2000 AD Covers Uncovered: Stewart K Moore on holographic orchards, the dept of freaks, & steamroller Lawmasters
13th March 2024
Every week, 2000 AD brings you the galaxy’s greatest artwork and 2000 AD Covers Uncovered takes you behind-the-scenes with the headline artists responsible for our top cover art – join bloggers Richard Bruton and Pete Wells as they uncover the greatest covers from 2000 AD!
Another stunning Prog cover now from Stewart K Moore, wrapped around Prog 2373 with Dredd astride an absolute beast of a Lawmaster…
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Although he initially dabbled in comics in the 90s, Stewart K. Moore’s career didn’t really being until the 2010s, starting with a project that would take him a decade to complete – Project MKUltra: Sex, Drugs & the CIA. He’s also completed his Tragedie of Macbeth adaptation, initially self-published, but then released in 2023, again from Clover Press. Finally, there’s the two amazing series in David Lloyd‘s digital anthology Aces Weekly – The Boötes Void and Thrawn Janet. And of course, his immediately recognizable art first appeared in the Prog with Pat Mills’ Defoe: The Divisor in 2019 (Progs 2150-2161), followed regularly with some great work on Dredd, along with plenty of stunning covers, just like this latest.
So, on we go… Stewart K. Moore with his latest Prog cover, a typically gorgeous wraparound piece that looks an awful lot like this…
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SK MOORE: In Block Mania written by John Wagner and Alan Grant, Steve Dillon drew a panel that sums up dystopia in the world of Judge Dredd. It begins to rain and Dredd looks up because he now knows where the terrorist is. He knows because rain is not scheduled.
Maybe it’s because I grew up in Scotland, a place where it’s usually scheduled to rain, but I always considered this scene a darkly funny moment. For my purposes on this cover, the rain here is just a dramatic element. It’s an easy way to give a still scene movement. It gives it life. Here it’s a steamy summer or early autumn rain.
I have a hard-bound black A3 sketchbook, it looks like an enormous moleskin, it even has the elastic black band of a moleskin notebook. In it, I do only Mega-City One stuff, where I try and sharpen my act on everything that might be found in the city.
I think, looking back, I may have taken for granted that I knew Dredd’s world well enough to just go ahead and draw it for 2000 AD. Well, I do know it well enough but what I don’t have [when a script hits my desk] is time to hone things, to find the best shorthand for me for say a Mega City truck or ‘Starscraper’, so this notebook is a place to practice those things.
I’ve said it before but reading Dredd inspired me to become an artist – I imagined drawing it decades before I ever did. I’d think a lot about the best way to approach the subject. And one thing I always thought slightly intimidating was the Lawmaster bike.
This bike has to be as imposing as him – its best images seem almost like a steamroller/road roller, but it also has to be fast and capable of dynamic jumps. Initially I tried to draw a fairly traditional Lawmaster, but I’ve noticed art droids putting interesting design spins on it of their own invention. Over the years these moments of artistic freedom have contributed to an evolution of the design that I think keeps the subject evergreen and at its best.
So, to notebook! What can I do with it to make it work for me?
For me any of my Lawmasters simply can’t deviate too much from the classic – I don’t have permission or the desire to deviate too much – but it does have to do the job in a way that convinces me. After all, if I’m excited by it it’ll show on the page. The inverse is also true, I cannot draw what I’m not interested in and if I feel the drawing looks stupid it’s over, I lose heart and it becomes a struggle [or a greater one, because it’s always a struggle!] It’s a big personal failing, I can only draw what interests me.
So in my notebook, the bike has been changing and growing. I’ve referred to the main sketches a few times in different ways, initially as a prospective cover pitch that I didn’t actually pitch.
The time finally came in late 2023 but I reduced Dredd and the bike to a silhouette and submitted the idea to Tharg…
I moved Dredd’s arms, adjusted the angle of the head and the posture from my original. I draw all these things without models – you can use posable digital models, or apps to generate forms, or you can use photo references, anything goes. But I feel while they can help they can also add awkwardness. I’ve tried them but tend not to and didn’t with this, going the traditional way – from doodles to sketches, to finished art.
I combined three or four things to punch things up a bit for the bike. First, I like drawing horses and I thought of the Clydesdale workhorse, a massive beastie. And if you look at the arch of my ‘gas tank’ you may see it evokes an arch a bit like the neck and main of a horse. But the handlebars suggest a bull’s horns, so that’s why the engine pulls down, like the deep chest of a bull too.
With these animal similarities, I have a weighty and powerful ride but I still don’t have extreme speed and dexterity. That came when I thought of a wasp.
Don’t tell anyone because I might get into trouble for doing this but I articulated the back wheel. I draw it in a way that allows it to move independently of the main chassis. I’m not a biker, I may not have my terminology ’down’ but you can see that articulation in some of my pages.
On the sketchbook page below you can see how I worked all that out on the page.
Only, I didn’t – that’s a big fat lie – I did all the animal stuff in my head and just scribbled this, right now, to satisfy the odd art lecturer that might be reading this.
‘Show your work?’ I did the work in my head.
There’s often a rifle on the side of the bike, a riot gun. Here I thought about the Widowmaker design. I think it was first drawn by Carlos Ezquerra and later, for the Karl Urban film, by Jock (I think). So I drew something in that range for the rifle, I put it in a clear holster because, A) I had a selfish desire to show it all off and, B) because I was too daft to realise it didn’t need one. Next time there won’t be one.
I took chances with the punk, I drew him a bit more graphically than normal, not real. I drew him twice in fact; the first time was bloody awful and I had to put it down, that part of the drawing sucked and I went away a bit depressed. I came back later, deleted that crap and drew this new fella…
I started to feel like the scene was shaping up like an animation cell. I drew the bike on the back a bit like the great design in Akira. To be honest though, this kind of happened by accident, I only painted it red once I saw what I’d done, the design similarity. I love that film, so it’s always in there somewhere I guess. But here I was really preoccupied by all the trees in the holographic orchard.
Yes trees. Yes holographic orchard.
Not sure if it would work, I drew this thinking about extinction in a world where the trees are holograms with leaves programmed to fall in autumn. I knew I was going off the rails and so I did all the trees on other layers in case it didn’t work – and it really didn’t. Tharg had the option to use or delete.
An important lesson – learn to love throwing it all away; there’s always the next panel and the next and the next. Let the idea find its place down that endless line of pictures. Do that with failures too, keep going, make it better next time. In comics there’s always the next panel.
In the background I drew trucks I was very happy with – pure luck. Sometimes I think drawing comics is best when you feel you are drawing a kind of toy world, toy-like things and toy-like people, animate toys. Some of my favourite artists draw this way. I think.
I have a central casting or ‘dept. of freaks’ and some of them are in the background here, if you look closely. They’re onlookers, gawkers. The keen-eyed might see their same cousins elsewhere in my work such as on my MK Ultra 3D glasses, I had been working on those around the same time I started this picture and there is a clear family resemblance – a kind of backwoods, ‘I’m My Own Grampa’ kinda resemblance. A way-too close for comfort ‘Deliverence’ kinda family resemblance.
Process wise this project went like this :-
1. Transfer sketch to 2000 AD page template in Manga Studio, grey it out, and draw over it on a new layer.
2. Next I began thinking I needed engine details and Dredd details, so I added more details and it stopped being a strict silhouette – that wasn’t working for some reason.
3. I drew the city as a black mass, faded it out, and added a new layer for details. I drew the skyline first in other words. It’s maybe my best MC-1 so far. Just luck. It worked for a change.
I paint it all in Photoshop, grey out, darken, spatter, delete spatter, spatter again, feel angst and wander off for a coffee and when I come back it somehow looks better. Like machine elves have come in and fixed it or I’ve forgotten the bits I struggled with.
Finally – art tip – With everything I do, I start with the big shapes and slowly work in to the smaller shapes. Painting a city? This! Painting a head of hair? This!
Thank you so much to Stewart for another fascinating look at how it all gets put together – you can find it on the front (and the back) of Prog 2373, in newsagents, comic shops, and from the 2000 AD web shop.
And he’s right – in art, and in life, you’ve got to learn to love throwing it all away, not being so precious, letting the idea find its place, keep going, embrace the failures as well as the successes, and make it better next time.
As for more from Stewart, there’s plenty of his 2000 AD work we’ve covered – Covers Uncovered pieces for The 2000 AD Encyclopaedia, Prog 2179, Prog 2239, Prog 2340, Megazine 440, his 2020 Sci-Fi Special poster, and a fascinating look at the artistic process with his two-part Covers Uncovered for Surfer here and here. We’ve also interviewed him twice now, first about his work on Defoe: The Divisor here and his Judge Dredd: Ascension Day strip here.
As for Stewart’s other work, find and follow him on Twitter and Instagram, read his bio here at Lambiek, and buy all his works including his The Tragedie Of Macbeth adaptation and the damn fine MK-Ultra: Sex, Drugs & The CIA, all about the shadowy world of government conspiracies and covert ops with the CIA’s mind control program.
It’s now available in a complete collection of volumes 1 and 2, with orders from Mission Comics San Francisco and Gosh Comics London coming with an extra 3D original sketch to go with Stewart’s new 3D cover for the book – and don’t worry, you also be getting Stewart’s aforementioned dept. of freaks on the 3D glasses that come with the book.
