Good afternoon all!
So, the last festival of the year (in my calendar, anyway) is coming up this weekend in Loughborough, Leicestershire. The Comics Fair Loogabarooga is not only fun to say, but also the first of it’s kind, teaming up with the Loogabarooga Festival 2017, and can be found in Loughborough Town Hall this Saturday from 10am-5pm. If you’re local and fancy checking it out, it’s free to attend! All the information can be found here.
The floor plans have just been released, and although it’s a small event there are some strong contenders from the small press comics work, and Drew (Ink & Booze) has selected a fine line-up indeed. I’m seated next to my pals at Good Comics, and this time as Paddy is in attendance we can leave the framed photo at home. I’ll be there with copies of the usual suspects of Njálla, Cosmos and the newest addition to my paper children Self-Care & Vegetables. As well as these I’ll also have copies of the Broken Frontier Small Press Yearbook 2017 with my short comic At the End of the Garden (pictured below).
Here’s what they say about the event:
In association with Loogabarooga Book Festival and Loughborough Comic Con, LCF looks to showcase the talent and skills of the Uk’s Small Press and self publishing scene, with panels and workshops showing you how to make and get into comics as well as a big comics market this is the perfect way to find your new favourite creator and support some incredibly talented people. The event is FREE to attend with a nominal charge to attend workshops.
In other news, I’ve still been ticking away with Inktober! I tell you, it’s not so much the challenge of doing a five-minute drawing, it’s the remembering when you’re 2.5 pints into a pub quiz that you haven’t done anything for the day, and probably won’t manage it by the time you’ve poured yourself into bed just before midnight. But alas, it’s also been nice to mix it up a bit – like on Friday when I took a nice yet thigh-achingly difficult cycle out to the beach to also to catch up on inktober. So, if anything, it’s just another good excuse to show off how beautiful it is where I live.
With just under two weeks left until October and Inktober is over, you can catch up on all my drawings over on Twitter or keep an eye out here for the final display of them all together in my blog on 1st November.
In other news, I’ve been working away on a new top secret comic for something in the new year (yes, yes it’s already time to talk about 2018 releases – gasp!) which I’m not going to show you anything about just yet – but I WILL show you how I’ve been brushing up my skills with digital illustration! I’ve never been much for drawing on a screen with shapes, but as an artist and someone who likes to have many strings to my bow, it’s important to look into different methods – whether that’s sewing, lino printing of using purely digital means. A couple of weeks ago I went to a really nice Mexican food place down near here, and it got me thinking about how much I adore Mexican food and how cool it would be if I somehow ended up doing a total Chef and got a street food van. Not that I plan on doing it.. but you never know. So, let’s make a logo. And here it went!
Adventures in vector (would make an excellent title of a book) is something I want to keep working on, and diversify in finding a way that I can use any material possible and still show a unique style. Much like working on the jiggling jellies commission a short while ago, this is another thing I’m keen to keep working on and keep finding new ways to make cool things. Who knows, maybe one day I’ll make a comic that combines digital and traditional? Or fully digital? The world is my pixel and/or vector-based oyster.
And that about sums it up for now! If you’re near to Loughborough then please do pop along to the Loogabarooga Festival and Comics Fair on Saturday and it’s going to be truly ace. If not, you can still get all of my books online through my Etsy store. I’ll be back next week with the Loogabarooga low-down, so until then..
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