Frequently Asked Questions
Who runs the website?
The website is run by Ocean Point Limited, which is owned by Ian Churchill and wife Sacha Churchill. All art sales are handled by Sacha. You can therefore be sure that you are buying direct from the artist and that provenance is guaranteed.
Does Ian take on convention sketches?
Ian will do a limited number of paid sketches per convention, depending on how busy he is with signings, panels etc. He will typically not take advance orders for convention sketches but will open a list first thing on day one of the show. Requests will be taken strictly on a first come, first served basis. It helps if you can bring reference material for the character you’d like him to draw. To find out what shows Ian will be attending check out the News page.
Does Ian charge for photos at conventions?
Ian will be happy to pose for a photo for or with you without charge, time permitting!
Does Ian charge for signatures at conventions?
Ian doesn’t charge for signatures but please be considerate in how many you ask for. If signing all your comics means that other people might miss out, Ian will respectfully decline to sign all of them.
Can I send something for Ian to sign for me?
Unfortunately not. Not only does Ian’s workload prohibit any extras, there is also the risk of something getting lost or damaged, a risk we don’t wish to take.
Can Ian send me an autograph?
I’m sorry but due to the large number of requests we are unable to send signatures.
What tools does Ian use?
Way back when, Ian used to use a 4H pencil because he’d read somewhere that John Byrne used one! He quickly moved to a mechanical pencil because he didn’t have the patience to keep sharpening a regular one, and also hated to have to break the flow when he was on a roll!
For a long time he used a 0.3 4H mechanical pencil but he switched over to 0.3 HB because it produces a darker line which helps when scanning and printing artwork directly from the pencils. He also uses a 0.5 blue mechanical pencil for layouts and foundation work.
To correct mistakes he uses a propelling eraser that you hold like a pencil as well as a regular eraser for larger areas. He inks with pens, using a range of thicknesses from 0.05 to 0.8, and sometimes uses Sharpies for heavy black areas.
He works on a fully-positionable angled drawing board and uses an Anglepoise lamp when there’s no daylight available.
Ian was first in line when Apple introduced the iPad Pro with Apple Pencil and it quickly became his tool of choice. He still sketches at shows in pencil and uses traditional media for studio commissions, but the majority of his comics work is now produced on the iPad Pro. The enemy of every professional comic creator is the deadline and more and more comic book artists are switching to digital methods to speed up their work flow. Ian is no exception. He finds it allows him to pencil AND ink a page in the time it used to take him to just pencil a page by traditional means.
The app Ian uses the most regularly is Procreate and he uses it for 99% of his comic page production. The majority of publishers still prefer their final files to be in Photoshop so Ian transfers the completed Procreate page to a Photoshop comic page template for submission to the publisher.
Who has influenced Ian artistically?
As a kid Ian read a lot of books with illustrations by Arthur Rackham, who he thinks is the “best comic book artist that never was” – Rackham died just as comics started to come into their own. As far as comics go, his first big influence was John Romita Snr, specifically on his Captain America run in the late 60s and early 70s. His work is what got Ian into comics. John Byrne was another major influence – Ian bought pretty much everything he drew, even after going pro. Other influences have been Arthur Adams, Alan Davis, Bob Layton…
Original Art: Pencils and Inks
As deadlines get tighter and the world goes digital, the traditional method of manual inks over physical pencils is no longer the norm. We want you to know exactly what you are buying, so please read through the information below and the information given by each piece of art on this site, and if you are in any doubt as to the properties of a particular page you are interested in buying please don’t hesitate to get in touch.
Most of the original artwork sold on this site has been pencilled by Ian and inked by hand over the pencils, ie on the original artwork. Where known we have included details of the inker.
For Ian’s creator-owned projects, Marineman and REVENGE, Ian digitally inked the artwork himself. So, the pencilled page is the only original artwork. This is indicated by ‘pencils only Ian Churchill’.
Other work has been pencilled and inked by hand by Ian, which is clearly specified. Or it may have been published without inks, ie directly off the pencils.
More recently, Ian’s pencilled page may have been scanned and sent digitally to the inker, who prints out the scan and does manual inks on the printout. This can lead to some ambiguity about what is original artwork. Is it the page that Ian has physically drawn on, which has his pencils, or is the page with inks which is the published piece? There’s no right or wrong answer, it’s down to personal preference. We have indicated in the artwork details where recently-uploaded pages have been inked from scans: this applies to work done for DC in 2015. For older pieces, we will work backwards and amend the artwork’s details to indicate whether it was published off the pencils or inked from a scan. This will take us some time, but please feel free to drop us a line if there is a particular page you are interested in buying and we will prioritise that.