Behold, the Zarjaz cover of Prog 1646 by the ever-wonderful Simon Davis. Okay, I’ll come clean, I cheated a bit with this one! I wrote to the talented Mr Davis asking for a scan and he sent a lovely reply informing me that he’s 'a bit of a luddite' who doesn’t scan his work.So, dear reader, the image you’re looking at is simply a Photoshopped version of the comic cover. I fairly certain however, that it’s a faithful re-creation of the original as Mr Davis does seem to have the uncanny knack of producing some extremely eye-catching covers, using ‘white space’ to maximum effect. So, the rest of this blog entry will be dedicated to showcasing some of Simon’s magnificent white space covers, with a bonus Frazer Irving at the end to make up for my dishonesty with the 1646 cover!
Oh, one more thing, as well as an amazing comic artist, Simon is a prize winning portrait painter. His work is absolutely breathtaking, please take the time to have a look at some beautiful examples here and here.
Lets kick off with Prog 1553's Stone Island cover featuring Sorrel's re-animated corpse, yuck!
Followed by a couple of covers from John Smith's Dead Eyes:
In this cover, Judge Dredd 'brains' a member of the Branch Moronian Cult from prog 1283:
Here we see a guilty looking Ramone Dexter from Sinister Dexter (a strip which many would argue Mr Davis is the definitive artist of) from the superb 'And Death Shall Have No Dumb Minions' storyline.
Finally, the 'Duck and Cover' cover from Si Spurriur's Black Atlantic story in the Megazine.
As promised, here is that cracking Frazer Irving Marauder cover, which again uses white space to make the image really grab you by the (eye)balls!
Great stuff - I really like his work and he has a distinctive bluey-green colour you can often find dashes of on faces (which shouldn't work but it does - I wasn't sure about it initially but I've come to keep an eye out for it). He hasn't used it as much recently but is a natural fit for that stonking zombie head cover.
ReplyDeleteI think his work "Ampney Crucis Investigates" is his best yet and I have my fingers crossed for an Eagle nomination for it. I know this is about the use of whitespace but any chance of featuring his Ampney Crucis cover at some point? I also have my fingers crossed for that getting a nomination too but I'm less confident of that one ;)
Also I know he has technophobia so a scan is out of the question but could he take a photograph of it instead? I know I'd be interested to see the page on the easel (if that is what happens) as an interesting peek into the process.
Also more background on his ine art work on his Wikipedia entry.