HUGH BYRNE Amazing Fantastic Photomontages!

Talking of Hugh Byrne, this guy is a creative genius who works primarily for a charity called SNAP, helping disadvantaged people through the arts. His work composites images from various sources in amazing ways and has recieved a lot of critical acclaim. Recently he published a book of his work which is available from this link:
http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/884699/?utm_source=badge&utm_medium=banner&utm_content=280x160%22
Would make an excellent Xmas present that will also help this selfless artist get the recognition he deserves!

Alien Girl in my Backyard

After some conversations with my friend the photographic artist Hugh Byrne, I tried some of his photoshop tricks: Here's my Alien Girl playing in my old backyard in the snow!

Big in Russia!

I've noticed that every month my website gets a lot of hits from Russian Warhammer websites such as Warforge.ru. Since I don't speak Russian I can't join the site and say hi, but if any Russian WH or WH40K fans are reading this, hi and thanks for your support!!!!

Night Dragon

To celebrate the relaunch of the Fighting Fantasy book line I will be making some posters available to Dave from http://www.fightingfantasy.com to be given away as prizes!

New Website Up and Running!

After a lot of effort, I managed to get my new website up and running! I designed this one myself so it would be easy for me to keep updated, which meant learning web design and a smattering of basic HTML as I went along, and it's not bad for a complete web-dummy like myself!
Coincidentally, the new Fighting Fantasy website is up too, to mark the September 3rd relaunch of the Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks. I believe Bloodbones by Jon Green and illustrated by myself and with a cover by Martin McKenna is due to be republished in April 2010.

A few new digital paintings

At the moment I have several digital pieces on the go, some of which are still only sketches, and a few heading toward "completion", or at least reaching a state where they look reasonably finished. I'm trying to get some more to that happy state, and at the same time experimenting and trying to teach myself how to use Microsoft Frontpage: I want to redesign my gallery site and I find Dreamweaver hard to get my head around. The current site was great when we first got it online, but didn't really function as intended on Internet Explorer (it was designed using Dreamweaver and with Firefox by my good friend Pete Billingham.) so compromises had to be made. Also, since I found it hard to update that didn't get done enough and as a result a lot of my new stuff hasn't made it there yet. The new site will have the new pics and be easier to update as I go.

The News from Nowhere

I thought it was about time I started a blog, mainly about my work as an artist and illustrator, though I expect my incarnations as tattooist, writer, gamer will get a look in from time to time. It will be a good place to showcase new professional and personal work, stuff from my sketchbooks and ideas I'm playing with.
To start with, I'm currently doing a lot of experimenting with Photoshop, getting used to painting digitally. I've only had a Wacom Tablet for about a year and digital painting remains a massively exciting novelty to me, so I'm ploughing away at several personal pieces to see what I can do with it. This one is an alien girl which began as a biro scribble in my normal sketchbook of just a helmet and shoulders. Scanned in, I decided it needed a body. This is not the only version I have on the go, but just the one I'm liking best at the moment.