A few images from the exhibition I have at the new Orbital comics store in London. Also a couple of pics of the store’s new look on the night before the launch. I believe my artwork will be part of the store’s gallery space until the end of February.

Electric Sheep Magazine asked me to illustrate a review of the Swedish vampire film ‘Let the right one in‘ which will be hitting our screens soon. I usually don’t upload these sort of commissions until the work has seen print and I can be sure it’s being used. But I’m pleased with this one and I thought I’d give you, my loyal blog followers, a heads up!

Having seen the film, I can heartily recommend it and it was a pleasure to produce this piece. I hope I’ve managed to do the movie justice. Go and see it.

I’ll be exhibiting a selection of original artwork at the new Orbital Comics which opens this Saturday. The new store has a gallery space (which I think must be a first for a comic shop based in London?) and I’ll be sharing the walls with some other artists selected by Comica’s Paul Gravett. There’ll be new pages from How to Date a Girl: Issue 3 up there – among some of the older pages – so I’ll try and arrange them in a way that demonstrates how my style has changed over the years. I’ll also have some sketches and doodles on display.

Tomorrow evening, I’ll be attempting to look like I know how to use a spirit level while I put up the work. Will take a few photos of the new store and the mounted artwork and put them up here for those of you who can’t make it. Don’t know how long the exhibition will be on for but here’s an Orbital press release with all the other info:

Date Saturday, January 24, 2009
Time 10:30am – 7:00pm
Location Orbital Comics, 8 Gt Newport Street, London (gmap)

Orbital Comics are proud to present our EPIC NEW comic shop!

We’re open on Saturday 24th January at 10.30am!

To celebrate our opening we’re having our Mega Sale

- 50% off Back Issues
- 50% off other selected lines
And to mark the event we’re giving away to the first 100 people a FREE Goody Bag with your purchase(s)!

NEW Comic Art Gallery
Yep, Orbital’s the first to have a comic art gallery within its store – for the opening we have Tom Humberstone, the Eagle Award winning creator of Art School Scum, Everything You Never Wanted to Know About Crohns Disease, and My Fellow Americans. He’ll be exclusively exhibiting original artwork from his forthcoming graphic novel How to Date a Girl in 10 Days.

Happy new year all.

So, this blog has been neglected for a month but that’s about to change. Lots of new work to start uploading here and some exciting commissions have been coming my way over the past couple of weeks which I’ll hopefully get to talk about soon. For now, here’s a few updates:

How to Date a Girl in 10 Days Issue 3
I’ve posted the first 5 pages of this concluding issue below. I’m really interested to hear what people think as the style has developed since Issue 2 and I’m curious to see what you all make of it. I’ll start posting the rest of the issue as and when I’m happy to show the pages. Having said that, I’ll stop short of posting the whole thing here so some people buy the printed version!

New printings of Issue 1 and 2 will be on their way soon too. With all new covers and nicer paper stock.

Appearances
After taking a break from conventions during 2008, I’m going to start booking a few shows and return to the crazy world of comic-book peddling. I’ll miss the first few months so I can concentrate on getting the comics to a standard I’m happy with, so I’ll sadly be missing the UK Web and Mini Comix Thing. The first convention will be the Toronto Comic Arts Festival (TCAF) in May. That will be the first opportunity for everyone to pick up Issue 3 of How to Date a Girl, but I may have a small launch in the UK beforehand.

After TCAF, I’ll be attempting to appear at most of the UK festivals inbetween working on my next comic project.

Everything You Never Wanted to Know About Crohns Disease
Due to such a fantastic reaction to this comic, I’ll be getting a nice hard-copy version of it printed up before the festivals. Thanks to everyone’s continued support of this comic. It means a lot.

Artwork for sale
Fancy beating the credit crunch and owning some original art? To help cover costs of all these reprints and new comics I’ll be taking to the printers over the next few months, I’m selling the original pages of How to Date a Girl. The artwork is framed and will cost 150GBP (plus postage). If you’re interested, please email me at ventedspleen*at*hotmail.com with the details of the page you’re keen on. Some pages have already been reserved or sold.

Phew! I think – after that slightly mercenary last piece of slef-promotion – that’s it. Thanks for continuing to check out and support my work, and watch out for new art here soon!

In an attempt to keep everyone up-to-date with future exhibitions, shows, comics etc. etc. – you can now either follow me on twitter at www.twitter.com/ventedspleen or join the facebook fan page (depending on your web 2.0 preferences).