Merry Christmas!

Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas!

Eat, drink and be merry! Seasons Greetings! x

Emmy The Zombie Sleigher

So, a couple more posts before I close up for Christmas...

Earlier this month, I did a comic strip for Emmy The Great and Tim Wheeler's online advent calendar for their festive album This Is Christmas. One of the songs on the album is called Zombie Christmas and listening to it gave me the idea for this drawing of Emmy The Zombie Sleigher. Move over Buffy...

Xfm are currently giving away a free download of Zombie Christmas as a special seasonal gift.

Look What THEY Drawed (Christmas 2011)

It's that time of year again, so here are a bunch of creative Christmas cards I received from some of my friends.

First up is this cute little dragon, courtesy of Richy K. Chandler...

Next, Yuki Nishimura drew this hilarious Christmas version of the movie Alive...

Joe Beale drew this picture of Christmas in Greenwich...

Zarina Liew sent me a festive picture of the characters from her
Le Mime web-comic...

And Arina Orlova produced this very topical illustration...

And finally, my dear old mother got in on the act this year and drew me a Christmas card featuring a picture of me pulling Santa's sleigh... Thanks mum! (Although she forgot to draw my beard...)

And thanks to everyone else who sent me a card this Christmas. And I hope you all have a great day tomorrow! MERRY CHRISTMAS!

***UPDATE 02/01/12***
I also got this neat card from Nanae Kawahara, illustrated on both the front and the back...

And I bought Nanae's New Year postcard from her Yaomart market stall at the Duckie Christmas Market at the Barbican, just in time for 2012 – the Year of the Dragon...

Sketchbook Project 2012 (Work In Progress)

Now that I've finished the commissioned work that's been keeping me busy the last few weeks, I thought I better get back to my Sketchbook Project 2012 sketchbook...

I'm nearly at the end of my sketchbook now. It's been an interesting project to do, and I definitely plan to take part again next year.
If you haven't already, you can view all my previous pages here:
http://www.arthousecoop.com/users/PaulShinn/artwork

The Man In The Iron Mask

After yesterday's blog post about Daniel Craig starring in both the Bond films and the upcoming remake of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, today I saw the poster for the second Sherlock Holmes film and I began wondering if maybe there's a shortage of actors out there to star in all these franchise movies.

As well as playing Sherlock Holmes, Robert Downey Jr is also Iron Man and will be in next Summer's The Avengers movie. And Chris Evans (not that one!) is also in The Avengers as Captain America, but was the Human Torch in the Fantastic Four movies a few years ago. And before all this, Sir Ian McKellen was both Gandalf in The Lord Of The Rings trilogy, and Magneto over in the X-men films.

Surely they must get confused about which character they're meant to be playing...

The Girl With The James Bond Tattoo

While I was out and about yesterday, I saw the poster for David Fincher's remake of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo on the side of the BFI IMAX cinema. Seeing Daniel Craig taking on the role of Mikael Blomkvist gave me the idea for this drawing...

The "James Bond tattoo" is taken (with permission) from my friend Arina Orlova's excellent artwork: James Bond: Kills and Kisses.

The Hole Opportunity

I was commissioned to produce an illustrated book cover for James Minter's first novel The Hole Opportunity.

The Hole Opportunity is an English farce, revolving around the misadventures of Colin Griggs and his wife Izzy, who decide to set up a "Hole Farming Business", supplying holes to the local golf course. When things don't go exactly to plan, Colin ends up making an enemy of the club's captain: Major Woods.

You can order a physical copy of the book, or download an eBook version, from Amazon.

Carols By Candlelight

I was commissioned to design a poster and marketing material for the University of Arts London's Christmas carol service, which was held last week at St Paul's Church in Covent Garden. The A3 poster had to appeal to people regardless of their religious beliefs, and I came up with this design using a hand-drawn pattern in the background to suggest Winter and the lettering in the title reflecting the long thin appearance of a candlestick.

Using a modified version of the design I also produced an A5 postcard, a digital image to be projected onto a plasma screen, and the front and back cover for the Order Of Service.

**UPDATE 14 March 2012***

And slightly belatedly, here is a photo that my friend Olympia took on her phone of my poster up on the wall at UAL's building at 272 High Holborn, which serves as a central hub for all of the various colleges...

The Line It Is Drawn Try-Out (Week 2)

So last week I shared my first submission for The Line It Is Drawn over on the Comics Should Be Good blog, and now I've got my week 2 submission(s) to share with you.

This week's theme was "comic book characters that haven't previously teamed up", and I ended up drawing two of the suggestions:

'Mazing Man and Forbush Man

The Monitor and The Watcher (watching Watchmen)

Voting is now open, and if you like my drawings, please click on this link and tick the box with my name (It's the sixth name down in the second list, in case any of you have a problem finding it). You can also check out the other entries while you're there, in the interest of fairness.

Voting closes on Thursday 15 December at 11:59 EST and the two entries with the most votes will be the new weekly artists joining the current bunch of regulars. Wish me luck!

Emmy & Tim's Christmas Advent Calendar day 8

One of my favourite singers, Emmy The Great, has released a Christmas Album with Tim Wheeler called This Is Christmas. You should buy it!

I've been listening to it on my iPod for a while now, and was pleased to get an email last week asking if I wanted to draw a comic strip based on their song Jesus The Reindeer to be included as a festive treat as part of their christmas advent calendar on their facebook page!

My comic strip was featured today behind Day 8 of their advent calender!

**UPDATED 15/12/2011**

Tonight I went to Rough Trade East to see Emma & Tim perform an in-store gig as the last part of their This Is Christmas mini tour. It was of course a very Christmassy affair, and as well as the songs from their album they also played cover versions of Last Christmas and Fairy Tale of New York, as well as other Christmas songs. At the end of the gig the pair did a signing and signed a copy of my comic strip for me!

The Line It Is Drawn Try-Out (Week 1)

The Line It Is Drawn is a weekly online column on the Comic Book Resources website. Each week a comics-related theme is suggested on the Comics Should Be Good blog and twitter with people posting suggestions for that theme during the week. Seven artists then each pick one of the suggestions to draw and the results are posted at the end of the week.

Three of the regular artists involved are stepping down soon, so they are currently looking for new artists to replace them, and I decided to throw my hat into the ring. Over the next couple of weeks, all those people wishing to try-out for a position get sent the list of suggestions and have the chance to submit their work.

This week's theme was "Super-fy It: Turn a person, real or fictional, into a superhero". Out of over 250 suggestions, I finally decided to go with The Virgin Mary(!) and made her into the superhero Immaculate, based partly on the cover to the Image comic
Invincible #32...

Next week's theme is "Team-up two comic book characters who have never had a team-up before".