It’s been a little while, huh? Apparently my limits of multitasking are, a) starting a new, demanding day job and b) moving home… again. Hopefully, this time moving has been for good, and we have been hard at work for the past fortnight to make our home everything we have ever hoped for. For the first time in too long I have a peaceful space to call my own, and a working space that is nice and far away from where I sleep. I have a list of things to work up to before the new year, and 2018 is going to be more exciting than ever..
I’m so happy to be re-releasing Cosmos & Other Stories in early 2018 with Good Comics, complete with a bonus story – so keep your eyes peeled for more information on that in due course! The online stores are now totally sold out, but you can possibly still pick up a first print edition of Cosmos at a few stories in the UK: Orbital in London, Dave’s Comics in Brighton, Gnash Comics in Ashburton and the Travelling Man stores – if you’re after one in time for Christmas it’s worth giving those stores a call.
In other news, I haven’t had much time to do any work, let alone write a blog about how little comics’ work I’ve done. I have, however, managed to throw all of my inktober pieces together into an animation, so check that out below:
It’s a bit rudimentary, but it’s really nice to see it all in motion as I imagined it. Inktober feels like only yesterday yet also forever ago since I sketched my fox and butterfly pals. In my drawing hiatus (thanks to all my belongings being packed in boxes for at least two weeks) I have however excelled in cushion cover making and even made my first pair of curtains last week. AND a net curtain! Possibly not as exciting to you all, but I promise it’s been every bit the roller-coaster and incredibly satisfying. Almost as satisfying as taking down the visually abhorrent curtains that were here when we moved in… but that’s a story for another day. Blergh.
Anyway! Keep your eyes peeled as I endeavour to be back next week with something more to show you. Until then, have a picture of my new squirrel friend and the beach that’s a 10-minute walk from home. Peace out!
So, it’s November! I now look forward to losing the feeling in my toes between getting out of bed in the morning and returning to it that night, that crisp autumn/winter smell that infuses the air, and wrapping myself in several layers to keep toasty whilst I sit down to draw. It’s true, I’m not much of a winter/cold weather person (unless I’m on a snowboard on a mountain), but there are certain positive things that come with the long nights and snuggling up to keep warm.. for one, it seems more than respectable to get into comfy clothes as soon as I fall in through the door.
So, aside from noticing the chill in the air, this past week I’ve been plugging away at #inktober! I did fall behind a little during the month-long challenge, and have to complete two in one day a couple of times, but I still stuck with it and managed to come out with a complete narrative. Check it out!
It’s been a lot of fun to work on something with no pressure, and also fun to do more work created with Kuretake Zig brush pens rather than a solid black lines and painted with gouache. The full tools I used for each day are:
Prismacolor Premier coloured pencils (colours: Cream, Sunburst Yellow, Peacock Blue)
LAMY Safari (colour: Petrol)
The Kuretake pens are the same brand and type that I used to create Self-Care & Vegetables, and have a really nice relaxed feel to them. If you use them nervously it can all go a bit wrong, but to make sweeping and confident lines they are an absolute delight. Yes I could talk about pens for hours. Yes I’m more than comfortable with my ability to do so.
In other news, I’ve been continuing work on the comic I spoke of last week. It’s been slow progress as I’ve been juggling several other things, but I’ve started being able to plot in where some of the story text is going to go, and cutting and pasting parts around to make it look as strong as possible before I start drafting up the final artwork. Have a look:
Cosmos Additional Story Work in Progress
As I mentioned last week, part of this new story involves trying out some other ways of storytelling. It’s a little more fiddly and means that my streamlined process of working on comics that I spent years perfecting can’t be applied , so it’s probably going to take me a little longer than I’d originally envisioned. But, the good news is that stooping over a desk and paper is a particular loved past-time of mine, so no fear in getting it done!
Finally, in some scarily good news, there are only a few copies left of Cosmos & Other Storiesavailable from Good Comics! I totally sold out of my stock about a month ago, and those gents are down to the final handful of copies – and it’s only been out since late March! The good news is that there will be a reprint in the new year, but for now if you’ve been holding off and want to make sure someone get’s their Christmas copy of Cosmos then act now: http://goodshop.bigcartel.com/
And that just about wraps it up for now! Keep an eye out for what I get up to with my inktober pieces now they’re all done, and I will endeavour to be back soon with more comics news. Until next time, have a good week/weekend everyone! Peace out.
This year I’ve been lucky enough to buckle down and find time to do Inktober, the social-media led daily drawing challenge for the whole of October. For my Inktober, I’ve been posting daily(ish) pictures of a narrative on Twitter of a fox and a butterfly engaged in some kind of chase-battle. Think Duel meets Mad Max: Fury Road, but fluffier and ending far more happier. So, actually not anything like Duel. Or Mad Max. Whatever, you get my point.
On 1st November I’ll be posting the whole series on my blog, and shortly after turning it into something really cool – so keep an eye out!
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).
Table layouts!
I’ll also have copies of the BFSPYearbook 2017 with me!
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..
So, another comic event has drawn to a close leaving just one final show before the year is done. Where did 2017 go, huh? Bristol Comic & Zine Fair (BCZF) had an absolutely electric environment this year, with an expanded space and over 100 creators behind 80 tables. I was in the smaller side-section of the venue known as The Kitchen, right next to the food and coffee (useful) and in an immense stroke of luck, the person I was due to be tabling next to had cancelled at short notice, meaning a) I could spread out and b) I didn’t have to sit in a pillar. You wouldn’t believe some of the pillars and chairs you end up getting squished next to at comic fairs over the years… It’s not all glamour, I tell you.
A very sizeable half table thanks to someone dropping out last minute.
Ready to go!
The beauty of Bristol is that it has an eclectic mix of students, local artists and generally interested general public. With the event being free to enter it brought in a lot of people and made the whole event a really exciting place to be. Having my table located off in a side-venue would normally mean a quieter day, but the organisers managed to put a lot of complimentary creators/publishers together, and regardless of my location it was an incredibly busy day! Tabling next to a pillar was a little lonely at times, but I had a lot of interesting conversations with people and had a chance to catch up briefly with Dave of Avery Hill Publishing and Alex Thomas from Pipedream Comics. I also met Bryony Attenburrow, who did the Laydeez do Comics blog back in January last year when I spoke alongside Andy Oliver and Danny Noble, who is really nice! The whole day was a bit of a whirlwind, meeting new people and catching up with comics’ chums, but it was a really great day. Huge thanks to the BCZF organisers for doing such a spectacular job, and of course to everyone who swung by my table to say hello!
Off course, it wouldn’t be a good day at a comic fair if I didn’t get the chance to pick up some sweet new zines. Between myself and Sam we managed to pick up a nice haul of new things – some of which I’d been after for a long while. Check it out!
The haul! L-R: What Happened by Simon Moreton, Desert Island Discs Fanzine edited by Sammy Borras, Laydeez do Comics Hometown Anthology, Glorious Wrestling Alliance: Grappling Road by Josh Hicks, Zoology by Jo Berry, The Fields Beyond Episode 1 by Matthew Pettit and M69 by Nick Soucek
Zoology by Jo Berry
Pipedream Comics Pull List
Pipedream Comics Interview
As you can see, I also managed to get my mitts on a copy of the Pull List which included my interview! So shiny! You can pick up your digital copy of the Pull List here. I’d been wanting to pick up the Laydeez do Comics zine Hometown for quite a while, and similarly the Desert Island Discs Fanzine hasn’t been out all that long and I’d always intended to do something for it. There’s a really interesting correlation between comics and music, something you can see in the Dead Singer’s Society zines too – you can’t beat the passion of reading about someone’s connection to a particular song, album or artist. It’s like listening to Professor Brian Cox talk about the solar system or physics; I’m not wholly familiar with those long words he’s using, or totally understand what he means, but damn it’s interesting.
Another cool thing I picked up purely by it taking my fancy, is this really cool fold-out double-sided illustration/poster by Jo Berry! It quite literally caught by eye as I was walking back to my table with £3 burning a hole in my pocket – it’s a really interesting way of working and something I’ve been keen to try out for a while, the folded paper method of narrative and building out to a bigger picture. I can’t find much information on Jo or where to by Zoology, but she has an Instagram page here.
In other news, I’ve been clocking away and doodling away daily for this year’s Inktober! I’ve managed to always miss taking part the past few years, usually due to being busy working on twelve other things. So this year I decided I would truly throw myself into it and have a good go at it. And so far I have just about managed to keep on track, with only a few “I can’t be bothered to clamber into the house for WiFi to post this tonight, I’ll do it tomorrow” moments.
Travelling Inktober – on the way to BCZF!
Inktober days 8 through 10 – transcending paper special.
For those of you unaware, Inktober is essentially 31 days of 31 drawings. Every year cartoonists, comic artists, illustrators, creatives, librarians, doodlers and anyone who wants to, picks up a pen and does one ink drawing every day for an entire month. It keeps you drawing even if it’s only 5 minutes a day, and for others who spend longer on their pieces can add real refinement to their drawing. Me, I’m just a doodler, so I’ve spent the last 10 days making one ink drawing with a couple of Kuretake brush pens and some added highlights to make a narrative about a fox and a butterfly. All the drawings are posted up on my Twitter, but keep an eye out on here as at the end of the month you’ll get to see the entire story.
Collective Arts Brewing is a grassroots craft brewer based in Ontario that aims to fuse the creativity of craft beer with the inspired talents of emerging artists, musicians and filmmakers. Matt Johnston and Bob Russell founded Collective Arts Brewing on two beliefs: The first that creativity fosters creativity. And the second, that creativity yields delicious pints.
Each of our beers is a work of art. On the inside, we proudly brew some of the most well-crafted beers with the help of our brewmaster, Ryan Morrow. On the outside, we feature limited-edition works of art by artists and musicians that change every few months. Added bonus? Through the augmented reality technology of our partner Blippar, all labels come to life through the free Blippar mobile phone app. Simply scan the label to hear the music, see the videos and view artist bios.
Sadly, due to moving, I just missed the deadline. But, that’s no reason not to finish it up anyway as it’s valuable experience. Have a look at my designs below:
Collective Arts Brewing – Maple
Collective Arts Brewing – Bamboo
Collective Arts Brewing – Fuji
Collective Arts Brewing – Final Mock Ups!
As you can probably tell, this set was hugely influenced from a couple of months ago when I was watching documentaries on Life in Japan and their arts and culture, prompted by the Hokusai exhibition at the British Museum. It was really nice to do something without any people/figures, and also it was good to do something a little more branded and physical, even if I didn’t make the submission deadline. I’ll try again next time – the new call for art is already up with the deadline of April 2018.
