#Ian McQue

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Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse by Ian McQue

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by Ian McQue

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Ian McQue

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Ian McQue

[downthetubes]

Rebellion Releases: Best of 2000AD rounds off in June, new 2000AD continues new Judge Dredd epic

This week's 2000AD sees the finales of both "The Devil’s Railroad" and "Feral & Foe", and includes a tribute by Karl Stock to "Nikolai Dante" and "The Order" artist John M. Burns

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Ian McQue

https://twitter.com/ianmcque/status/1566185573257297920

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Bdubs Sky Tug boat

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Ian McQue

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By Ian Mcque

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by Ian McQue

[quindriepress]

This week's spotlight is on Beth Fuller and her comic Witching Hour. Beth is an illustrator and concept artist from Dublin, Ireland. She’s considering putting down the stylus pen and heading off into the wilderness to live as a hermit, but likes hot showers and horror films just enough to keep her in civilisation. For now, anyway. (@bethfuller | website | instagram | twitter)

"Witching Hour is about a young girl sent on a mysterious journey by her father. Two pale trees with intertwined branches form a strange gate at the edge of 12-year-old Esio’s town, and beyond it lies an old, ruined land. Over their pints, as dusk falls, the villagers say it’s where lost things - and people - eventually end up. She’s got sandwiches, an apple, plasters, a bottle of Tipperary Kidz water and a Horrible Histories book in her rucksack and she’s heading off into the unknown, with only a talisman to guide her. There’s no telling who she might meet along the way."

Read the spotlight below the cut!

"That’s the initial rundown, anyway. Speaking more subjectively, I wanted to create a setting where two totally different characters - as different from each other as you can get - are forced to work together and end up changing each other’s lives. I really do think you can get on and find common ground with almost anyone, in the right circumstances."

Witching Hour took several years to incubate. "I’d been working on a comic slowly and haltingly since I was 18. There are pages kept deep, deep in my computer with old, badly drawn versions of Esio in a radically different setting, but it never really made sense as a story. I don’t think I made it past page three! Still, the fantasy atmosphere and character of Esio stuck with me over the years. Plus I really like to mix the dull, routine and mundane aspects of everyday life with things that are otherworldly and strange."

"Eventually we had a visual narrative module as part of my degree, and while recalling my old comic pages (I was mulling over it in the shower, which is where I think many of us do our most important thinking) an idea came to me that would form the basis of Witching Hour. Adding this to the embers of my previous project gave me more than enough fuel to sit down and start drawing.

"I have plenty of ideas for what I want to get up to next. I’ll work on a tarot set, keep working on freelance concept art and illustrations, design some tattoos, maybe try my hand at another comic at some stage. As always, feel free to get in touch and let me know if there’s anything you’d like to see from me!"

Beth draws inspiration from many sources: "The landscapes of south-west Ireland. Horror films, foreign language films, fantasy films, anything animated. The writing of Michelle Paver, Neil Gaiman and Ursula LeGuin.

"For me, though, it’s primarily the work of other illustrators that has inspired me the most, and it’s often only through seeing and evaluating lots of different brilliant styles that you can start to discern your own tastes. As a child, the obligatory Ghibli film catalogue. Then the work of Chris Riddell, Max Prentis and Ian McQue were enough inspiration to foster an interest in art school. I went, studied Illustration at DJCAD, and discovered Jake Wyatt, Celia Lowenthal, Juliette Brocal, Linnea Sterte, Jack T. Cole, Evan Cagle, Alphonse Mucha and (of course) Moebius. Seeing their work is like taking the creative spark and making it into a deodorant flamethrower."

Beth's work often centres around fantastical worlds and sweeping landscapes. "I think somehow you always come back to what you know. Sometimes you don’t even notice you have a fascination with something until you start to create and it keeps returning.

"My family and I spent a lot of time around Irish coastlines growing up, especially during the warmer months. Kerry, in the south-west, has mountains that turn brown in winter, then when summer comes are carpeted with a haze of purple heather, not unlike the hills of Scotland. There are crumbling ringforts and monastic ruins on isolated hilltops. I could be in the most beautiful place in the world but still miss the coconut scent of Kerry gorse. The fantasy aspect is fun to play with, and it adds a nice sense of mystery, but fundamentally I think the landscapes I draw are an attempt to capture, and return to, the shores I kicked about on as a kid."

For aspiring comic creators, Beth has this advice: "This is a common one, but I think it’s still worth saying: if you have a story, get it down. You don’t need to consider yourself a comic artist to make a comic. You also don’t need to wait around for the right time, or enough expertise - nobody is going to give you a nametag with ‘comic artist’ on it. If you can draw, and you need to say something, just start drawing boxes and see where it goes. Also, ‘Necropolis’ by Jake Wyatt is really good."

You can pick up Witching Hour, alongside the other three comics in our 2023 collection, right here on Kickstarter! 

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Ian McQue @ianmcque

10:15 to Delft (not that one)

[manfrommars2049]

tree by Ian McQue via ImaginaryTrees

[tenderlysharpmidain]

assembling a large pie from its fundamental biopunk ingredients inside a laboratory, dramatic epic scifi biopunk,action shot, by ian mcque and Quentin mabille and Takeshi Oga and Peter mohrbacher, artstation, detailed, 4k --q 2 --v 4 --upbeta

NielG

midjourney

[jondoe297]

this is a trend i can get behind. well it's not exactly a trend but seeing artists all over the place post this image/graphic is great an i thought i'd join in.

you know what's not simply 'just a trend'? this A.I. nightmare that we also see flooding our feeds(and more). A.I as we're talking about here,and how it's being used,is nothing short of horrible,unethical and straight up wrong.

i actually had the idea to doodle the image instead of posting the original after seein artist Ian McQue's instagram post. cuz that's(even if it's just a small thing) how inspiration and ideas work. not a machine or algorithm sweeping the internet for artists' work and Frankensteining it. which is astonishingly and infuriatingly an analogy used by some to justify doing this!

it's done on a tiny piece of scrap paper i have. it off-center an sloppy,you can see a rough pencil shape underneath. an i forgot to make the top of the 'A' and the 'I' overlap the red circle lol. cuz i am a human with a specific level of skill that is also affected by things like my mood. i may take too long to do a sketch that others do in a much shorter time but i don't do it in the same amount of time an the same effort it takes to google search. There is an effort an a process to go through an also enjoy. i may suck at drawing hands but i know how many fingers are in one. i may follow in the footsteps and a similar art style of my favorite artists but i don't shamelessly absorb their work,spit it back out distorted signature an all an call it mine.

but that's what art is an what artists are. Human and sloppy an messy an complex an full of emotion an experience an fellings an moods an the movement your hands and your tools do to put that on whatever material you choose to put it on. Art is the distillation of the human emotion and experience or any part of it at any given time. even if it's not intended to be,cuz sometimes you just wanna have some fun or derive some joy from it. an that itself is the most human it gets and in the best way. Not a machine mimicing the visual part of it with no essence! Skip straight to the 'pretty' pictures. Worse,it's humans using the machine to steal others' work not even some evil machine doin it by itself. we always say 'no shortcutss in art'. It's the process! The emotion!

so many other aspects and things to touch upon. and that i think about. but i rambled on a bit. many others are better with words than i am. We gotta keep on fighting the good fight. for our and our fellow artists' Rights. i myself will continue to help an share in as many ways as i can,even if small.

btw the original 'no to A.I.' image was created by artist Alexander Nanitchkov(cuz always credit the original artist or creator!) on artstation where a protest's happening against the platform implementing A.I. in an act of betrayal we're sadly seeing on many art sites and platforms. it was sparked by artist Nicholas Kole,you can read some about it right here or follow Kole on instagram or on twitter