Comics In The Kitchen exhibition

Way back in June, I took part in the "Comics In The Kitchen" exhibiton at Orbital Comics, London, alongside a bunch of other food-loving cartoonists and illustrators creating illustrated recipes.

I decided to revisit two characters from a recipe comic that I created last year, featured in the Comics Cookbook, published by Centrala, but come up with a new recipe to illustrate. After giving it some thought, I decided to do a cake recipe, because I enjoy baking cakes. I looked up some recipes online and decided to go with a chocolate and beetroot cake, which I did try baking before deciding if it was the right recipe to use for my comic.

The exhibition was great and there was a really strong mixture of different styles and recipes. Obviously, it's long since been taken down, but here's my piece from the show [click to enlarge]...

Blogs of Future Past (Part 2: Comics)

So continuing my catch-up of 2015 in the early days of 2016, here's a couple of comics projects I was part of last year which I hadn't got around to mentioning properly...

(Click on the images below to enlarge)

I contributed a page to A Bit Of Undigested Potato, Keara Stewart's anthology about bad dreams and nightmares, which is available to purchase from her online store.


I was also asked to contribute to Richy K. Chandler's second Tempo Lush anthology: Tempo Lush Tales of the Tanoox, the follow-up to Tempo Lush Tales which was released in 2014 and which I provided artwork to a 12-page story that Richy wrote. This time I was contributing to a collaborative comic with a dozen artists all illustrating a page of a comic based around the lyrics to a song Richy wrote called Bugleberry Tree.

Richy sent me the lyrics for the whole song and told me which verse he wanted me to illustrate, but that was it really in terms of direction. Everything else was up to me in terms of how I chose to interpret those lyrics and even how the main character should look. I didn't see any of my fellow creators' work until the book was all put together and it was fun to read through it all together. Tempo Lush Tales of the Tanoox also features a number of other stories and is available to buy from Richy's online store.

And I drew a one page comic for Frame By Frame, a free Film and Television zine put together by Steve Walsh and Shaun Richens from Gosh! Comics. I don't think there are any copies still available, but I drew a comic about Spoilers!


I'm hoping to have a lot more comics projects happening in 2016, so watch this space!

Anders Nilsen in conversation with Tom Gauld at Orbital Comics

Yesterday evening I attended an event at Orbital Comics with Anders Nilsen in conversation with Tom Gauld, as part of this year's Comica Festival. Although I am a big fan of Tom Gauld's work, I wasn't that familiar with the work of Anders Nilsen, but it's always interesting to hear two creative people talking.

Here's a quick sketch I did of the pair before the talk began – and while they are both looking rather unanimated in my drawing, when the conversation got under way they were both very lively, engaging and interesting!

I got a lot of inspiration from the talk for my own comics work, and am keen to pick up Big Questions by Anders Nilsen, which has just been released by Drawn & Quarterly.

AND after the talk finished I was able to get my copy of Tom Gauld's Hunter & Painter signed!