Sketchbook

Err, how is it nearly September?

| rozihath

Hello everyone,

I can’t be the only one who feels like 2020 was a bad dream and it should be May 2021 or something? How is it nearly September? So many questions.

Well, since my last update in October, a fair bit has happened. I moved house, Sam and I adopted a beautiful greyhound called Malibu, I took way too many pictures of said dog, we at Good Comics successfully funded our Kickstarter campaign and released five new books because of it, I did an alumni talk at my old University, built a bed, self-published my weekly comics into a new book Eta Carinae, designed more postcards for my friend’s business, got Covid, got over Covid, did a charity run and all the while continued working on my next big comics project.

I feel a bit dizzy listing all of that. So, where to begin?

Since last year I’ve been working on a larger project than I’m used to – a comic, which at the moment, all I can share with you is that it’s about whales. Now, everyone loves whales, right? I’ve been doing a lot of research, reading whale-related books and reading around the subject into other areas such as craft, mythology and poetry. I even read Moby Dick, which was a very long ordeal…

Above: The fold-out whale book I created with trimmed-down cartridge paper, pencil, ink and gouache along with mountboard and hand-dyed muslin covers, using shibori techniques in grey dye

Above: A gallery featuring work from my whales sketchbook, including playing around with inks, textures and researching stitches.

Fun, huh? This is a purely self-motivated project, so it’s great to be able to find new avenues of research and things I’d like to encompass in the story. On the flip side, having no real deadlines or timelines means this has a way of getting put to the bottom of my pile. Between work, kids and Good Comics it’s tough to have my own time. Or to allow me time to work on this.

I think that’s part of the reason I’m writing this now. No, not because I’m procrastinating(!), but to share this kind of weird, purgatory feeling of wanting to dive into a project but having a lot of other responsibilities that tend to come first. But hey, I’m working on my priorities and making a conscious effort to not let my own personal work fall to the bottom of the list.

In other news, I helped my dear friend Bisi with some more marketing materials earlier this year, for her homemade French-inspired foods brand Recettes Sucrées 1859. I’ve created more illustrative work for her before, but this was a lot more simplistic and in the style of some of her own packaging she’s using now. Check it out!

Bisi is always such a passionate person to work with, and her cakes and confisures are incredible. Check out her products here.

Finally, I’m running a short bank holiday weekend sale on my Etsy store. 15% off, no minimum spend, and no code needed. Just go to this link and check it out. If you haven’t already got one, you can pick up a copy of my latest comic Eta Carinae for just £3.40 in the sale, plus P&P.

Until next time!

Rozi x

Quarantine & Coffee

| rozihath

Hi folks,

Welcome back! The calendar has ticked over to April and we’re in the midst of a worldwide pandemic (in case you weren’t already aware). I hope you’re all safe and well wherever you are.

Now we’re all settling to a new normal of being inside, it’s really time for me to get back into writing. So here it goes! Here’s what I have for you today:

  1. Start of spring sketchbooks
  2. Quarantine drawing challenge & free comics
  3. Good newsletter
  4. Recent projects

1. Spring sketchbooks

Remember a few months ago I made some autumn-winter sketchbooks? Well, they’re soon to be back with the next season: Spring-Summer 2020! Back in late-February, I picked up some new papers from the magical Shepherds fine papers in London especially for the next set of sketchbooks. My new prized papers have been sitting quietly waiting to be collated, and it’s on my list to do.

Meanwhile, you can now pick up one of the last few autumn-winter sketchbooks on sale for just £2.50 with FREE UK shipping (everywhere else £2 p&p)! Any remaining sketchbooks will be taken off sale in the coming weeks, so pick one up whilst you can.

2. Quarantine drawing challenge & free comics

It goes without saying that it’s a really stressful and scary time for everyone. However, one of the most heartwarming side effects of the COVID crisis has been people’s response to opening up their skills and creativity for all.

From Grace Sandford’s Instagram live drawing workshops, to Oxford Pennants printable positivity pennants (direct link to pdf here), and even free audiobooks, it’s great to see so many people trying to make this confusing time more comforting and inspiring.

At Good Comics, we decided to release a bundle of free comics to encourage everyone to take government advice and stay home. This bundle includes the first edition of my 2017 release Cosmos & Other Stories, as well as Stealing Home: Rookie Season by Paddy Johnston (including a comic by yours truly). You can read about the bundle on the Good Blog, or take a direct link to the bundle by clicking here.

Good Sam has also announced the quarantine drawing challenge of designing your own old-timey baseball player! It all started with a ‘find your 1800’s baseball player name and evolved into something more:

As Pee-Wee “Hoss” McGraw, I’ve started designing mine up already. We’ll post a gallery of as many as possible over on the Good Comics website. Here are some tips/guidelines!

  • Try and make the designs to 2 1/2 x 3 1/2 inches.
  • Baseball has a long and rich history including some amazing women and people of colour players, so be creative!
  • If you don’t like your ‘name’ from the challenge above, feel free to make up your own.
  • If 1800’s America unnerves you (i.e. the slave trade) , feel free to make it a modern-day vintage style card.

If you’re up to the challenge, email your cards to us or tag @samuelcwilliams on Twitter and use the hashtag #MajorLeagueMugs. And have fun!

3. Good Newsletter

In February we launched the brand-spankin’ new Good Comics newsletter. It’s monthly at this point, but we also send out random news as and when we can, like about our upcoming release from Claire Spiller! (more on that below)

I like to think we’re pretty interesting, so you can read our March newsletter here, and sign up for future updates by clicking here. Go on, you know you want to.

4. Recent projects

I’ve been pretty lax towards keeping my site up to date, so I have a couple of more recent projects to share with you! Firstly, earlier this year I was commissioned to create another back cover for Star Jaws issue 31!

As it was the February issue I went for a valentine’s theme, with a love letter from Senator Bail Organa to his wife Breha Organa – the adoptive parents of Princess Leia before Alderaan was destroyed by the Death Star. Yes, I thoroughly enjoyed being enthralled in the Star Wars universe. Yes, I researched a lot about Alderaan’s most iconic landmarks and foliage. No regrets. Click here to see the full back cover in action!

Secondly, I also worked on a submission for Two Set Mag: ‘a zine focused on writing, with a healthy dose of art and photography – all by skateboarders‘, as described on their site.

This comic is for the second issue, under the theme of ‘chance’. It’s not yet available to buy, but keep an eye out and I’ll let you know when it’s purchasable. In the meantime check out their Instagram and grab a copy of issue #1 from the online store.

I’ve also been busy with the Good Comics team preparing for our latest release, Raze by Claire Spiller. Claire’s work is beautiful and she’s well rehersed in printing comics so she’s been an absolute dream to work with – check out her latest work and pre-order your copy of Raze today. If you like my comics, this will be up your street! Treat yo’self.

And that just about rounds it up for now! A few other things have happened, like turning 30, having my feet tattooed, having an incredible pre-birthday celebration with Sam in London and learning how to homeschool a 10-year-old. But hey, better save something for the next blog!

Until next time, stay safe!

Rozi x

Sniffle Syndrome

| rozihath

Afternoon fellow snifflers.

It seems to be fully-loaded cold and flu season in my neck of the woods, and everyone is sniffling and coughing near constantly. Including me. I’m not sure whether mine is down to autumnal hayfever, a low-lying cold that’s waiting to emerge or my entire head being taken over by a goop monster. Who knows?

Anyway, it’s a busy time of year in the run-up to that yet-to-be-mentioned gift-giving holiday that occurs at the end of the year. I’m finishing up a web-comic, launching a top-secret community-based project and tending to general life tasks which now also include catering for my three new gerbil assistants: Peach, Nugget and White-Knuckle Rog (more on them another time). But still, I have things to show you all!

Autumn-Winter sketchbook
Autumn-Winter sketchbook, inside pages.

Firstly, the autumn-winter sketchbooks I announced a couple of weeks ago are selling fast! There aren’t many left, so if you’d like to join the club of seasonal strugglers, you can pick up your sketchbook here. Each order is lovingly wrapped in brown wrapping paper and posted in a card envelope so it reaches you safely and can be recycled easily.

If yours arrives and you want to share some of your autumn doodles, please do email me as I’m planning on setting up a gallery to share our autumnal feelings. You can contact me here.

I’ve also put up some risograph prints on my store that I printed with Assembly Press earlier this year. They’re in very limited supply, so pick one up quick! Available in two colours – fluoro pink/orange, and fluoro orange/yellow.

Reach A4 Print in orange/pink
Reach A4 Print in orange/yellow
Reach A4 Print in orange/yellow - detail
Reach A4 Print in orange/pink
Reach A4 Print in orange/pink - finer detail

And, that’s about it for now. Keep your eyes peeled next week as I’m planning to finally announce what I’ve spent the past few months working on. I’m equally excited and nervous, so watch this space!

Until next time, stay sniffle free my friends.

x

Summer Loving

| rozihath

Goof advernoon, evereony!

This humidity/hayfever combination has me all a’funk. Even more so when I sit down to write my blog, and can’t recall what I ate for dinner two days ago let alone what I’ve been doing for the past nearly six weeks. I can hear you all now, reading this, muttering affectionately… “ah, that’s what happens when you start getting older”. Thanks.

Thankfully I’m a lady of lists, so here I am to look back through them all and get you up to date at what’s going on at HQ.

Since we last spoke:

  • I’ve been researching and writing my keynote speech
  • My sketchbook for codename: The Biggest One Yet (TBOY) is becoming plumper
  • I went to Bournemouth University’s Festival of Learning
  • I’ve been on a copywriting course through my work (expect jazzier headlines in anything I write from now on)
  • And, drove around my living room swerving to avoiding Pokemon and wild animals*

So! Keynote speech. It sounds impressive, it feels impressive, and a solid 10% of me is not nervous at all.

Genuinely, I’m really looking forward to speaking at the International Graphic Novel and Comic Conference; it’s something I couldn’t have ever dreamed of doing a few years ago, and really, to talk about comics for half an hour to a keen audience is practically a dream. Try introducing yourself as a comics artist to anyone who isn’t a comic artist – it’s exhausting. Even trying to answer the question of ‘what kind of comics do you make?‘ is a tricky one, as really, people only know of a very few genres. Superheroes, political/newspaper cartoons, and possibly if they live in a metropolitan city with an excellent bookshop, they may also know of autobio/biographical and journalistic comics. All-ages-anthropological-sociological-travel-fantasy is a bit of a jumble, let’s face it. So being able to talk to a semi-engaged audience sounds delightful!

The theme of the conference is Retro! Time, Memory, Nostalgia. My speech is on Retrospective Storytelling: From Childhood to Characterisation, on Wednesday 27th June. So if you’re booked onto the conference please do come and say hello! You can find the full programme here.

Sketchbookin’ hard on my biggest comics’ project yet…

Next up, I’ve been chugging away slowly at a sketchbook I picked up specifically for working on my next comics’ project in. For The Biggest One Yet (TBOY) I really wanted to grow an idea though sketching and external inspiration, rather than starting with an idea. I have a few things I’d like the story to encompass and a route for it to take, but the finer details are something I’d like to stumble upon during the process. I’ve been posting regular updates and sketchbook pages on Patreon, so if you have FOMO of TBOY then YKWTD: https://www.patreon.com/rozihathaway

I couldn’t possibly leave you with nothing, so here’s a taster:

IMG_3546
IMG_3547
IMG_3548
IMG_3549
IMG_3610
IMG_3649

This past week I also made a special trip on the number 17 bus to Bournemouth University for their Festival of Learning. They’ve had a whole host of interesting events on, but the only one I could make it to was the fantastic Storytelling from India talk from Tara Douglas. Sadly I couldn’t make it to the screening of the animations that the talk was based on, but it was still incredibly interesting all the same. The talk of India’s caste system reminded me a lot of an exhibition I went to a couple of years ago at the International Slavery Museum in Liverpool; which, FYI, is a fantastic museum and if you haven’t been there already I highly recommend it. Back to the talk – Tara led us through the process of making a series of animations based on tribal stories, myths and legends. Using local storytellers, narrators and artists it made for a really interesting and beautiful project. If you’re interested, you can see a full article from Bournemouth University here, or check out the website here.

And that just about wraps it up! As I said above, I have been lucky enough to go on a copywriting course with my day job – so have I convinced you through my words? I’m not sure what I would be trying to convince you of… Maybe I need more practice.

Until next time!

 

x

 

*driving around my living room swerving to avoid Pokemon may or may not be in the imagination of myself and four-year-old Saul.

 

The Comics Break

| rozihath

Good afternoon all!

I’m writing this in the clutches of the latest cold that’s going round, which has me coughing for hours on end, so please send cake and medicine to me whilst splutter out this update…

So, I hope you’re all up for something a bit different today, as I’m going to tell you a story. Make yourselves comfortable! Once upon a time, after Cosmos & Other Stories came out, and after I finished up pieces for Dirty Rotten Comics #10 and The Broken Frontier Small Press Yearbook 2017, I decided to take a short break from comics. I think, doing this kind of work, it’s all too easy to feel like you have to keep churning out work so people don’t lose faith or forget you exist. But after a tough personal spell and using work as a crutch to keep me going, it was time to let my mind go and deal with life, and try to regain my health.

The break from comics didn’t come naturally, and I still worked on commissions both for private clients and other more illustrative work (the Kickstarter print with Emily B. Owen’s Brain Shoodles, and a piece for the Habitat anthology). But, the break from direct comic work was there all the same, and it gave me valuable time to promote the work I’ve already done and work out where best to move next. And, play with some different materials and techniques. Check it out:

Lino Printing
Lino Printing
Zig Brush Pens
Tombow Pen & Graphitint
Tombow Pen & Graphitint

Having time to play around with new processes and materials has been golden, and given me a chance just to draw or create for the sake of drawing again. I’ve played with creating stamps from soft lino,drawing with Kuretake Zig Brush pens, the Tombow ABT Dual Brush Pen and some Graphitint pencils, as well as other experiments in fabric and dying, clay and wood. Taking that pause really did help to clear my mind and work on new concepts, and it gave me new skills and new challenges to hone in on to keep improving.

And that leads us to my new project! Due to be released in September in time for Thought Bubble Festival, I’ve been working on a small comic which I’ve gone thorough the scripting and layouts of already, when the inking coming next. Have a look at some sketches:

One thing I’ve been taking note of is how my painting accounts for the majority of the atmosphere in my work. So, remove the painting, do I still give that effect? This new project I’m working on is not only vastly different and physical application, but also different from my usual storytelling too, being totally autobiographical rather than based in imagination. It’s been challenging, and new, and exciting all at the same time. And I really hope people like it!

I do miss splashing about with gouache and I’ll definitely keep evolving the way I paint, but for now, get ready for something new and exciting and totally paint-free! -gulp-

And that’s where I leave you for now! I’ll be back soon with more news, but until next time have a good week/weekend everyone. I’m off to visit family and get plied with food to mend this illness once and for all. Laters!

 

x

The Art of a Good Sketchbook

| rozihath

So, after a very long summer since I finished up my first year at University, the second year is finally looming. ‘Back to School’ signs are popping up everywhere, and I get that sinking feeling once more as I realise in a months time life is going to get stressful again for 7-or-so months. Don’t get me wrong, I love to learn; Going back into education has been the best decision I’ve ever made, and I am so glad I didn’t listen to all the naysayers when I decided to apply two years ago. However, yeah.. Juggling studies, part time work, a long distance relationship and a social life is quite the challenge, but I’ve never liked to make things too easy for myself. Where’s the fun in an easy life?

Sketchbookz r 4 cool kidz. Random doodle.
Sketchbookz r 4 cool kidz. Random doodle.

Back to business. One of the many things my course has taught me so far is the art of having a good sketchbook. Back in college all those years ago, up until the last year or so, I absolutely detested using a sketchbook; I couldn’t think of anything worse. I’d much rather try and draw something from start to finish in one go. If it looked alright, great. If it looked terrible, I’d get annoyed and brood over how terrible an artist I thought I was. Then feel so down I’d eat a whole sharing bag of Doritos (Cool Original, of course) with mild salsa dip, proceed to feel rather ill and then regret every cool, salsa-y moment of my comfort eating whilst laying in the fetal position. Productive, right? When it came to starting my course at university, they expected all this sketchbook work to support my ideas and show progression. Ughhhhhh, honestly, such a pain. It felt like I was taking 2 weeks to do something I could come up with in 2 days, but all this sketchbook work actually proved valuable. I paid £9’000 for my first year to learn how to use a sketchbook – bargain! But in all seriousness, it has become a staple tool of mine. One huge deciding factor has been on using proper paper sketchbooks. We’re talking Seawhite of Brighton’s extra-strength when wet kind of proper sketchbook. I’ve found even Moleskine’s sketchbooks and the ones you can pick up in the art section of WHSmith’s lack quality. Nowadays, like with my Lost and Found comic, I’ll draw all the artwork in my sketchbook and scan it in from there, I don’t even use ‘final paper’ anymore. But yes, I have learnt that forcing myself to work in a sketchbook first, although may take extra time, actually makes the final pieces look surprisingly better. Still, for some work I’ll just go in all-guns-blazing and completely a piece start to finish with no planning (Boba Fett, for example), and my recent comic-endeavours have been extremely quick turn-around for deadlines so sketchbook work has been limited. But as I approach my last 5 weeks of ‘freedom’ before uni starts up again, I have been utilising my sketchbook for my last three projects of the summer. I’m not quite sure why I keep piling on work for myself, I guess it makes sense to keep a consistent flow so that uni’s 5-projects-at-once doesn’t cause me to have a breakdown.

Currently I’ve been using my sketchbook to work on ideas and scripting for a children’s book commission I’ve been asked to do. I love children’s books, I have no shame in admitting that. Oliver Jeffers is probably one of my favourites, along with Jon Klassen coming in close second. Even better, this book I’ve been asked to do is a Christmas book! So I get to be completely over the top and make it as magical and Christmassy as my imaginations will allow. My preliminary character development and sketchbook work is pretty much complete, so now it’s time to get it drawn up, yay! Here are some snippets of my sketchbook and the characters so far, to keep you all interested;

So, there you have it. The elusive sketchbook. Not a huge amount to update this week as I’ve been super busy with other boring adult things, but hopefully I’ll have more for you all next week. (Yes, if you notice the French translations, I’ve also been using my sketchbook to aid my learning Français. J’ai améliore (I hope)!) For now, I hope you all have a lovely weekend whatever you may be doing. Over and out!