Book Cover Photograph News! “The Red Road” By Denise Mina Is Available Now!

Last year I managed to get one of my photographs selected for the cover of the paperback edition of “The Red Road” by Denise Mina. remember? I wrote about it HERE.

It’s still beyond me why the publishers didn’t use a picture of Glasgow’s Red Road Flats or at the very least, a red road, but I’m still happy to have one of my photos on one of Denise Mina’s books.

This is how the book looks:

This was my original photo:

You can buy the book straight from the publishers HERE.
Or from Amazon HERE.
Read an extract from the book HERE.

There’s a pretty good interview with Denise Mina HERE.

That’s all for now, and remember, never judge a book by it’s cover!
See you on the bookshelves.

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The Dying Art Of Courtroom Art.

For a while when I was younger, I thought about becoming a courtroom artist.

See, I used to naively think that the courtroom artist was permitted to sit in on whole trials, perfecting their sketches and then selling their drawings on to the newspapers at the end of the day for big money! But this is not so.

I recently read a newspaper interview with a 68 year old courtroom artist named Patricia Coleman which was a real eye-opener. Born in Texas, Patricia worked in graphics for a Houston TV channel before emigrating to the UK in 1987 where she swiftly began working as a courtroom artist.

Mainly working for ITV News, Coleman has covered almost every major legal event for the past 26 years. She says:

“There have been lots of cases and they have all been different and there are different ways to work at them as well. Sometimes I get to sit inside the court but most of the time I have to observe and then run outside the court, find a quiet spot and do the sketches from memory.”

Did you hear that? From memory!

This is not an easy thing to do at all and I should know. Because I just tried it myself.

Here’s Patricia Coleman’s courtroom sketch of infamous British serial killer, Rose West:

As an exercise, I stared hard at Patricia’s sketch for exactly 3 minutes straight and then I quickly turned away and gave myself exactly 2 minutes to draw my own version from memory. This is the best I could come up with:

…As you can see, my version, whilst slightly resembling Rose West, is not a patch on Patricia’s which was done in a similar time frame.

As mentioned before, Coleman has covered pretty much every major British legal event of the last 26 years and I always imagine that it would be difficult not to let the things you overhear during trials influence your drawings. I mean, we all know that Ian Brady is evil but it’s not the courtroom artist’s job to paint him as being evil, right?

Here are some more of Patricia’s sketches…(Click on them to enlarge)…

“Some of them have been very memorable and the most upsetting was the Lockerbie trial in Holland. At the end of the trial, they read out the name and age of every one of the victims and where they were from and it seemed to go on for so long. I found it just so sad. That is one of the saddest things ever.”

Courtroom Artistry will soon be a profession of the past. Earlier this year, Channel 4 screened a version of Nat Fraser’s murder trial. 6 weeks of proceedings condensed down to 2 hours for television. It was fascinating.

Cameras are being granted unlimited access to courtrooms more and more these days and while I think that is a very good way to educate the public on exactly what happens during a trial, it will mean the end for the courtroom artist. And that’s a sad thing.

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Book Cover Photograph: “The Red Road” By Denise Mina.

Hi folks, did I mention that one of my photographs has been chosen for the front cover of the paperback edition of “The Red Road” by Scottish crime author, Denise Mina? I don’t think I did, did I? Well anyway, it has, and the other day I bumped into Denise at The World Pipe Band Championships on Glasgow Green and let me tell you this! She has the sparkliest eyes I’ve ever seen!

The paperback edition of “The Red Road” doesn’t come out until sometime in February 2014 but Denise was nice enough to send me a photo of how the cover currently looks just now…

Authors usually never deal with the images which will front their books and there ain’t no exception here my friends! The Orion Publishing Group were the ones who bought my photo and although I think the cover looks great, I couldn’t help but notice that they have tinkered with my photo just a little bit. – Which they are completely entitled to do for the next 3 years 🙂 …

Please buy the book when it comes out and until then, you can keep up to date with things on Denise Mina’s amazingly designed website which is right HERE.

See you on the book shelves!

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Al Cook’s “Necropolis”: Cut Loose (Complete Version).

Good evening.

Originally intended as a 2 parter, my long lost and even longer awaited Necropolis horror comic strip installment “Cut Loose” is now available in its entirety and you can only find it by clicking right HERE.

Here are a few cropped images to temp you…

Al Cook’s “Necropolis”. Cut Loose: Part I.

Part II was supposed to be out long before now but I had conflicting ideas of where I wanted it to go.
Zip on over to Al Cook’s “Necropolis” to see Part I of ‘Cut Loose’ in all its glory and where Part II will appear in the not to distant future.

Oh aye!
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