A black-and-white ink illustration identical in composition to one of the fully rendered pieces elsewhere in the archive: Sláine planted atop a heap of skulls and bodies, axe raised in one fist and dagger in the other, hair standing in wild electrified spikes, flanked by two grotesque attackers with birds wheeling overhead against a ruined tower. Presented here without color, the piece reads as either a preliminary study or an alternate uncolored printing, and the reduction to pure line strips away all of the atmospheric wash Bisley typically layers over his work, leaving only the underlying draftsmanship: confident, thick contour lines, dense cross-hatching for shadow, and a real sculptors sense of where muscle and bone sit beneath the skin. Bisley was almost entirely self-taught, drawing obsessively from early childhood in Lincolnshire before landing his first professional work at 2000 AD in 1987, and a stripped-down sketch like this is a useful reminder of the sheer structural confidence underneath the more famous painted color work, the same instincts for gesture and weight that Frank Frazetta and Richard Corben are counted among his major influences, visible here without any of the paint to soften or obscure them. Comparing a piece like this against its fully painted counterpart makes clear how much of Bisleys finished color work was built directly on top of strong underlying drawing rather than relying on atmosphere or rendering to disguise weaker fundamentals, a discipline that served him well across the switch from 2000 AD strips to the painted graphic novel covers that later defined his reputation.
Slaine sketch
