Comica Conversation: Shaun Tan and Quentin Blake

This evening I attended a talk with Shaun Tan and Quentin Blake in conversation about their work. Quentin Blake is probably my favourite illustrator and I also really like Shaun Tan's work, so it was very interesting for me. They had never met each other before, so it was good to hear them talking about their similarities and their differences. The event was Sold Out so it was a packed room and it was hard to actually get a good view of Tan and Blake, but I did manage to do a quick sketch of the pair...

Happy Birthday Spider-Man!

Amazing Fantasy #15 – featuring the first appearance of Spider-Man – was published by Marvel Comics in August 1962, so this month marks Spider-Man's 50th anniversary! Here's a drawing I did to commemorate the occasion...

Bon Voyage Nanae!

My friend Nanae is leaving London next week and going back to Japan. She had a farewell get together last night, and I made a card for her...

Nanae really likes dogs!

Desperate Dan and The Dandy

Yesterday I read an article on the Guardian website reporting that The Dandy – the UK's longest running children's comic – faces closure after 75 years after it's circulation dipped below 8,000.

When I was a kid I use to read The Dandy every week along with The Beano, and they were probably one of the things that first got me interested in comics. I hope that The Dandy is able to turn around it's circulation figures and that news of it's possible closure will be enough to give it a boost in sales. It would be a shame for it to no longer exist.

All of which led me to do a quick drawing of Desperate Dan, one of the main characters featured in The Dandy, getting ready to tuck in to his favourite meal of cow pie...

Facebook Drawing Challenge

I wanted to try something different this evening, so posted the following Status Update on my Facebook page...

...and then sat back and waited. Fortunately the replies began to come in, and after half an hour I had a few suggestions to put to paper. Below are the suggestions I got, along with my corresponding drawings...

(There's always one isn't there...!)



(I'd already drawn some Olympic athletes the other day, so I decided to use this as a chance to draw the Olympic 100m champion, Usain Bolt...)











And that's all folks! I quite enjoyed doing this, so might do it again sometime...

Creative Project #3: Superstition

The latest Creative Project theme is Superstition, which immediately made me think of the Stevie Wonder song of the same name, and I ended up drawing this Peanuts-inspired picture...

Adventures in Ink

Today I attended the 2nd International Alternative Press Festival at Conway Hall. As well as buying a lot of cool comics while I was there, I also took part in an Ink Drawing workshop run by the amazingly talented Zarina Liew. The workshop was a lot of fun and we got to play around with inks and brushes with Zarina explaining the various techniques you can try with inks.

Here's Zarina demonstrating the techniques to a clearly engrossed audience...

Photo courtesy of Richy K. Chandler

And here I am getting down to trying it all out for myself...

Photo courtesy of Richy K. Chandler

One of the techniques that I liked the most was to load the paper with water, and then add the inks, before blowing on the paper causing the ink to spread out across the page. I tried experimenting with this technique to see what effects I could produce and turned it into this final image...



Here's a close-up of the little penguin I added in the corner...

I really like the effects you can achieve with inks and the vibrancy of the colours and definitely plan to experiment some more with this medium...!

Always believe in your soul/You've got the power to know...

I was not particularly looking forward to the Olympics before they started in London last week – mainly due to the constant reports of transport chaos and overcrowding in the city – but now that it's actually here, I'm actually enjoying it quite a bit and tonight I watched an amazing evening of athletics with Team GB winning not one, not two, but three gold medals with some remarkable feats of human athleticism!

Well done to Jessica Ennis, Greg Rutherford and Mo Farah!

Emperor Yes and Friends - That's All Folks!

So the Emperor Yes and Friends show came to an end yesterday after a three week residency at Top Office Machines on Bethnal Green Road. All of the work was inspired by two songs by Emperor Yes – Fishes and Wasps – and there was a great variety of work being exhibited.

For those of you that weren't able to make it along, here are my two comics that were featured in the show...

And here's a small selection of some of the other work included in the show...

Wasps Wig by Ayano Fukuoka


Fish by Sephryn Grey


Stand Next To You by Parlee


Fishes by MVF


Bastards by Stevyn Colgan

Emperor Sea by Alec Jones

Wasps music video poster by Sam Ballard

You can check out more of the work featured in the show over at the online store.

Thanks to everyone that made it along over the past couple of weeks, and thanks to Ash from the band for asking me to be involved with the project.

Fan Art Friday: The Secret History of D.B. Cooper

Today's Fan Art Friday picture is inspired by one of my favourite comics of 2012: The Secret History of D.B. Cooper by Brian Churilla, published by Oni Press.

So, who is D.B. Cooper? I was unfamiliar with this particular chapter in US history before I started reading the book, but a quick Wikipedia search later, and I was intrigued by the story of the only unsolved air piracy case in US aviation history:

On November 24 1971, a man using the alias D.B. Cooper hijacked a Boeing 747 aircraft between Portland, Oregon and Seattle, Washington. On the ground in Seattle, he demanded $200,000 in ransom and two parachutes. When his demands were met, he ordered the plane to take off, and somewhere over the Washington widlerness he parachuted out of the plane. Over forty years later, D.B. Cooper has never been located and is still on the FBI's most-wanted list.

Churilla's comic finally reveals the truth about D.B. Cooper's history and the events surrounding the hijacking, a psychedelic adventure involving a fringe group within the C.I.A., psychic assassinations, and a red teddy bear called Lee. The Secret History of D.B. Cooper is one of my favourite comics of 2012, and continually keeps you guessing about where it's all heading, before finally coming together in a truly satisfying conclusion.

Here's my drawing of D.B. Cooper and Lee facing off against one of the monsters within "The Glut", the psychic battleground within the human mind...

The fifth and final issue of The Secret History of D.B. Cooper was released on the 18 July.