Category Archives: Sketchbook pages

Pages from my sketchbook.

Ordo Xenos and mutants too!

I’ve always found the Warhammer 40,000’s Imperial Inquisition a fascinating side to Games Workshop’s flagship game so here I’ve sketched a team for the Ordo Xenos (the alien hunting branch of the Inquisition). We’ve got an Adepta Sororitas and a Deathwatch Imperial Space Marine, a gunfighter and in the background the Ordo Xenos inquisitor himself.

Warhammer 40,000 Ordo Xenos

On the facing page are a couple more mutant gangers. In the middle is a fat mutant who uses a giant crossbow and a makeshift windlass for loading it. At the bottom right is a female mutant who has made an armoured carapace to hide in the junkheaps and take pot shots with her hand-made scrap-launching gun.

GW stuff is copyright GW.

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Mutant Psyker

Some strange doodles on the left (a German nutcracker, a shield design for an Undead Army (red skull-moon over black castle), a fishman mask idea, a flaming horse, ratman and a green dog-man using his voice as a sonic weapon) and on the right is my Mutant Psyker, a Fat Mutie and some SF hologram text.

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The Mutant Gang returns!

Fast forward to 2015-ish and I feel like sketching my jolly mutant band again (on the left page you can see my Xeno-archaeologist examining an alien skull ). I’ve sketched the current bunch; the giant biffo mutie, the bald, pallid psychic mutant, the crazy clown-haired leader with his metal claw arm and various others.

Mutant gang line-up

This is my line-up of mutants; a mutie wide-faced woman with a scrap-shotgun, a melting-faced fat mutant with a giant crossbow, the mutant psychic (now a dwarf), the giant dude, the clown-haired leader and the berserker.

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Mutant berserker

Round about a couple of years later I returned to these ideas as I felt I could do them a bit more justice. I started with the mutant berserker. I imagined he had found an electronic object that glowed a little when he discovered it in the filthy junk-heaps. He thinks it’s a refractor field so now believes he’s invulnerable to bullets.

I added a bit of acrylic white (probably Skull White!) to this version and some more crazy mutant gang territory symbols.

Here I’ve loosely sketched in a version in inks, acrylic white and a bit of watercolour wash. More next time!

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Mutant Gang sketches


One of my first attempts at digital painting (in 2002!) was a fight scene in a hive world setting between slightly medieval-garbed fanatical mutant-hating humans (a Venator gang) fighting a mutant slave gang. Hive World Warhammer 40,000

I still like it, despite it being done ages ago and in Painter Classic (maybe having only one layer helped the image to be more coherent.)

Well a few years later, back in 2006 I wanted to revisit the image and began doodling and sketching these muties again. They’re not ‘Chaos mutants’, just unfortunate souls mutated by all the toxic pollution affecting generations of humans living in the Underhive.

Some of my mutant character’s are evolving on these pages; the gangly, goofy berserker and the guy with the blade on the end of his arm.

Here’s a very quick doodle on some lined paper of the mutant gang, the large mutant waving his trusty hitting pole in a threatening manner at the back! More of these sketches later.

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Sunken World tavern scene pencils and watercolour

At the end of a sketchbook I usually draw an full page sketch and colour it, even if it’s only a light wash. My last sketchbook I decided to create the Sunken World tavern scene I’d been planning for a while. On my facebook page I’ve enhanced it with some digital painting layers which you can see by clicking on the link to the right

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My 2018 Christmas Card

This is my Christmas card for 2018, along with the model sheet I often do for comic strips. The card was all digitally drawn and inked in Clip (Manga) Studio.

I based the scene of the snowman (who I’ve called Snowpocalypse) on Jack Kirby’s cover for The Mighty Thor Marvel Treasury Edition from 1976.

The fonts are by Blambot. http://www.blambot.com/index.shtml

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Sunken World tavern sketches continued


When I’m reaching the end of a sketchbook (not my work ones, I have separate sketchbooks for them) I like to have a full page image to finish it off. I’ll add things to it over time if the idea isn’t fully formed or there are a load of characters. Here, getting near to the end of this on I was thinking about the tavern idea are some more possible patrons.
One the right side I’m refining my ideas for a smaller race for the Sunken World. I haven’t named them as yet, but here’s a bit of background: They used to spend their lives in forests, with dwellings built on platforms between the trees or hanging on the side of larger trees but after the destruction of the larger forests caused by the Tempest Storm (when the Thulhids invaded from another dimension a century or so ago) they’ve had to adapt to a more nomadic life, often ending up working onboard ships. As smaller creatures they have to band together so I imagine one would hire a whole extended family group. As smaller, arboreal mammalian creatures they probably had to use poisons to hunt in forests, maybe they’ve still got the reputation for using such things.
More soon!

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