Paul Davidson - Judge Smiley?

A toothy cover for Tooth!

Here we have a fantastic debut cover by newly assembled artdroid Paul Davidson. Paul is currently wowing us with his excellent artwork on the Judge Dredd thriller, Suicide Watch. Though his first gig for 2000AD, Paul is an accomplished comic artist having worked on Warhammer Monthly and Marvel's X-Club and X-Factor comics.

Paul is a fan of 2000AD, having grown up loving Mick McMahon's work in the 80s. I must say, the eagle, the shoulder pad and the bold blacks in the inks of this cover really put me in mind of Mick. Not a bad complement, eh?

Over to Paul to tell us more: 

"Matt the editor discussed a handful of comps I presented, and decided on a simple, iconic pose to introduce the new series that featured the new threat in the background.....these are two examples of the many I submitted."

The mother and father of the finished cover!

"Once we had decided on a final direction to proceed, I then tightened up the drawing of Dredd (a combination of the two roughs above) and took it to the lightbox stage and started straight into the inks."

He's behind you!

"Inks finished, I start to block in the colour using Photoshop. Since it was the first time I had produced Dredd art for 2000AD I felt a certain nostalgia, and was drawn towards representing a more simple colour process i.e. not over rendered, which i believe helps the image appear stronger and more bold..."

Certainly does! As mentioned above, I really like these bold inks. 

The Justice Department poster  for the cleaner teeth campaign

Paul continues "The finished image, flattened and ready to be sent off to Matt Smith. As you can see, I worked into the helmet a little more, just to create some space between Dredd and the gnashing terror, lurking behind him (so the readers eye goes there first )..........simple, but hopefully strong......loads of fun to produce!"

 Ssssssssmile!

So there we have it, a huge thanks to Paul. I'm really enjoying his interiors in the prog, really nice panel layout and a very cool style. Though his style is distinctive, I get hints of greats such as Kev Walker, Greg Staples mixed with Anthony Williams. I really do hope we see more of Paul's work in the Prog.

If you want to see more of Paul magnificent art, check out his fantastic website here, there's some gorgeous work on there. Thanks again to Paul for taking the time to send the pictures and text!