Orkney Visit

Back in February 2017 I met Cam Kennedy at the 2000AD 40 years of Thrillpower Festival in London, which led to me setting up this site to help Cam promote his work and help other collectors get visibility of the pages that are available for sale.

We've had a lot of success in getting some lovely pages into the hands of "CamFans" since then but the request that always comes up is for more images of the pages. So when I got some free time in December I thought it would be great to get up to Orkney to see Cam and also get some images of his original art.

So for me the journey started in the south of England, up from Heathrow on the plane, then transferring onto a dinky little LoganAir plane.

Cam & his friend Ian picked me up from the airport and took me to Cam's - though I could have been anywhere as it was so dark that I couldn't see anything, apart from eerie refection of sheep's eyes in the fields!

Staying at Cam's is a real treat for an art fan, with iconic work on the guest room walls.

and beautiful views of Orkney landscapes from the window.

I learned that Cam's neighbour was fellow comic book artist Jim Baikie - and that this was no co-incidence. Cam visited Jim and became friends after finding out about their mutual interests, and Jim sold Cam a plot of land which Cam then built his house on.

The weather during my visit wasn't great, but we were able to get out briefly and see a bit of the local area.

It was fascinating to see Cam's studio set up, though he actually did much of his work at a more typical dining room type table. Cam told a funny story that he would often be painting and flick his brush behind him to get rid of the excess water on the brush. This led to coating the radiator behind him in the colour palette of the book he had been working on.

It was also fascinating to see some of Cam's non-comics work, some of which was on the walls. Cam lived in Normandy, France for a few years before moving to Orkney and during this phase he focussed on fine art as well as commercial art working with a local printer doing design work for them. Its something that he has continued working on over the years, and has various canvasses including work right up to present day.

Cam showed great hospitality, and over many lovely meals and drinks we had a lot of great conversations, discussing his career, time in France, time in Portland Oregon, his various projects, and visitors to his home over the year. I recorded an hour long conversation, and that will be shared at some point in the near future.

Cam wanted to show me the source of the term "hotties" which has cropped up in various Judge Dredd strips over the years - they're a kind of log that Cam uses for burning to heat the house during the cold Orkney winter.

And on top of this I spent a long time taking photos of Cam's original comics artwork which will be making its way onto the site very shortly. I didn't uncover too much extra work not already listed (aside from some Ektryn, Taboo, Dredd Taxidermist and Warlord) though we did look at some of the prints Cam has - so will be adding some of those to the store soon.

So before I knew it my time was up and had to head home, though just in time as a storm was hitting, threatening cancellations for flights and ferries out. Made it home safely though the plane back was a bit wobbly!

As a leaving gift, Cam did a quick sketch in my copy of the IDW Dredd hardcover. Cam used my white Posca pen to draw a negative image - the first time Cam had done this so he found it an interesting exercise.