CHARCOAL

Stories of artists and their extreme approaches to their life and work, across a variety of domains and eras, were too good to not call upon for Relentless. I’m an admirer of historian Simon Schama and the way he manages to inject real drama into what we probably remember as pretty dry accounts of artists and their work in art history classes. Inspired to bring these stories to a wider audience, I decided that the format of the graphic novel would be an ideal, contemporary approach and chose to portray the lives of Caravaggio, Bernini and Paganini. 

I love the work of Duncan Fegredo and wanted something with strong light and shadow, with attention to historical detail. I eventually found Simon Gurr, who described the Caravaggio commission as his dream project. We developed the script in-house and roughly split it into 3 acts, one for each double page spread. His final solution for the cover was really striking with Caravaggio both poised as both as genius and thug.

The next 2 novels featured biographies of artist and sculptor Bernini and demon violinist Paganini. I worked with legendary illustrator Dave Kendall, whose visceral style worked perfectly with the subject matter. He has worked for clients such as Metallica and 2000ad, so it was a privilege to collaborate with him.