Thought Bubble 2015!

This weekend it's time for the Thought Bubble Comic Con, the culmination to this year's Leeds Comic Art Festival. I'll be exhibiting over the weekend at table 43 in New Dock Hall, and here's a handy map showing where to find me:



As well as selling copies of March Of The Penguins and Look What I Drawed..., I'll also be debuting my new comic book I Am Not A Dog!...



Jake is a vampire. Eddie is a werewolf. And definitely NOT a dog! But with a £1000 cash prize up for grabs at the local Dog Show, Jake is keen to persuade his furry friend to get in touch with his canine side...

Happy Birthday Dad!

It's been a while since I've added any new posts to my blog. That's not to say that I haven't been busy. In fact, it's because I've been busy that I haven't had time to do any new posts. But I'll hopefully be rectifying that situation very soon, so new content will be forthcoming!

Anyway, to make a start, here's a birthday card I drew for my Dad, who is 71 years old today! He recently bought himself a mobility scooter, so I decided to draw a picture of him zooming through the park on his new toy...

#DrawSnoopy

I discovered that 10 August is officially Snoopy's birthday, as can be seen in this strip below, first published on 10 August 1968...



To mark the occasion (and to publicise The Peanuts Movie) the hashtag #DrawSnoopy has been doing the rounds on the internet, and I thought I'd join in...

Happy Birthday Giacomo!

It was also my friend Giacomo's birthday over the weekend. He had an 1001 Nights-themed party, but sadly I was unable to attend. But I did draw him a suitably themed birthday card for the occasion...

Happy Birthday Sylvie!

My friend Sylvie's birthday and I drew her a card. She also recently completed a 10K Run to raise money for the Nepal Earthquake appeal and got a medal. If I got a medal for something, I'd be wearing it every day, so I included it in the picture I drew of her...

Happy Birthday Mum!

Today is my Mum's 68th birthday! She's started joining a walking group recently, doing weekly walks around London. So I drew a card with a picture of her walking and reaching 68 miles...

Life Drawing

I've started going (fairly regularly) to a Life Drawing class above the Royal Inn In The Park pub on Victoria Park. I've been meaning to get back into Life Drawing for a while, so it's good to finally be doing it on a regular basis.

5 minute poses...


15 minute pose...


30 minute pose...


30 minute pose...

CARD-MAGEDDON!!!

Forgive me Internet, for I have sinned. It's been over a month since my last blog post! And while I try to get back up to date with my assorted scribblings, I've realised that I've got a bunch of birthday cards and card commissions that I have so far failed to upload, so if you'll indulge me for a moment, I'm going to stick them all up onto the World Wide Web in one voluminous post.

Here we go...!

Sometimes an idea just pops into head and the only way I can exercise it from my mind is to get it down on paper! So after a slightly hysterical conversation about the character Bane in the film The Dark Knight Rises with my friend Arianne (you had to be there!), and finding out that it was her birthday, I drew her this card. With a ghost. Because there's always a ghost!



My brother commissioned me to draw a birthday card for his friend Kate...



Well, actually he commissioned me to draw an engagement card for Kate and her boyfriend James first, but because I was particularly busy at the time, the birthday card ended up being done first. Still, I made the engagement card eventually...



Also, Arianne got a Full Time job and so was able to spend less time at the gallery, meaning she doesn't have to wear the uncomfortable tie so much...



Somewhere along the way, Keare and Nile got married. Congratulations! And I drew this portrait of them both in a card that Andy Oliver organised...



More recently, it was Julia Scheele's birthday, and I drew her this card, based on the cover she drew for Summer Camp's zine Drive Past My House, which they released to coincide with the launch of their album, Bad Love...



And I think that about brings us right back to the present. For now! I'll be posting some other stuff that I've neglected to shove onto the Internet very soon, and then I'll hopefully be able to maintain a more consistent schedule. At least that's the plan...

Recipe Comic

Hmm...I haven't posted anything for a while. I have been working, but not on anything that I can post...just yet! But one thing that I have done is draw a comic based on a recipe for a competition. I decided to draw a comic about how to cook okonomiyak, which is a Japanese savoury pancake. The results of the competition will be released at the beginning of July, but for now, here's my one page comic...

(click to enlarge)


[UPDATE]: My comic got selected for inclusion in the book, and is available here: http://centrala.org.uk/shop/comics-cookbook/

Happy Birthday Elizabeth!

It was my friend Elizabeth's birthday yesterday. Here's a card I made for her...

Happy Unbirthday!

Sometimes things don't go entirely to plan...

It was my friend Saul's birthday the other week and while his initial last minute drinks gathering didn't go quite according to plan, fortunately there was some hasty reorganisation and Birthday Drinks: Take Two was a much more successful endeavour. And I finally got to give him the card I drew for him, featuring Saul cosplaying as his favourite superhero*, Captain Marvel...



My friend Chantel had her birthday earlier this week, and recently relocated to Hull for a new and exciting job. A bunch of friends went up to Hull this past weekend for birthday celebrations and drunken Mario Kart, which I was particularly sad to have missed, but unfortunately I was working over the weekend. But to make up for my absence, I drew her a card which I posted to her new address as a surprise!



*I'm not 100% sure if she's actually his "favourite" superhero, and he'll definitely correct me if I've got that wrong, hence this small disclaimer! But definitely Top Five, for sure!

Dirty Rotten Comics #4

I've got a one-page comic in Issue 4 of Dirty Rotten Comics, an alternative comics anthology, published twice yearly and committed to supporting small press artists from the UK.

Dirty Rotten Comics #4 will be released this Friday, 17 April 2015, priced at £4 and can be pre-ordered here: http://dirtyrottencomics.bigcartel.com/product/pre-order-dirty-rotten-comics-4

Here's a sneak peak of my strip that the guys posted on Twitter the other day...

Secret 7" submissions

I submitted a couple of designs for this year's Secret 7" show. The annual show has been running since 2012 and each year takes 7 tracks from 7 of the best-known musicians around and press each one 100 times to 7” vinyl. They then accept submissions from creatives from around the world to interpret the tracks in their own style and 700 sleeve designs are selected and printed, to create 100 unique copies for each of the 7 tracks. These are exhibited and then sold for £50 apiece to raise money for a selected charity.

Sadly none of my designs were selected to go into the exhibition this year, but with over 4,500 sleeve designs submitted and only 700 sleeves in the final exhibition, there was a lot of competition.

Still, I was pleased with the designs I produced, so at least I can share them here. However, in the spirit of Secret 7", I'm not going to tell you exactly which track they were for, although I will give you the list of the 2015 track selection so you can hopefully work them out for yourselves...

Let Forever Be by The Chemical Brothers
Reflections by Diana Ross & The Supremes
Go by The Maccabees
Sledgehammer by Peter Gabriel
Dead Flowers by The Rolling Stones
Digital Witness by St Vincent
Born Slippy by Underworld



The Secret 7" exhibition will be on at Somerset House from 10 April – 3 May, and the 700 copies will go on sale on the 4 May.

Happy Birthday Clare!

My friend Jess commissioned me to draw a card for her friend Clare's birthday. The last couple of years, I have made Jess a birthday card based on the covers of Hanson albums, because she loves Hanson. And it turns out (surprisingly!) that she's not the only one, and her friend's Tash and Clare are also fans of Hanson. And so Jess wanted me to draw a card for Clare, also including her and Tash, and based on the cover to the band's Shout It Out album...

Who Let The Dogs Out?

A few weeks ago, I was contacted about doing a pet portrait of a dog called Pirate. I was sent some reference photos of the dog and they asked if I could use all of the poses in the picture. I did a rough sketch, and once this was approved I went ahead and drew the final piece using a Zebra Fude brush pen. I then coloured it using Photoshop and added a grass texture before also adding some ink washes that I scanned, to give a bit more form to the dog.

Blind as a Batman...

Earlier today I saw an article online about a comic convention a few years ago where various comic creators were asked to pick up a marker, close their eyes and draw Batman. The results varied from the impressive to the hilarious, and I thought I'd give it a try myself...



Not too shabby!

Portrait commission

My mum recently commissioned me to draw a portrait of her friends, Chris and John, for their 40th Wedding Anniversary. As they spend a lot of time gardening, I used a photo of them together in their garden, which their daughter Karen sent to me.

15 Minute Comic

On Tuesday night I went along to Karrie Fransman's Guardian Masterclass: "How to create successful comics and graphic novels". I was hoping for a bit of a creative kick up the backside and get some advice on how to approach publishers. Hearing Karrie speak about comics is always inspiring, and she has such a genuine love for the medium. I picked up lots of helpful advice, as well as reaffirming some things that I was already considering by myself. As well as going through the process of how she put together the pitch for her two graphic novels, The House That Groaned and Death Of The Artist, Karrie also set us some practical tasks throughout the evening, including drawing a 15 minute comic using different prompts that she called out as we went along – "Draw an angry character!", "And they choose a fancy dress outfit!", "Now they're going to a party" etc. It was certainly challenging, but fun to have to draw something quickly, without overthinking it too much.

Here's my (very scribbly!) finished comic! [click on the image to enlarge]

Happy Mother's Day!

Today is Mother's Day in the UK and here's a card I drew for my mum, who says she often feels like an octopus doing multiple things at once...

Webcomic Artist Swap Project 2015: Wasp's Week

Last week saw the third annual Webcomic Artist Swap Project (WASP) take place where a selection of webcomic artists swap art duties amongst their respective strips and work from each others’ scripts. While I don't have my own webcomic (Yet!), last year I was asked to contribute for art duties and drew Rachael Smith's One Good Thing comic. This year, myself and Lauren Murphy were asked to come up with a special comic that could be featured each day alongside the other WASP comics.

Lauren wrote the script for our story, which I then drew, and our strip was published over the seven days of WASP Week.















The whole page was then published on the final day of WASP for those that might have missed part of the story during the week...



I also contributed artwork for the WASP banner which contributers could include when they posted their artwork online:



And as a final bonus behind-the-scenes Process preview, here's my initial thumbnail layouts for our comic after my first read through of Lauren's script...

Kung hei fat choy!

Happy Chinese New Year of the Sheep!

Sketchbook Project 2015: Winter

I just finished another page for my Sketchbook Project 2015 sketchbook. The theme for my book is "Winter".

I've never watched Game of Thrones, but I'm guessing it's something like this, right?

Go! Go! Go!

My brother recently passed his driving test, and I made him a card to celebrate the occasion...

Burns Night

'Nuff said!

Little White Lies' Breaking Bad Creative Brief

Having had a couple of jobs cancelled in recent weeks, I found myself with a bit of time on my hands and, while surfing the internet, discovered that Little White Lies were running a Breaking Bad Creative Brief to design a piece of artwork based on your favourite scene from the series. The winner will receive a 55" TV and a complete set of the Ralph Steadman designed Steelbook Blu-rays of the series, which look lovely!

Anyway, having watched the whole series early last year I thought I'd give it a go, and created an image based on, possibly, my favourite episode of the series: Fly (series 3, episode 10)...

Happy Anniversary Elizabeth and James

My friend Elizabeth commissioned me to draw a portrait of her and James as a present for their five-year anniversary. She sent me a lot of photos for reference, plus notes about hair, clothes and glasses, and I was pleased with how it turned out (and happily, so were they!)...