dAVEMCKEANillustrator, photographer, comic book artist, graphic designer, filmmaker and musician.

COMICSI liked Dave, who was quiet and bearded and quite obviously the most artistically talented person I had ever encountered.

- Neil Gaiman

David Jeff McKean (1987) is an English illustrator, photographer, comic book artist, graphic designer, filmmaker and musician. His work incorporates drawing, photography, collage, found objects, digital art and sculpte.

He has numerous collabo-rations with Neil Gaiman, Comics, CD Covers (150 and counting), Edito-rial Illustrations, Chil-dren’s books, Photogra-phy and recently Film.

After failing to find work in new York in 1986, He met writer Neil Gaiman and they collaborated on a short graphic novel of disturbing childhood memories, Violent Cases. This was followed by a miniseries with Gaiman called Black Orchid and covers for DC Comics, HellBlazer.

In 1982, Dave illustrated the Batman graphic novel, Arkham Asylum: A Se-rious House on Serious Earth. During this period his work was often com-pared to Bill Sienkiewicz.

Stray Toasters by Sienkiewicz

He then went on to producing covers for Gaiman’s Sandman series, all it’s collected editions and many spin offs. Fur-ther collaborations with Neil came the graphic novels Signal to Noise in 1992 about a dying film-maker and his last film; and Mr Punch, which explored similar themes

as Violent Cases through the im-agery of the Punch and Judy show.

McKean also wrote and drew 10 is-sues of Cages an ambitious graphic nov-el about artists and creativity, illustrat-ed in a stripped-down pen-and-ink style.

From L - R Clockwise: The Dreaming #39, Cages: Book-Plate Edition, Death: Time Of Your Life #1 and Celluloid.

Mr Bobo and The Other Mother (Coraline)

McKean has designed posters for the 32nd Telluride Film Festival and projections, sets and directed film clips for the Broadway musical Lestat.

He has also created a few books documenting his trav-els using only illustrations, Postcards from Vienna, Bar-celona, Paris and Brussels. Also a 200 page book called Squink that gathered a number of drawings in 15 chap-ters.

Illustration

CD COVERS• Alice Cooper• Altan• Tori Amos• Iain Ballamy• Buckethead • Counting Crows• Dali’s Dilemma• Dream Theater• Machine Head• James Murphy• My Dying Bride• Michael Nyman• Paradise Lost• Skinny Puppy

(To name a few)

BOOK COVERS• Coraline - Neil Gaiman• The Savage - David Almond• The Homecoming - Ray Bradbury• MirrorMask - Neil Gaiman & Himself• The Day I Swapped My Dad For Two Goldfish -

Neil Gaiman• Wolves In The Walls - Neil Gaiman• The Graveyard Book - Neil Gaiman• Crazy Hair - Neil Gaiman & Himself

From L - R Clockwise - The Cleansing - Suicide Silence, Neil Gaiman Audio Collection ,The Wolves In The Walls (book)

The Wolves In The Walls - Neil Gaiman & Himself.

In ‘The Wolves In The Walls’ Dave Mckean uses a combination of pho-tography and illustration to create an interesting way of using collage.

In a way his work makes you think which parts are photos and which are not.

I find his work in Wolves In The Walls and The Day I Sold My Dad For Two Gold-fish, quite interesting and of course Cora-line and The Graveyard book. He makes something interesting when just work-ing in black and white for illustrations.

Decay Inevitable - Conrad A. Williams. (Book Cover)

I think this is the same process again, using a combination of photography and illustration. It’s been said Dave using a pro-cess called xerography also known as electrophotographic.

Xerography is a dry photographic process in which a nega-tive image formed by a power on an electrically charge plate is electrically transferred to and thermally fixed as positive on to paper or other copying surface. So it’s almost like photocopier but gives the freedom to put images around of other images.

This could have been a painting or a print. He may still have used photography for the police man’s shirt.

I find this piece interesting as it’s looks like a paint-ing but it might be the use of mixed media.

The Wolves In The Walls - Neil Gaiman & Himself.

Looking at this image Dave may have used the Xe-rography process. (If it’s true that he actually uses it.)

Taking a background image then copying say the tuba and then the wolf or maybe cut the piec-es down so parts didn’t merge together. For exam-ple adding the wolf ’s paw over the tuba photograph so it’s looks as it actually holding it and playing it.

Also it has been said that he uses Photoshop for minor changes in his work, maybe for thing slike brightness and contrast and colour balance.