Coming Atcha!!!

As visitors to the Cloud 109 blog are only too aware, your old Blogmeister has been conspicuous by his absence of late. Impervious to pangs of conscience, his keyboard has remained out of action at least as regards the cybernetic activity required to satiate the desires of some of his most loyal readers.

Has this man got no conscience?

Well actually he has and I have been feeling varying degrees of guilt but I comfort myself with the thought that it's all for a good cause.

And the good cause is nearly upon us as Illustrators Issue 1 along with The Art of Denis McLoughlin are currently being printed and bound and will be hitting these shores come August.

So here as a taster is the cover to The Art of Denis McLoughlin, plus the cover and some interior spreads from issue 1 of Illustrators.

And I think those of you who want to try this first issue out will agree (well I am hoping fervently that you will agree) Illustrators is going to be an ever better substitute for a daily blog - not to mention The Art of Denis McLoughlin, which finally does this amazing artist the justice he so richly deserves by providing a definitive collection of his work with accompanying text by the late artist along with a wonderful memoire and critical appreciation by his friend and biographer David Ashford.

The book also includes check lists of all those killer diller Bloodhound hardboiled fiction covers along with glowing reproductions of scores of covers most of which have not been seen by more then a few of his most devoted fans. Whilst his Buffalo Bill Annuals might well be reasonably familiar to a lot of collectors, there are few who have seen all his TVB noir paperback covers. Within the pages of this book you will see all of the TVB Paperback covers painted by McLoughlin, along with some really early Bloodhounds. There is discussion of his techniques and reproductions including full size details of some truly stunning originals.

McLoughlin is also the lead feature in the debut issue of Illustrators along with an interview with Ian Kennedy looking back on his over half century of working as one of this country's premier illustrators and comic strip artists, with features on the Spanish artist and doyen of romantic illustration Angel Badia Camps and Parisian artist Cheri Herouard adding further luster to the proceedings. A beautifully instructive essay by Mick Brownfield takes you behind the scenes of one of the artist's most iconic Radio Times Christmas covers.

We have got the most fantastic team of contributors on board and over coming months you can look forward to features by the artist and writer David Roach, writers David Ashford Norman Boyd and Gary Lovisi, ex Fleet Street Art Editor Bryn Havord, the writer and broadcaster Brian Sibley and host of the amazing Carol Day website and David Wright specialist Roger Clark to name but a few.

All in all perhaps not such a bad trade off after all.

We hope you will join us for the ride.


We will be giving you a sneak preview of issue 2 shortly.