Creating a Graphic Novel : Art – Food – Photography

Featured artist Dion Hamill recently had a Wonder Woman ACEO up on eBay. Another one of his auctions worth highlighting is an amazing Black Cat piece. (Click on the picture to be taken to the auction!) It’s a rare opportunity to win an piece of original artwork so remember to bid high and bid often!

26 year old Gary Badwin from Valley of Wales, United Kingdom is sharing some of his artwork. This showcased is based on the Zombie versions of 2 famous X-Men, Beast and Nightcrawler. Although it’s a little gruesome, it’s still some very cool artwork.

Zombie Beast Inked :

Zombie Beast Coloured :

Zombie Nightcrawler Inked :

Zombie Nightcrawler Coloured :

When did you get into the artistic field?

I took a keen intrest in art from about the age of 4, I took part in my first competitions at 5, coming first in all of Gwent, South wales. did art G.C.S.E in comperhensive school getting a C grade, didn’t like art class in school, I was into comicbook art and horror, the school wanted you to do drawings of vase’s and flowers,etc. After school I was still drawing more of a hobbie, doing it in the evenings and weekends. So I’d say I’m self-taught.

Is there any styles which have influenced you?

I would have to say I am heavily influenced by Steven E.Gordon creator of X-men Evolution, and Jeff Matsuda chief character designer for both Jackie Chan Adventures and The Batman, I love how there art work is clean and simple not over worked! I draw for fun and my son Lewis (7 years old) to colour in. 

Is Lewis your only son?

I have two sons, Lewis as mentioned and Oscar who’s 18 months.

You must be swamped with two boys to look after so thanks for your time to answer some of my questions!

For more of Gary’s work check out :

• Photobucket
• DeviantArt

Previous featured artist Dion Hamill has an amazing Wonder Woman ACEO currently on eBay. It’s a great opportunity to own a piece of Dion’s work. Click on the picture for your chance to bid on this work. Remember to bid high and bid often. (Make sure you check out the other auctions that are currently on offer too.)

A mixed bag of a post with a new drawing by featured artist Mike Crichlow. I think it’s a very cool piece, especially love the expression on her face!

I haven’t been posting up as much as I would have liked with a lot of my time taken up with the Australian Open. The finals are over with an incredible match between Andy Murray and Roger Federer with Fedex taking it out in 3 exciting sets!

On a website related news, Sigmatestudio was hit with over 600+ spam comments today which was extremely frustrating! I moderate all comments and expect the odd spam comment but never this many! I never got around to activate the askimet plugin (anti-spam) but as soon as I cleared out the junk comments, it was activated! Hopefully it won’t catch any legitamate comments but please email me at sigmatestudio [at] sigmatestudio.com if you comment doesn’t appear after a couple of days.

Been a while since the last food post and I thought it would be a great opportunity to test out my new Canon G11. Whilst not as sharp as a 40D SLR, it still can create some crisp images even in the below low light conditions with the aperture opened to 2.8. Anyway . . this is a little North shore place in Sydney which has the most delicious gyoza, I think ginger is the key to giving these japanese dumplings that extra zest.

Gyoza Serving :

What’s inside :

I didn’t get the opportunity to showcase all of Pasquale‘s amazing work last time. Both these pieces have an amazing style, although I’m more partial to the Princess Leia piece even compared with his previous Zatanna work.

On another note altogether, wishing everyone a very happy Australia Day on the 26 Jan 2010. For those not from the land down under, it’s a celebration of the first fleet’s arrival at Sydney Cove. (See you can learn a little history from this site!) Hope you have a great day and make sure to fire up the barbeque.

Phoenix (Jean Grey) :

Princess Leia :

It’s been a great day in the mailbox for me, first Frankie’s amazing present to my Threadless T-Shirts! I love the fantastic envelope it comes in. The below are photos of the actual shirts themselves so excuse any wrinkles. The ET Phone Home design is especially cute, so if you see someone wearing one of the below designs . . it could very well be me! (Be sure to say “Hi”)

I’ve received some extraordinary parcels from Frank Kadar and Troy Parke. Yesterday from previous featured artist Frankie Washington, the original Wonder Woman sketch and Marooned on Mogo arrived! I definitely count myself lucky to own an original Wonder Woman sketch from a fantastic art, just need to frame and get this one on the wall. Huge thanks to Frankie for such a fantastic gift.

Parcel :

Wonder Woman :

Marooned on Mogo :

Previous featured artist Dion Hamill (who also did an amazing Star Wars step by step guide) is sharing his experience on another project. This one is a children’s book called “Fox and Tiger”.

Final Image :

Dion Hamill – Guest Post
I also enjoy technical challenges, like how to solve an illustration problem quickly but still with quality. A few months ago working on a children’s book titled “Fox and Tiger” the brief required the two lead characters Fox and Tiger to be walking through various scenes in China with distinctive characters to the region surrounding them. It goes to the publisher who approves all the images, the designer gets back to me and then I get started on the final colour art with the clock ticking down to the deadline (which always seems too short).After completing the final art, sending it in way ahead of schedule I sit back to relax with a martini.

That’s when I get the call, the publisher wants to change all the supporting characters to different animals. I generally work on illustration board with gouache and I really didn’t want to paint over the original art or completely repaint the image. So after first doing some sketches of the new animals to be portrayed in the images I paste them in using photoshop over the original art.

Once this is approved I then paint the new animals on a separate illustration board using the same materials and medium. Then I scan them in and merge the new animals on top of the old art in photoshop. Finally I paint over the surrounding background in photoshop using the various tools, trying to emulate my “old fashioned” painting style so the artwork looks seamless. Overall it took about a day to complete all 8 pages and I still got the work in on time and with quality.

Its not exactly breaking new ground but I was quite pleased with myself, as I’d never used the Photoshop program before. So I’d challenged myself to find a solution and learnt some new techniques along the way and doing that keeps being a freelancer fresh and exciting.

A great Zatanna showcase by Pasquale Qualano, I think the rabbit was a very cute touch. Checking through previous posts, it seems like Zatanna is one of the favourite characters to be done. How do you think this piece compares to the previous artists’ representations?

• Zatanna by Dion Hamill
• Zatanna by Dean Juliette