a proof sent this week, and if it looks nice, I should have some of these for sale at the Glasgow Comic Con (and maybe through the blog? Yeah, probably here as well. Anyway - watch out it's cominggggg!!!)

Sketch-Up: Wonder Woman

Bit of an oldie, this, but I dig it. I like my Wonder Woman large of arm, wide of grin and able to drink you under the table.

Dredd-ful colours

Panel of the Day (monkey on a hoverboard edition)

This is from issue 448 of Doctor Who Magazine, which is in the shops... um. Now!

Yo Joe!

Judge Dredd giving some unlucky bastard what-for, no doubt. When will the tyranny end??

Anyway - click to enlarge!

D

Panel of the Day (Time Share edition)

Damn you, fall!

Superman and Batman kicking it Kirby-style with the Ultimate Bastard.

Conan... IN COLOUR

What it is.

Hawkeye - IN COLOR!

POW!

Diagnosis: MAGIC!

Dr Strange!

BIG BARDA!

BIG BARDA!

Conaaaaan! It's Conan!

Warm-up Conan sketch. I don't draw this big, bowl-haircutted bozo that much, but when I do, I always have fun with him.

Guards! Guards!

A wee glimpse at my next Doctor Who Magazine strip, which will be out in... June? July? Summer, anyway. I don't want to say too much just yet, but it's a glorious, picaresque romp of a thing with a guest star who pretty much steals the show.

Here are some big, ugly alien guards - on balance, probably my favourite thing to draw. Look at them there, with their shock batons and big guns!

D

Wolverman! Luthortooth! My eyes!

I have a weird job.

Hulk Wash!

Today's warm-up pic, posted in honour of the fact that the Hulk is the coolest thing in this Avengers trailer.

D

Biggie v The Shadow

Pencils for an unfinished commission piece. I might ink this when I get a mo.

Mr Latveria 1962

A pencil sketch for a recent commission. I ended up going with a different approach, but I like this a lot, especially the mystical sigils on his armour. Doctor Doom rules!

CH!

A little somethin' somethin' from that Oni Press project I'm working on. Pencils and inks by me, colours by me and the missus. Coming... SOON!

Thor vs. Karate Kid

Another recent commission piece. Not shown: Mr Miyagi, Ralph Macchio, that blond kid who always plays toughs in eighties movies, the dude from Cagney and Lacey or Elisabeth Shue.

Happy Birthday, Woodgod!

This one's for Kurt Busiek.

In the clearing stands a boxer...

Still kicking that boxer idea (from WAY back) around. Did this earlier today -



- came out nice!

Does Whatever an Iron Can

Here's Iron Man!



I don't think I'm alone in finding Iron Man a bit of a bugger to draw. His armour is either too baroque and fiddly (as in the Ultimates version) or just kind of... dull. So this is a halfway house between the modern version and imperial phase Iron Man (ie. the Bob Layton model). I hope you (whoever you are) like it.

Bye!

I Drawed the Law!

Some Dredd doodles to warm up my brush-hand. Drokk!

HIT ME!

Remember that bit in the Dark Knight when the Joker's stood there in the middle of the street, and that crazy old Batman is speeding towards him on his massive bike, and then Batman pussies out because the Joker is too awesome to kill? Imagine that but with Adam West and Cesar Romero:


This was another recent commission. It's the most fun I've had with my drawing in bloody ages - I almost don't want to give it away. The commissioner (lol) asked me to take a moment from Batman's "dark" era (ie. everything since 1986), and recast that moment with the 60s Batman and Joker. I was torn between this and the neck-snapping bit in Dark Knight Returns. But no one wants to see Adam West snapping Cesar Romero's neck - that's too frigging horrible for words. So I picked this fairly iconic bit from The Dark Knight. Which in turn, let's be honest, is not a million miles from this:



Love that Joker!

Adding Burt Ward's Robin was my idea - sixties Batman is nothing without his monkey wrench, after all.

Knock, Knock!

Another recent commission piece:



I do miss David Tennant.