Broken Frontier

Besides lending his superior painting skills to illustrate a plethora of 2000 AD's comic tales, Simon Davis is also an established painter. Here he talks extensively about his career and his love of comics.

Having been active in the industry for over 18 years, Simon Davis is always working on something for the comic industry. Though also published by DC Comics, he is perhaps better known for illustrating many of 2000 AD’s covers and finest comic strips like Judge Dredd, Sinister Dexter and Stone Island. Besides doing comics, his activities as a fine art portrait painter has led him to win numerous art prizes.

Broken Frontier: Your style of illustration is quite different than the norm, even for Europe and the likes of British Magazine 2000 AD; how did you arrive at that art style?

Simon Davis: When I first started around the late eighties you had people like Simon Bisley and Glen Fabry that were doing fully painted work and I started off my career as an illustrator and wanted to do comics. Getting to see those guys in the 2000 AD magazine made want to do comics, either as an illustrator or painter. It’s quite brilliant though and quite rare that you get to do weekly comics fully painted. I’ve been doing this now for all these years and even now there’s only a couple that do fully painted comics. Most of the stuff is coloured on the computer now.

Simon's cover painting for 2000 AD Prog 1707 featuring Judge Dredd.
Click on the image for the complete version.

BF: Your starting point is still a pencil sketch though, am I right?

SD: Yes, I usually get commissioned to do a whole story, for example, for 10 progs (episodes) and when I have finished it, only then will they start running it in the comic. I work on about 10 fully painted pages a month which is okay. I’ve been doing it for so long that the process has been fully worked out, pencils to inks to paints. I also ink them quite thoroughly before I paint them because it’s easier for the painting part. Sometimes you get a structure underneath and you can paint through the smudge. It’s probably quite excessive to do it this way but it just helps me to have a good structure underneath for me to follow. Just making a lot of work for myself. [laughs]

BF: I suppose this is a completely different mode of working as opposed to your fine art portraits?

SD: The biggest difference with the comics and the portrait painting would be the materials; portrait is oils while the comics are gouaches. It dries quick and reproduces really well which is one of the reasons why I use it. The process is also different. For comics I spent a week doing the roughs, a week doing inking and then a good week for painting. I can paint two pages a day which is relatively quick. With portraits, oils take ages to dry but relatively the same principle is used there.

Detail from the cover of 2000 AD Prog 1705 featuring Nikolai Dante, the only character to best Judge Dredd as Britain's favourite comic character. Click on the image for the full version.

BF: While doing the comic pages, do you sometimes find yourself hankering for the fine art pieces?

SD: Yeah, it happens. When you have to do a long story, it can be quite relentless. It can be like a chain almost and then it is nice to have a break and do some portrait stuff. I think that in how I construct a comic panel there is a similarity in how I lay out a painting sometimes in terms of composition. They both feed each other and that can be quite useful.

BF: I also noticed a difference in style. In your comic pages, the lighting is handled much heavier and more dramatic.

SD: The thing with some of the comics I illustrate, like Stone Island and Ampney Crucis, is that I use a limited pallet to keep some continuity between each episode. With painting it takes longer to do and there’s more subtlety and the image is presented more thoroughly. For comics you want to have it clear, detailed and nicely painted but you don’t want to hold the story up. If you insert a brilliantly rendered image, it holds the story up. You got to read the story because that’s the point of it. If something is action you got to be able to read it quick.

BF: Was the transition to comics from your illustration and graphic design work easy?

SD: Well there’s a difference between US comics and the UK and especially the type of storytelling 2000 AD excels in, which is a bit more sympathetic to European comics. I personally stay clear of superhero comics, I don’t think I’m suited for that, the dynamics and punch ups. I don’t consider myself a dynamic painter. With 2000 AD, although there is action, it’s more talky and they use more idiosyncratic humour and that is quite sympathetic to my work.

I find myself more interested in European artists than American. I realise that what I’m saying is a bit limiting because I’m sure there are massive amounts of comics in America that can prove me wrong but in the general sense I adhere more to the British sensibility.

Click on the image to experience the full impact of Simon Davis' portrait work.

BF: It is true that the style in European comics is more static. US comics are more about movement.

SD: American comics are for a younger crowd. The key principal in European comics is the story whether it is an action story or a romance story. That is what seems to matter there, superhero comics are very brash and violent. And again, that is fine but that is not for me. I grew up with Astérix which I still absolutely adore. Most of it is talking though, I like conversational comics.

BF: Have you ever been approached by a European publisher to do an album?

SD: No not really, I have never been proactive in that regard. I have been working for 2000 AD for 18 years now and pretty constant as well. To be able to do fully painted comics for 18 years is quite unheard of really; most painters sort of struggle through it. I have been quite happy to do it. I also have a good pair-off with various writers like Ian Edginton and Dan Abnett. Often I tell them what I want to paint, like a great big samurai robot thing and then they get started! So why would I want to stop doing that?

The cover painting for 2000 AD Prog 1751 featuring Fallen Angel. On the left the painting integrated into the 2000 AD cover design. Click for a larger image.

BF: How does it work afterwards then? F.i. Ian Edginton, does he confer with you about the story you’re working on?

SD: Usually we just have a phone call and discuss what I would like to draw without any idea what this would mean story-wise. For example, I would like to do a detective thing and then he works up a synopsis, gives me a ring to see what I think and we take it from there. After that I draw some sketches and we send it off to our publisher for his opinion. So it’s quite collaborative. Ian is a really good writer and quite sympathetic to the artist so he puts in maximum 6 panels on every page. I am quite pleased we have this dynamic going.

It’s a bit different with Dan Abnett. He is an incredible writer who does just so much like novels, comics in the UK and US. The taps on his brain just seem to be constantly open. When we talk on the phone about something, you can expect to have something show up the same week that will be a thousand times crazier than what we talked about, fully realized with good characters and all. I worked with him on Sinister Dexter quite a few years, probably the longest I stayed on a character(s).

BF: Do you have a preferred genre that you like to work in?

SD: The story I’m doing at the moment, Ampney Crucis, was born out of me wanting to do a Golden Age English detective story which ended up tying into multiple dimensions and stuff. I always wanted to do something that was set in the 1920-30s so that is fun to do.

When I look at other people, the only comic that I really follow is Hellboy because I think Mike Mignola is an absolute genius. Even with Duncan Fegredo it is perfect, he is an amazing artist. So that would be the only character that I want to draw but I wouldn’t want to do a strip with that, maybe a painting. The style requires something blocky and beautiful design. It is the perfect comic to me. It’s all about Mignola liking these old horror movies and stuff coupled with this focused storytelling.

The three covers of the Ampney Crucis serial for a beautiful designed triptych. Click for a larger version.

BF: What are some of your influences?

SD: When I first started it was obviously Simon Bisley but the American artists I really liked were Bill Sienckiewicz, Kent Williams and John J. Muth. Stuff like Elektra: Assassin and Havok/Wolverine: Meltdown, that was absolutely brilliant. They made the comics seem a bit more relevant in a way. They were of course direct descendants from Jeff Jones and Berni Wrightson but they made it their own in those days.

When I wanted to move from comics to painting, I got in contact with a painter called Phil Hale who lived in London. I used to go see him - still do - and he just basically told me that if you want to paint, you need to paint and get to it. He is an amazing painter and a big inspiration. He did a few Swamp Thing covers for Vertigo from the more recent series. He’s an American chap but lives in London. I wouldn’t say that I was his apprentice but he was very encouraging and we went over stuff a lot.

BF: So what are you are working on at the moment?

SD: At the moment I am working on the story of Ampney Crucis. He is a detective who has a manservant called Cromwell. He just came back from the first World War and he is still haunted by a vision he saw at the Sommes. He gets caught up in an adventure with a monster from another dimension. It’s hard to explain (laughs). The first storyline is collected into a book. Nobody dies so hopefully there will be another storyline soon. [laughs]

Follow Simon Davis online at his website.

This interview was conducted at the Lille Comics Festival in Lille, France.