Scotch Corner Art Blog Celebrates Its 3rd Birthday

The Scotch Corner daily art blog is celebrating its third birthday and, like last year, has called on a number of guest artists to give a short holiday to the Scotch Corner regulars, artdroids Graeme Neil Reid, Gary Erskine, Simon Fraser and Alex Ronald, and artists Jon Hodgson, Andy Hepworth and Thomas Crielly.

The first guest for July is artdroid Henry Flint who provides the illustration of a 2000AD cover for the current Judge Dredd saga 'Days Of Chaos'. In addition to several images, each guest will answer a series of questions and Henry reveals that his first published work wasn't in 2000AD but actually in The Dandy where he, as a reader, sent in a picture of Deperate Dan which won him Star Letter and a jigsaw.

Further guests to come in July include Paolo Rivera, Mike Austin, Paul Bourne, Simon Gurr and INJ Culbard.

The Scotch Corner art blog is here.

Tube Surfing: Two, Four, Nine, Fifty

BBC2 Scotland Only: Monday 11 July 2011 10pm will see the broadcast of the BBC Artworks Scotland documentary about Scottish comics and comic writers which, unsurprisingly, will feature Alan Grant, Mark Millar and Grant Morrison talking about their work. While it is officially only being broadcast on BBC2 in Scotland, and presumably will be available to the entire UK on the BBC iPlayer for seven days afterwards, it is worth remembering that Sky viewers in the rest of the UK are able to access BBC2 Scotland on channel 990 and so can watch or record it at the same time as those north of the border. Details of the programme are on the Artworks Scotland webpage.

Four Cornerers: Four of the seven artists who make up the Scottish daily artblog Scotch Corner were at the Kingdom Of Adventure shop in Kirkcaldy last Saturday for a signing and the recording of a podcast. Jon Hodgson, Andy Hepworth, Graeme Neil Reid and Tom Crielly were joined by Simon Fraser for a short time via Skype but technical issues, otherwise known as a blown fuse, meant that his Skype feed could not be recorded for the podcast. The reason behind the gathering was to celebrate two years of the blog's existence and their birthday present to themselves was a month's holiday as they have handed the blog over to an impressive array of other artists to show off their work and answer a few questions. To date these have included Mick McMahon, Bob Eggleton, Jimmy Broxton, James Ryman, Chris Weston and Siku. The Scotch Corner blog is here.

The Curse Of Issue 9? It looks like CLiNT has survived the curse of issue 9 but only by the skin of its teeth with the magazine's frequency dropped from 13 to an unusual 9 issues a year. Of the recent batch of comics related magazines, both Alan Moore's Dodgem Logic and Alan Grant's Wasted have fallen by the wayside for one reason or another having reached issue 8. SFX's Comic Heroes is currently on issue 7 and has gone from 4 to 6 issues a year so we will keep our fingers crossed for it and, of course, will have everything crossed for Strip Magazine in October and The Phoenix Comic in January. With Wasted gone to the great newsagents in the sky, Tales Of The Buddha and Vampire Vixens Of The Wehrmacht are both now looking for new publishers, so fingers crossed for them also.

Commando Interrogation: With the fiftieth anniversary of the first issue of DC Thomson's Commando at the end of last month, you would have expected the company to cover, or at least mention, it in their daily Dundee Courier newspaper, but it was not to be. Instead Scottish readers were able to read the thoughts of editor Calum Laird, deputy editor Scott Montgomery, former editor George Low and writer Ferg Handley in the Daily Record (the Scottish version of the Daily Mirror). The on-line version of the article has an excellent picture of Scott, George and Calum with loads of original Commando artwork but the paper version also had this priceless pic of George wearing a WWII British helmet. The downthetubes Medal For Resisting Interrogation must go to Scott as the only one of the four who managed to not have his age revealed. The Daily Record interview is here.

Scotch Corner @ Kingdom Of Adventure in July

The daily Scottish art blog Scotch Corner made up of professional artists Thomas Crielly, Gary Erskine, Simon Fraser, Andy Hepworth, Jon Hodgson, Graeme Neil Reid and Alex Ronald, is celebrating its second birthday in style by, er, taking a break. Instead of posting themselves over the course of July they will be handing the blog over to a selection of guest artists including top names such as Roger Langridge, Anton Emdin, James Ryman, Bob Eggleton, Chris Weston and Mick McMahon.

However the Scotch Corner gang are not leaving their fans high and dry as they will be appearing at the Kirkcaldy comics and RGP shop Kingdom Of Adventure on Saturday 2 July 2011 beginning at Noon for a signing and sketching session which will then be followed by the recording of a podcast. Thomas Crielly, Gary Erskine, Andy Hepworth, Jon Hodgson and Graeme Neil Reid will be there in person while Simon Fraser will be appearing via Skype.

There are more details of the event at the Scotch Corner blog and more details of the venue on the Kingdom Of Adventure website.

Cal-Hab Droids Infiltrate Megazine 301

The latest issue of the Judge Dredd Megazine, Meg 301, has a distinctly Scottish flavour to its art and script droids.

Behind a lovely Judge Inspector Inaba cover by Frank Quitely, from Cal-Hab's west coast, comes the Dredd story The Natural (shown below) about a Mega City One athlete who, controversially, refuses cybernetic assistance for his races. Written by Gordon Rennie, pencilled by Graeme Neil Reid, both from the east coast and inked by west coast Gary Erskine, the strip is the debut for Graeme in a 2000AD title. Graeme has been talking about his route to drawing Dredd professionally on his blog where he bravely shows off some of his earliest Dredd artwork from 20 years ago, as well as the spec scripts and responses he received from the Nerve Centre at the time.

The Judge Inspector Inaba story Hondo-City Justice, with art by Neil Googe, is written by Cal-Hab-er Robbie Morrison while Robbie's Nikolai Dante co-creator Simon Fraser, another Cal-Hab-er, writes and draws Lilly MacKenzie And The Mines Of Charybdis now on its fourth episode in which Lilly and Cosmo finally make it onto the surface of the planet.

Both stories are coloured by Gary Caldwell, yet another Cal-Hab-er.

Last but certainly not least of the Cal-Hab droids in Meg 301 is Alan Grant who is writing the Anderson Psi-Division story The House Of Vyle, drawn by Boo Cook, in which Cassandra is called to the hamlet of Salem just outside the Mega-City's walls where strange things are afoot.

Megazine 301 also includes Armitage by Dave Stone and John Cooper while the reprint is a selection of Mick McMahon's Judge Dredd stories.

• Judge Dredd Megazine 301 is available from newsagents and has a cover price of £5.99.

• Graeme Neil Reid, Gary Erskine and Simon Fraser are all members of the daily artblog Scotch Corner.

Bohze Moi! Scotch Corner Recruits Simon Fraser

The Scotch Corner daily art blog has added its sixth and final regular member in the shape of Nikolai Dante artist Simon Fraser.

Simon has taken on the previously vacant Saturday slot on the blog which also features other Scottish artists Thomas Crielly, Gary Erskine, Andy Hepworth, Jon Hodgson and Graeme Neil Reid. The Sunday slot is deliberately left open for Scotch Corner readers to promote their own artwork, whether they are from north of the border or not.

Having starting off his tenure on Scotch Corner with a selection of his life drawings and a few tantalising comments about what is to come, Simon's current post is artwork from a proposed movie project.

Simon, along with fellow Cornerers Gary Erskine and Graeme Neil Reid, will be attending the Hi-Ex convention in Inverness this weekend where he will donate a page of Nikolai Dante artwork to the convention auction for the charity Children 1st as well as a separate double page spread which will be auctioned for the Haiti earthquake appeal.

Simon's Scotch Corner contributions can be found here while there are more details of the Children 1st Dante page on the Hi-Ex website and the Haiti page on Simon's blog.

New Starblazer Comic?

As much as we would like to tell you that DC Thomson have published issue 282 of their science fiction digest Starblazer, we can't. However we can show you artist Graeme Neil Reid's idea of what the cover of Starblazer issue 282 might have looked like.

Graeme has posted the details of the artwork and his memories of Starblazer on his own blog where he also includes the full version of the illustration since Starblazer covers, like Commando covers today, wrapped around onto the back of the issue. He also includes an illustration of the pencils that he used to create the final version of the art.

The pencil version of the artwork is now available to win on the Scotch Corner art blog. Graeme is offering the original pencils, an A3 print of the finished artwork and several original copies of Starblazer itself as the prize for the February competition on Scotch Corner.

To enter the competition you simply have to go to the Scotch Corner blog and leave a comment about the prize in the competition section. What could be simpler?

Tube Surfing: Marvel Fun, Arthur Ranson, IndieManga and Look and Learn

• Our thanks this week to the fab British Comic Art blog, for spotting Dan Dare, Mekon and Dalek on the cover of Fantastic Four 573; artist Alan Davis is of course a master of dropping in such characters into his backgrounds (older readers may recall Dan Dare in a crowd scene in an episode of Marvelman...)

• Sottish artists co-operative blog Scotch Corner has launched a competition to get a Marvel character of your choice drawn by Tom Crielly.

• Talking of competitions, artist Tim Perkins has launched a Christmas Manga Art Competition. The winner will have their work appear online here on the Wizards Keep News Pages, over on the Wizards Keep Blog and on the other Wizards Keep network places on the Internet, all 22, or so of them.

• Commando editor Calum Laird has been talking about lettering Commando artwork on the Commando Blog. "Commando has never had a 'hand-lettered' style of type," he acknowledges in response to queries on its creation. "In the early days an electric typewriter (an IBM Golfball, I believe) was used. That was later changed to photo-typesetting where the type was created and then outputted on photographic paper to be stuck on to the artwork. Most recently, the type has been totally electronic and is married to the artwork in QuarkXpress. Our current typeface is Helvetica Bold — we have used a Futura and a Spartan face in the past." What he doesn't say is why...

• Arthur Ranson, well known to 2000AD readers for his work on strips such as Judge Anderson and Button Man, now has his own official web site (www.arthurranson.com), crammed with great examples of his art down the years. Arthur reports he has an exhibition coming up from 14th January at London’s Orbital Comics gallery and also reveals the Button Man movie is still in development hell, by al accounts. "Dreamworks have a few months to decide whether to either go ahead, pay for more time to decide, or drop it," he says, countering reports of some casting decisions elsewhere on the Internet.

• Readers in and around Edinburgh might want to head along to Forbidden Planet there tomorrow evening, where bestselling author Ian Rankin will be signing copies of his comics debut Dark Entries from 5 to 7pm on our branch in Southbridge, just a haggis-toss from the Royal Mile, so please do come along (the event is free but ticketed, check with the branch to get hold of one, telephone 0131 558 8226).

• The New 'Legends' Anthology is now available from the IndieManga online shop It features five self-contained short comics by Anna Fitzpatrick, Sally Jane Thompson, Kate Holden and Rebecca McCarthy, plus IndiManga's new member, Sarah Burgess. The book has the theme of 'Myths Legends and Fairy Tales' and is suitable for all ages, comprising 130 pages black and white for just £6.00. Get it here: www.shop.indiemanga.com

• (with thanks to the Birmingahm Mail's Speech Balloon column): My apologies for what may be a re-post but a quick reminder, then, that Look and Learn is offering a bumper festive read for Christmas with its "Best Of" series. "If you know an intelligent child (8-14) who is interested in history, legend, literature, art, philosophy, nature, science or geography, and also loves pictures, it is difficult to imagine a more wonderful Christmas present," said publisher Laurence Heyworth. Complete sets of the 48 issues of the Best of Look and Learn are available for only £39.99, including UK delivery. The magazines are numbered, but undated, and are in mint condition and can be ordered direct online at: www.lookandlearn.com

Scottish Dragons In The Crimea

Just how far around the world do the words of some blogs get? For Scotch Corner, the Scottish daily art blog, it is the Ukraine. Specifically Bakhchisaray School No. 1 in Crimea, Ukraine.

Scotch Corner runs a monthly competition to win artwork from each of the five artists involved in the blog. The August competition was for a limited edition print by Jon Hodgson entitled 'Dragon Rein' and it was won by Brian Woods who is a Peace Corps volunteer teacher at the school and who donated the print, and others that were sent with it, to the school. "The students from today were very impressed with the artwork," said Brian. " I told them that maybe today they don't know enough (English) but I hope one day they will write stories about what they see in those pictures!"

The current Scotch Corner competition runs until the end of September and the prize is the original artwork for a Star Wars style poster for the Doctor Who story Remembrance Of The Daleks drawn by Graeme Neil Reid as well as the DVD of the story.

The Scotch Corner art blog is here.

Entry to the September competition is free and details can be found here.

ScotchComp Launched: Win a Limited Edition Dragon Print

The Scottish Comics Creators blog Scotchblog, which features work by artists such as Jon Hodgson, Graeme Neil Reid, Gary Erskine and others, has a new competition for all followers of their humble site. Each month there will be a fantastic prize supplied by one of their contributors which you'll get a chance to win.

It couldn't be easier to enter: all you need to do is leave a comment about the prize and you'll be entered into the running. Any kind of comment counts but you have to make sure you think about it as you can only enter once, so make it funny, make it complimentary, make it a song, make it weird, make it anything you want but make your comment count.

To start off Jon Hodgson is supplying something very special as prize: a 60 cm x 30 cm print on really heavy, glossy poster stock, featuring artwork which was used on the cover of "Dragon Rein" by David F Berens. As you can see from the image above, it features an ancient and evil sorcer-king surveying the lands under his thrall beside his equally ancient, though considerably less evil, dragon mount.

"The print is a crop of the full painting, which was considerably wider to wrap around the novel cover front and back," says Jon. "It was made in Painter and Photoshop last year, and I think for me it was something of a milestone in adding details, and generally producing tighter work than what had gone before. I have one of these very prints hanging in my toilet."

So far there are only five of these in existence, and the prize is signed and numbered print two of an open edition. It's not a strictly limited run as such, but there aren't many about, and never will be!

• Click on the preview image box to see a larger version of this great image!

• Visit Scotch Corner for more information and full terms of entry