A particular passion of mine is getting my favourite artdroids to do commissions for me. Nothing matches the thrill of having someone who’s work you’ve absolutely adored since you were a child create a piece of artwork especially for you. A case in point is shown at the top of this post, it's the final version of my beloved Dredd vs Death commission by the legendary Cliff Robinson, and here's a WIP below...
This commission adheres to the eventual ‘theme’ I chose for my commissions - Dredd battling a famous villain in, or around, Pete Wells Block. I chose this idea as I found putting my likeness into a commission was too jarring and a bit of a distraction, taking the focus away from Dredd.
This is demonstrated by the first of my beautiful Ian Gibson commissions. Ian is an absolute hero of mine and was the first artist I went to for a commission. I was thrilled (and not to mention completely geeked-out) when he agreed to paint me being arrested by Dredd and, of course, Anderson, as no one in the business draws women as well as he!
As I loved the piece and the whole process so much, I asked him to paint me another. This time, Dredd fighting Mean Machine at my eponymous block. This beauty is HUGE and has elements in it that I’ve stared at for hours!
Around the same time, my good friend
Mark Willis was also getting a Dredd done by Gibson, his wonderful image is below...
Well and truly bitten by the commissioning bug, I contacted more artists who’s work I love. One of them was the amazing Chris Weston who painted me this Dredd vs. Death in absolute record time. I was thrilled to see it make an appearance in his hilarious Future Shock ‘Counts As One Choice’ in prog 1645...
I bought some Megazine Mean Machine artwork from Dredd artist and Sinister Dexter creator David ‘Max’ Millgate which led to some great
commissions from him.
Firstly, a Dredd vs Death vs Mean...
This beautiful Dredd on his Lawmaster. I adore the coloured version, it'd make a great cover...
And, of course a Sinister Dexter, afterall, he is their mammy! I particularly like this one as Ramone and Finny are off to Washington (in the North-East of England), presumably to whack me as that's were I live...
David is into self publishing at the moment and I suggest you check out his
Machine Punk graphic novels from Lulu.com, it's great, very 2000AD!
Similarly, after buying some pages from Savage and Dredd artist Patrick Goddard, I commissioned him to do me Dredd at the old Wellsy Block too. Instead of a villain, I asked for Dredd on his Lawmaster as I reckon he draws some of the best around...
My wonderful missus also contacted him and got me this for Christmas, Patrick told me he was going to have Dredd arresting me for looking at smut but the missus dissuaded him, the bloody spoilsport!
Sticking with Patrick Goddard, and (finally) getting this post on the topic of covers, my pal
Steve Millar commissioned him to do some modern day recreations of classic covers. Namely Brian Boland’s Captain Skank cover of Prog 199...
As well as Mick McMahon’s Walter the Wobot cover of Prog 89...
I love seeing modern-day Dredd in these old classics, as well as the subtle little changes the artists bring! Plus, give me a Mk2 Lawgiver over those weedy, dainty looking Mark 1's anyday!
More recently, Steve got the genius that is Mr
Cliff Robinson to recreate McMahon’s Cursed Earth Cover of Prog 83 which features a bruised and battered Dredd battling the Legion of the Damned, absolutely amazing stuff...
This isn't the first time Cliff has been commissioned to do cover re-creations, Mark Willis, who probably has more of Robinson's art than anyone else, asked him to re-create some of his earlier masterpieces that were unfortunately water damaged. Mark wanted the classic ‘Believe it!” cover of Prog 511...
As well as one of my personal all time favourites, the wonderful 'Statues of Liberty' cover of 495...
Cliff has probably graced more 2000AD related covers than any other artist and has, on occassion, been asked by Tharg himself to recreate the covers of classic progs for other publications. For 'The Complete Judge Dredd' magazine, he was asked to recreate McMahon's Cursed Earth iconic cover of Prog 61, which he did with stunning results...
A final commission piece for this post is the stunning Dredd vs. the Dark Judges painting below. This beauty was again commissioned by Mark Willis, this time from
Greg Staples, and it's absolutely gorgeous!
With the internet giving us access to our artistic heroes, it is now possible for anyone, time and money permitting, to get a masterpiece from their favourite artist. So go on, what are you waiting for?
Happy Easter to both my readers! As a special, ecclesiastical treat, I offer the making of 2009's cover of the year as voted for by the members of the 2000AD message board. The genius that is D'Israeli contacted me last week as he'd just discovered the email I'd sent him notifying him that he'd won such a prestigious accolade! By way of an (unnecessary) apology he sent this wonderful step by step breakdown of how he made the cover. What a lovely guy!
And next are the pencils...
Frame and blacks:
"Full inks," wow!
"Basic colour - pretty much before I add shading. I also pasted some stained glass pattern (made using a filter in Corel Painter) into the window panes."
Shading - the startling green colour in the title band is to help 2000AD Designer Simon Parr to select and mask out the title block around the figure.
"Colours without the inks - note that none of the colours go much darker than a mid-grey, so as not to fight with the black lines..."
And finally the cover as it appeared on the newsstands.
