Well, it's not a seasonal image this time around, but I've been busy with Christmas related things. All that chocolate won't eat itself you know!
These bookmarks were for a client who's into his astrology, but I'm sure you may have guessed that already.
Have fun, and I'll see you all back here next year!
The Avengers Christmas party took a turn for the worse...
Remember kids, drink responsibly.
(Also remember that the bacon sandwich is the worlds greatest hangover remedy.)
It's a good thing that Northstar has super-speed...
For some more Christmas based fun, visit mission in snowdriftland it's a fun timewaster from Nintendo. If you're fond of Super Mario World, you'll like this!
With the greatest respect to Steve Ditko...
Not only can you see my art in this months Advanced Photoshop (issue 24) you can also see some of my more sci-fi based work in the current Issue of ImagineFX (issue 12). 2 magazines in the same month. My bid for world domination continues.
As well featuring an excellent cover by the talented Jerry Lofaro, Advanced Photoshop #24 features a full 6 page masterclass on how to make the latest Skull-Kidd image written by yours truly! Go buy it now and find out some of my crazy methods! The line art for the image is on the magazine's cd so you can try out the advice for yourself and then post your results online at the Advanced Photoshop forum for everyone to see here!
Oh, and you could always email the magazine and tell them how brilliant you thought the tutorial was too. Y'know, if you felt like it... ;)
Thought this deserved a separate post- please prepare yourself for a shameless sales pitch!
Cool Surface badges are now available!!!!!
Yep, I gave in to popular demand, there are now badges featuring some of your favourite characters available for you to buy for a very modest price! (c'mon, you knew there would be a Skull-Kidd badge didn't you?). Do you love Zombies? Are you a cheeky monkey? Then there's now a badge for you!! Go buy some now!
This is the finished orthographic view of the goblin hunter for the CHOW activity. I have a whole new respect for people in the film/gaming industry for making illustrations like these, as it's much more time consuming than making things line up than you'd think! Coloured with markers with a texture thrown over it in photoshop.
For your viewing pleasure: Some more development sketches of the goblin hunter for Concept Art.org's "Character of the Week" (also affectionately known as CHOW on the forums), and the orthographic view of the Goblin from the front.
Now I'm not one to blow my own horn...ah who am I kidding?!
This scan is from this months issue of Advanced Photoshop's "Peer Pressure" section. Be sure to look at the big orange circle in the image, hehe...
It occurred to me the other day that I don't give you people enough sketch pages to look at! Seeing as I don't want you all to feel neglected, here are some preliminary sketches for an activity on concept art.org. Hope you like them!
Don't go wasting time is the new cd single from the band "Buswell", this is the cover I designed for them. It should be available very soon, I'll post a release date when I get it.
Actually meant to post this one a while ago but completely forgot to! It's the lines from the Frequency cover as coloured by the excellent Tom Scholes! You can see more of his work in his ConceptArt sketchbook which you can find here http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?p=1028711#post1028711
Apologies for the lack of updates recently, I was captured by a pirate ship full of monkeys. (Actually I've been busy working, but that sounds boring!) To make it up to you, here's a couple of images from a recent commission.
Note: The background is just a place holder for me so that I wasn't colouring against white, the character was separated and added to a website logo. I just want to say thanks to John Storey for being a damned nice client to deal with, I wish they were all like him!
For those of you that don't know, the character in question is an infernal from Warcraft, they aren't blessed with too much personality, but they make up for it by being just damned intimidating!
More soon!
Letraset commissioned me to make a tutorial for their marker pens, you can see it here.
Swindon is finally going to get a comic shop again, which means I can get graphic novels from somewhere other than ebay!
The new shop is called Swin City and will open at the end of this month. Before the shop was named, I'd come up with a much more generic poster girl for the shop. Since the renaming, she's ditched the cape for a trenchcoat and become a lot grittier. In attitude at least, I'm not saying she has hygiene issues or anything!
I've been doing some logo and font design this week, so I've not had anything to show you artwise, so to make sure you don't feel neglected, here's a sketch of a scientist. His name is Bruce.
(Note: It's supposed to say "scientician" in the title, it's a joke between my brother and me. "I'm a drawist" you see...)
I am officially Frequency's cover boy, this is the cover for the August issue of "That's Entertainment". And about 3 seconds ago, I just realised that I forgot to put my website on the image. Balls.
Oh well, you all know I did it....
You could be experiencing deja vu when you look at this pic. Some of you will remember seeing this image from one of the very first posts on this blog, but some of you will have just seen it in this months edition of Computer Arts Projects, where it was "highly commended", which I thought was worth a re-post. Big thanks once again to the lovely Sarah Hibbert, who collaborated with me on this piece.
Just got the okay to publish this online, from my clients: The Vandal Horde. It's come on a bit from that first inked version hasn't it?
More tomorrow.
In between doing commissions, I normally find it quite healthy to make images for the hell of it. It enables you to experiment a little, without worrying if your clients will accept any drastic style change, and bring what you've learned to your later drawings. Sometimes you learn some new tricks, and other times you learn to avoid certain styles!
Anyway, this is a speedpainting I did after working on a commission. It's not based on me, it was from a reference pic of a sulking child. (Although, I did hear pretty much every one of those remarks at some point as a kid...)
Hope you like it!
David
I mentioned that one of the reasons to check this blog as well as the website is for a "behind the scenes" look at things that you wouldn't see on the website, which is obviously the polished portfolio. This is one of the commissions I'm working on for the Vandal Horde. Here we have the inked lines, and the first pass of colours. (There was a pencil stage before that, but I forgot to save it!) Anyway, enough talking, here's an insight into how I work. More soon!
Quick post today: For those of you that haven't heard, The NEW CoolSurface.com is online!
You can go and see it now!
And for those of you that want to link to either Cool Surface or this blog, I've made you link banners that you can use!
More soon, David
For your entertainment, both the cover for next months What's On Guide, and the original text free art! Aren't I nice to you?
These two adorable creatures are my new housemates Timmy (the cat) and Ted (the dog). Done for my fiance's mothers birthday, which isn't for a few days yet, so don't tell her!
A while ago, I used to regularly throw my linework for pictures on an art forum so that other people could use my lines for colouring. It's thrown out some interesting results in the past, but one person began to stand out from the crowd.
The superb Tom Scholes has coloured a great number of my pics over time, but with various commissions getting in the way we found it hard to find the time to work together. When I posted the lines for this pic I was very happy to see who had coloured it first. Hopefully we'll get to work more together soon! Thanks Tom!
Recently I had the fortune of collaborating with the talented designer Sarah Bibby, a.k.a Rigel for a competition for Computer Arts magazine, the theme being "United in design" with a Latin flavour. It'd be redundant if I said we won, wouldn't it? (Fun though! )
Excuse the innovative subject heading, it's been a long day.
Hey look, it didn't take me too long to get some art up here after all! It's hard being right all of the time...This piece is for a cover to "That's Entertainment" - a What's On Guide published by Frequency.Commissions like this are fun because it was pretty much an open brief to do whatever I wanted, which is always a joy to hear!
This is my competition entry for Computer Arts Projects (if you didn't figure that out just by looking at it, it may be time to get some sleep!) I collaborated with the lovely Sarah Hibbert, who is always a joy to work with.It features Drumstikk(TM) - he's one of Skull-Kidd's friends. The piece is very mixed media, Drumstikk himself was sprayed onto the magazine, if you look at the background you can see the brief on notepaper (that's my dodgy handwriting by the way!) and it was all finished in Photoshop, but you knew that already.
That's all for now, feel free to leave comments. I'll see you all again soon!
Have fun, David
Welcome to Cool Surface Lite(TM) - Same great art, less calories.Cool Surface Lite is here to show you my latest art with a lot less hassle for me, updating my website (www.CoolSurface.com) can be a time-consuming pain in the proctologists area of expertise. Cool Surface will be updated as ever, this blog is just for those of you impatient people who can't wait for the latest Skull-Kidd pic or sexy girl sketch to be resized and given it's proper place on the site. And loads of more sketches and works-in-progress will be thrown in here at no extra cost. Aren't you lucky?Well, you will be, as soon as the art actually starts to appear! One thing at a time you know...
Well, it's not a seasonal image this time around, but I've been busy with Christmas related things. All that chocolate won't eat itself you know!
The Avengers Christmas party took a turn for the worse...
It's a good thing that Northstar has super-speed...
Not only can you see my art in this months Advanced Photoshop (issue 24) you can also see some of my more sci-fi based work in the current Issue of ImagineFX (issue 12). 2 magazines in the same month. My bid for world domination continues.
As well featuring an excellent cover by the talented Jerry Lofaro, Advanced Photoshop #24 features a full 6 page masterclass on how to make the latest Skull-Kidd image written by yours truly! Go buy it now and find out some of my crazy methods! The line art for the image is on the magazine's cd so you can try out the advice for yourself and then post your results online at the Advanced Photoshop forum for everyone to see here!
This is the finished orthographic view of the goblin hunter for the CHOW activity. I have a whole new respect for people in the film/gaming industry for making illustrations like these, as it's much more time consuming than making things line up than you'd think! Coloured with markers with a texture thrown over it in photoshop.
Now I'm not one to blow my own horn...ah who am I kidding?!
It occurred to me the other day that I don't give you people enough sketch pages to look at! Seeing as I don't want you all to feel neglected, here are some preliminary sketches for an activity on concept art.org. Hope you like them!
Don't go wasting time is the new cd single from the band "Buswell", this is the cover I designed for them. It should be available very soon, I'll post a release date when I get it.
Apologies for the lack of updates recently, I was captured by a pirate ship full of monkeys. (Actually I've been busy working, but that sounds boring!) To make it up to you, here's a couple of images from a recent commission. 
Swindon is finally going to get a comic shop again, which means I can get graphic novels from somewhere other than ebay!
I've been doing some logo and font design this week, so I've not had anything to show you artwise, so to make sure you don't feel neglected, here's a sketch of a scientist. His name is Bruce.
I am officially Frequency's cover boy, this is the cover for the August issue of "That's Entertainment". And about 3 seconds ago, I just realised that I forgot to put my website on the image. Balls.
You could be experiencing deja vu when you look at this pic. Some of you will remember seeing this image from one of the very first posts on this blog, but some of you will have just seen it in this months edition of Computer Arts Projects, where it was "highly commended", which I thought was worth a re-post. Big thanks once again to the lovely Sarah Hibbert, who collaborated with me on this piece.
Just got the okay to publish this online, from my clients: The Vandal Horde. It's come on a bit from that first inked version hasn't it?
In between doing commissions, I normally find it quite healthy to make images for the hell of it. It enables you to experiment a little, without worrying if your clients will accept any drastic style change, and bring what you've learned to your later drawings. Sometimes you learn some new tricks, and other times you learn to avoid certain styles!
More soon, David
For your entertainment, both the cover for next months What's On Guide, and the original text free art! Aren't I nice to you?
These two adorable creatures are my new housemates Timmy (the cat) and Ted (the dog). Done for my fiance's mothers birthday, which isn't for a few days yet, so don't tell her!
A while ago, I used to regularly throw my linework for pictures on an art forum so that other people could use my lines for colouring. It's thrown out some interesting results in the past, but one person began to stand out from the crowd. 
Excuse the innovative subject heading, it's been a long day.
This is my competition entry for Computer Arts Projects (if you didn't figure that out just by looking at it, it may be time to get some sleep!) 
