GALLERY

About

Hello, I'm a freelance illustrator based in the UK.

I was born in London, and started out in illustration with work for fantasy & horror small press magazines in the '80s, in particular the H.P. Lovecraft-devoted Dagon. My first professional commissions came from Games Workshop for their magazine White Dwarf, and this began a long relationship with the company, illustrating lots of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay publications and the very first Warhammer 40,000 book, as well as many other GW books and boardgames. I've also done game-related material for other publishers, including covers and internal illustrations for twenty-two (I think) of the Fighting Fantasy series from Puffin Books/Wizard Books, and card art for Magic: The Gathering from Wizards of the Coast.

I've also produced artwork for various publishers around the world including Scholastic, Time-Warner, HarperCollins and Oxford University Press, illustrating popular authors such as Anne McCaffrey, Raymond E. Feist and Harry Turtledove, as well as some classics including Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde and The Silver Sword. I was fortunate enough to receive the British Fantasy Award for Best Artist.

I illustrated the book accompanying the album release of Misterstourworm & the Kelpie's Gift, an orchestral work based on stories and characters from Scottish legend. My artwork was used as large-scale backdrops for live performances of the work by The Orchestra of Scottish Opera, with narration by Lord of the Rings actor Billy Boyd.

As an author, I've written some books about digital art including Digital Fantasy Painting Workshop and Digital Horror Art, and edited Fantasy Art Now published by Collins. In addition to work in publishing, I occasionally do concept and production art for computer games (following two years as an in-house artist at Eidos Interactive), and film and television productions which have included the BAFTA-nominated The Magician of Samarkand for the BBC, and most recently Gulliver's Travels for 20th Century Fox.

Currently: October 2015: My latest picture book The Crocodolly was published in hardback by Scholastic last month, and is available in Australia, New Zealand, and soon to be released throughout Asia in English, also with a translation into Chinese. The Crocodolly is something of a companion to my earlier picture book The Octopuppy which has been doing pretty well internationally -- more info at www.theoctopuppy.com Right now I'm working on my next picture book; so most of my energies have been directed towards my books for children. But I've also just finished another album cover for Axel Rudi Pell, which is the fifth sleeve I've done for his records. I've also been doing a little bit of work on the Game of Thrones computer game.

martin@martinmckenna.net

List of Published Work

List of Clients

Merchandise at Wardrobe Of Terror

The old martinmckenna.net

The Octopuppy

Prints at ArtPal

Artwork Archive at Flickr

News from October 2012

Happy Halloween!

Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Night of the Necromancer

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

In response to some wonderfully enthusiastic and supportive fans in France, and ahead of a new French edition from Gallimard Jeunesse, here are some of the interior pics I did for Night of the Necromancer.

For some reason or other I didn't get around to posting stuff from the book when it was first published in 2010, but anyway here's a selection. The complete set of thirty-one illustrations can be viewed, and purchased as high quality prints, here.

And here's a promotional video featuring the artwork, put together by the book's author Jon Green:

XB-1!

Wednesday, October 3, 2012

My gurning red demon fella gets another outing, as the cover of the October issue of the Czech sf, fantasy & horror magazine XB-1.

The Gift - published today

Monday, October 1, 2012

The Gift is released today, published by Scholastic in hardback. As I've mentioned in previous posts here and here, The Gift is my first proper picture book for children. It's a delightful, sad story about an unwanted teddy bear at Christmas, written by award-winning author Penny Matthews. Illustrating it was lots of fun, as it was such a departure from my usual attempts at spooky and grisly, and it was a challenge to convey complex emotions in the faces of soft toys! Below are some sketches I did along the way. The book is now available to buy in various online stores.