So long Steve!

Pretty much ever since I started going there regularly since it moved to it's current location on Berwick Street in Soho, Steve Walsh has been working behind the counter at Gosh! Comics. And now he's left and moved to Ireland. It feels like the end of an era.

As well as working at the shop and having an encyclopedic knowledge for comics, Steve also played a large part in building a community around the shop, and in recent years ran the Capers superhero discussion group and, along with Oliver O'Keefe, the monthly comic book reading group Reads. When it became clear that Steve was leaving, Ollie had the idea of commissioning me to draw an illustration that we could give to Steve as a present featuring the various members of the group. I thought it would be a good idea to do it as a homage to a classic comic book cover. Ollie wanted to reference Crisis on Infinite Earths #1, but I suggested Uncanny X-men #138 instead.

Here's the finished piece:



And here's a photo of Steve after we gave it to him:



Good luck in Ireland Steve. And to quote the classic X-men cover-line: "Hope you survive the experience"!

The Corbyn Comic Book

UK comics publisher SelfMadeHero recently ran a Call for Submissions for an anthology of comics about the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn to be published later this year. I thought I'd take a crack at it and produced the following one page comic, just before the deadline, based on the recent incident where Corbyn helped a mother up the stairs at a station, and also reflecting on the way certain parts of the media seemingly twist his actions to fit their own agenda...
[Click on the image to enlarge]



I received an email to say that my entry, unfortunately, did not get selected for inclusion in the anthology, but I'm still pleased with what I produced, so at least I can share it here!

Character Design Challenge

I've been following the "Character Design Challenge" Facebook Group for a while now. Each month there's a different theme and you have a month to come up with a character to fit the topic. This month's theme is Tarot and after reading through the list of Tarot card characters, I decided to jump in and draw my own interpretation of The Hierophant card...

Happy Birthdays!

Birthdays are like buses: nobody wants to sit next to the ranting drunk person. Also, you wait for ages and then three come along at once! And so it was at the start of February when my brother, his girlfriend fiancée and my auntie all had their birthdays within a few days of each other. To be honest, this has been happening for years, so I shouldn't have been so surprised...

Firstly it was my brother's birthday, and I drew a picture of him doing what he does best: sitting on his butt playing on his PS4! ;)


Next was Patricia's birthday. She's a big fan of Harry Potter...


And last, but not least, my aunt was turning 50 this year(!) so I drew a picture of her sitting on a bus (she gets a lot of buses) reading a book by Terry Pratchett, one of her favourite authors...

#Meet The Artist

There's been a meme doing the rounds online and showing up on my Facebook newsfeed called #MeetTheArtist where artists draw a picture of themselves, list their Likes and Dislikes and the contents of their bag. I don't really know the origins of this, but I thought I'd take part. So here's mine:

Chinese New Year: Year Of The Rooster

It was the start of Chinese New Year over the weekend, and with this year being the Year Of The Rooster, I did a drawing to celebrate...

Draw The Line

Shortly after Donald Trump was elected as President of the United States of America, I joined a group on Facebook called Draw The Line, set up with the aim of making comics and illustrations that provide positive actions that anyone can take when faced with a prevailing political landscape they do not like. These will be published on a website in early 2017, and in a print volume thereafter. A book about how to take action against inequality, unfairness, poverty, hate, and discrimination, no matter where or how it arises.

After the initial housekeeping and administration was complete, a list of universal, non-partisan actions was drawn up, – ranging from small and easy actions to those that take more effort, or require a little or a lot of money – distributed among the artists taking part and a deadline established to create a time frame for the project.

My action was:

If your car is only good for scrap or your phone is due for an upgrade, there are services which will take them off your hands and donate any proceeds to the charity of your choice.

After giving it a bit of thought, I decided to produce an illustration for my action, which hopefully gets across the message in a humorous way:



I'll try to update this post with more news about the project as it happens, so watch this space!

New Year, New Birthdays!

Hello 2017! Last weekend, my friends Anne and Anett celebrated their birthdays together. The problem with drawing cards for my friends' birthdays is that sometimes I find it really hard to come up with a new idea that is better than the last year, and (not to sound too big-headed about it) I think that I really excelled myself with both of their cards last year! Anyway, accepting the fact that I probably couldn't better myself, I decided to go for a fairly simple approach and draw a portrait of each of them enjoying some ramen (as we often meet up to go for ramen together):





The same weekend, it was also my friend Tadgh's birthday. Tadgh has been doing some excellent screen printing work recently, so I drew a picture of him producing a screen print of a birthday cake...

Cards Of Christmas Past

I was contacted by Pascale in November last year to draw a few Christmas cards for members of her family. She already had quite clear ideas of the design for each of the cards, so it was a fairly straightforward process.

First up was a card for her nephew(?), who I had previously been commissioned to draw a birthday card for earlier in the year:



Then there was a card for her boyfriend's two nieces:



And finally a card for her boyfriend, featuring the pair of them:



I also took part in The House Of Illustration's Illustrators' Christmas Fair in December (more of which, later!) and designed my own Xmas cards to sell at the event and to send out to friends and family afterwards:

3 Weddings and a Birthday

Back in October last year, my friends Arina and Chris got married. The day was fairly grey, but amazingly the sun came out exactly as Arina entered the chapel where they were getting married, shining right through the window onto the pair of them and lasted right up until they left the building! Who says miracles don't happen? Here's a card I made for them:



Also last year, my brother got engaged. Here's a card I made for them:



And at the other end of the spectrum, my parents recently celebrated their 39th wedding anniversary. Here's a (lovingly cheeky!) card I made for them:



And in non-marriage related news, it was my cousin William's 14th birthday last week. He's a transport nut, so I drew him this card of him driving an Underground train (and hopefully not striking!):