Inktober 2019: day 29 - Pentel pocket brush and ink wash

Berix isn’t crying, those tear tracks are permanent stains caused by a hallucinogenic drug.

Just time enough to introduce one more new person! Berix is another courtesan of the Dai Empress. His people make extensive use of mind-altering drugs, so one of his special skills is formulating them for courtiers. He enjoys music.

Inktober 2019: day 23 - Pentel pocket brush and ink wash (G-pen for the strings)

Here’s another character we haven’t met before, although you may have seen his eye if you’ve been here a while. Jothan is a courtesan at the palace of the Dai Empress, with music among his specialist skills. His people never show their open mouths, so he wears a veil if he’s been asked to sing as well as play.

(The harp design isn’t final, I think it should be a bit less symmetrical.)

Music Zine Highlights

Some highlights from the new issue of This Is Not A Serious Music Publication. I was introduced to a lot of new music this year, so it was much easier to come up with feature ideas than last time!

Sammy's already put this issue up for sale in her shop.

Halloween Playlist

Sammy and I made a new A6 music zine! This one is a Halloween playlist of 12 songs, and we've illustrated 6 each. I probably didn't have time to do it, but it was a lot of fun even if it was stressful. I didn't want to wait until next Halloween to use the idea.

The Bat For Lashes and Gnarls Barkley illustrations are by Sammy, and you can buy the zine in her etsy shop.

Music Zine - Summer 2013

One of the projects Sammy and I have been working on is a new issue of our music zine, This Is Not A Serious Music Publication. Of all our projects, this is probably the most fun to make. Although I admit I had more trouble thinking of material this time, probably because I don't keep up with music as diligently as Sammy does! I hope I'll be able to come up with more, because I'd love to make more of these in future.

Inspired Anthology 2013 - Cover

This is my cover for the 2013 Inspired anthology, Mixtape. I was very pleased to win the vote again this year, as the other cover was very good! I'm a little worried the colours won't be bright enough once it's printed, but we've never really had that problem before so hopefully it won't be an issue.

You can play two games with this cover. One is 'spot the character expats', I'll start you off by saying Iona from Patience is a Virtue is very easy to find. The other is 'spot which headphones were added in the digital colouring stage because Sarah realised the composition wasn't good'.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year, peeps! I thought I'd make a post with what I think is my best work of  this last year. In chronological order, these are:

The Mysterious Land of Under-Noodle, from the Inspired Eat Me! anthology

The Mystery of the Night Boy, a Patience mini-comic

The Hyaku Monogatari feature from the Hallowe'en issue of What's the Time, Mrs Woolf?

This Is Not A Serious Music Publication, a collaborative music zine I made with Sammy, which is probably my absolute favourite thing I did this year.

Two postcards from my Autumn 2012 set.


I think what I learned this year is a) I do some of my best work under extreme time pressure, and b) I also do my best work when I'm really excited about it. (Both apply to the music zine.) Possibly also c) due to being willfully contrary, bad reviews only make me draw MORE COMICS.
Unfortunately I also learned that it's very easy for me to get caught up working on small press comics and zines because they're a lot of fun to make, neglecting the work which would get me closer to illustrating actual books. Hence my plan for next year is to manage my time better and prioritise book-related work, even if it means making fewer comics. This was a really difficult conclusion to accept because I really love making comics with my friends, but I only have so much time in the week after going to my day job, and I just can't do comics (in the quantities I've been doing this year) AND do the work I need to break into book illustration. Not until someone starts paying me to draw things anyway.

So... I hope 2013 brings me people who pay me to draw things? 

AW YEAH NEW YEAR!

All the Zines!

Here's what I've been doing for the past few weeks, making two different zines! Sammy and I have made a music zine together, filled with comics and articles and gig sketches. I'm so excited to see it printed, it was so much fun to make. Also now I can draw a fender precision bass from memory. Sammy's put a preview on her tumblr, and you can buy the zine from her etsy shop.

There's also the September/October issue of What's the Time Mrs Woolf? which has a spooky theme because Hallowe'en is my favourite festival. It contains sewing instructions and comics as usual, but also ghost stories and horrible illustrations! There's a preview up on the woolfblog.

Both of these are being launched at the Birmingham Zine Festival tomorrow, but they'll also be available at London MCM Expo (26th-28th October) and Thought Bubble (17th - 18th November)

I'll be at all 3 events, so I hope some of you can come and say hi!

Dr Dee

All those Blur drawings reminded me that Sammy and I also went to see Dr Dee when it was on in London. For those who don’t know (and what poor souls you are) it’s an opera about the Elizabethan mathematician/astronomer/mystic John Dee, by Damon Albarn.

The music was lovely, obviously, but we were also really impressed by the costume and set design, so I did a few sketches in the interval.

Blur at Wolverhampton Civic Hall

BLURRRRR

Sorry, by that I mean that just over a week ago Sammy and I went to see Blur at Wolverhampton and it was the best thing ever.

The first set includes the… warm-up act? The Bots, anyway. It was a hard-core drawing warm-up, the singer never stood still!

Then I drew a million pictures of Blur. I really liked the sketches, so rather than tidying them up on the page like I normally would I traced or copied them onto different pages. The penultimate picture is the traced sketches, the last one is copied freehand.

Graham's ghosts

One of the first commissions I got after leaving university was to design a ghostly string quartet for an animated band. It was commissioned by a student called Graham Porter, and I has a lot of fun designing the ghosts. The commission included a painting to use for promotion, and some fairly detailed designs. These are some of the pose and expression sheets I was most pleased with, and a slightly terrible photo of the painting.

David Bowie, Jarvis Cocker and... Keane?

These sprang out of a brief conversation with somebody who involuntarily imagines singing animals whenever they hear music. They were embarrassed about it, but I thought the notion of Jarvis Cocker as a guinea pig in a leather jacket was something that needed to be put on paper.

Also, turns out I have no idea what Keane look like, I was imagining whiney-looking anaemic teenagers with floppy hair and a body type that suggested childhood Rickets.  I had to be rescued by google images.