Category Archives: BRUTE!

Samuel Beckett- 30-minute portrait

click to enlarge.

As part of my 30-minute Portrait series I decided, once again, to draw a man of senior years and created this vector sketch of Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet Samuel Beckett.

Beckett is widely regarded as among the most influential writers of the 20th century. Strongly influenced by James Joyce, he is considered one of the last modernists. As an inspiration to many later writers, he is also sometimes considered one of the first postmodernists. He is one of the key writers in what Martin Esslin called the “Theatre of the Absurd”. His work became increasingly minimalist in his later career.

Keep a look out for a special edition print run of this illustration in the BRUTE! shop.

KMFDM: WTF? album artwork

For the latest KMFDM release, band leader Sascha Konietsko and I came up with this enticing but dangerous femme fatale within whose tempting assets destruction awaits.

Coincidentally, I had been musing on the way women’s faces, lit from beneath by the light from their mobile phones,  resemble those Renaissance paintings of  Madonnas  and the placement of the sparkling fuse in the artwork adequately conveys this flushed, angelic look (even though its source is threatening).

Several alternative colour combinations were suggested before agreement was made on the featured green and yellow.

For more details on the album’s release, please visit KMFDM’s web site here

KMFDM Krank – new band artwork

I was asked by Sascha Konietsko of KMFDM to come up with a band illustration for their new album, Krank. Using several photos of the band onstage from their last tour, I spent a couple of weeks sketching the various members before building the scene in 3D and lighting it accordingly.

I then inked the individual characters before scanning them in and finishing off in Illustrator.

Details of the new album here

BRUTE! photos unearthed.

An old friend contacted me recently telling me she’d discovered some old photos of myself and fellow BRUTE! author, Malcolm Bennett, taken when we were publicising our unique range of T-shirts. Photographed by Dick Jude (of Forbidden Planet/Titan Publishing) in the then Cafe Munchen in London’s West End circa 1986-7, it shows the youthful literary duo cavorting with two suitably-attired lovelies.

Thanks to Gaye Scrivener (the cute one in the leather skirt) for this trip down memory lane.