Rufus Dayglo - Keeping Good Company.

This week the news finally broke that Bad Company is making a welcome return to the hallowed pages of 2000AD. 'Bad Company - First Casualties' will be written by series creator Peter Milligan asked inked by original inker Brendan McCarthy. The strip will be penciled by the fantastic Rufus Dayglo, which surely means that First Casualties will be a fitting tribute to the late, great Brett Ewins who sadly died last month.

Rufus, a good friend of Brett, is delighted to be pencilling the strip, and got in touch to show his working methods behind a recently released promo image. Over to Ruf!

"I've been asked by a few people who I created the Promo art for the new BAD COMPANY - First Casualties series, so thought I'd put up a few pictures showing my err... 'process'...."

"I started off with a little thumbnail, about 1 1/2 inches high..."

Aw... an itty bitty Kano, how erm... cute?

"Then I pencilled out a proper rough, and scanned it, and printed it out larger. I pencilled it onto water colour paper (Arches hot press 300gsm, it's actually cotton fibre, not paper, so a lovely surface to draw on)..."

More like Afro than Kano!

"Then I wetted it down to a board..."

All aboard!

Check out the McMahon Dredd Trading Cards art, just being the board!

 "And painted in the background black...."

So, a human skull in the previous pic, and a severed foot here?  Nothing to worry about at all!

"At this point, I changed my mind on my approach ( I had intended to 'ink' it last...) and decided to add inked lines...   I opted for ballpoint pen haha, as I love them, and they are waterproof when dry, so great to paint over.

Now he's just showing off!

Spot the Solid Gold Death Mask refs! 

I then added washes of watered down acrylic ink ( black Daler Rowney liquid Acrylic Artists Ink) so effectively painted it grey scale....

Hmmmm, One Direction have let themselves go...

Dirty company!

Nice to see where Frank Hart ended up...

"Then I cut it off the board, and scanned it at 600dpi (colour) and patched the scans together in Photoshop as it was large art."

"Then I added colour, and a few effects around his eye, then finally some type... and Presto!"

Fall in...

"Hope that made some sort of sense! The most important thing to remember is to have fun drawing,  try not to panic (as much as me...mumble mumble ) and drink loads of coffee, and have a good supply of Kit Kats!

 

XXXX

Rufus"

Thanks to Rufus for sending this fine article out of the blue, I'm honoured!