A very quick comic about Latitude while it’s all still fresh in my memory.

I had a wonderful weekend with the We Are Words + Pictures gang. Go visit the websites of Edward Ross, Philippa Rice, Anne Holiday and Matthew Sheret right now if you haven’t come across them already. Talented people. And great festival companions.

A massive thank you to you if you dropped by our tent and joined in with the drawing. It was such a wonderful weekend and so inspiring to see everyone throw themselves into creating comics with complete abandon. The WAWAP site will hopefully have a bunch of pics up for perusal with a proper blog about it soon (Update: It’s now online here).

In the meantime, here are some extra bonus sketches. To start with – some drawings I did during the workshops. Most of my drawings from the weekend were sold during a mini-exhibition we held at the end but here are the remaining images…

Actually… a brief explanation: One of the ways in which we tried to get everyone started with an activity was to ask people to draw a comic or illustration based on their experiences of the festival or previous festivals they’ve been to. We wrote simple prompts and provided them to people if they looked lost. Here, by means of providing an example, was my first one…

And another…

This one was just a doodle during the last stretch of Sunday…

Outside of the workshops, I didn’t get much of a chance to sketch. But here’s a quick one of a couple in the literary tent…

And a brief sketch of some people at a nearby bench…

Finally… a few photos! Here’s us setting up and a pic of Anne and Philippa…

A couple of shots of the workshops in full swing (this is during the quieter moments when we could actually take photos)…

Here’s Matt with a hand-made speech balloon (did I mention we had customisable speech balloons so you could star in your own photo-comic?!) and a small section of the make-shift exhibition we had at the end…

Before I go, just a quick mention to say that if you make comics or are interested in promoting comics at all – make sure you get in touch with the WAWAP team immediately. They’re always looking for new artists to work with and new events to organise. Anything to help spread the joy of making and reading comics. So email them right now if you want to help!

Phew!

And that’s it. One hundred comics. In one hundred days (with, of course, a little hiatus in the middle).

Hope you’ve enjoyed the ride. It’s been a very interesting and exciting challenge for me. Definitely learned a hell of a lot along the way. I’ll probably write a proper postscript about it all next week when I have a bit of time.

In the meantime, I’m off to Latitude festival on Thursday with We Are Words + Pictures to help run a comics workshop in the Pandora’s Playground area. If you’re coming to Latitude, make sure you stop by and say hello!

I’ve had such a fun time with the daily comic that I have a feeling I’m going to continue doing it. I won’t do it every single day – just now and again when it feels right. I expect I’ll do some drawing at Latitude so will try and have something to upload when I get back. Essentially – this isn’t the end of my daily comics.

On my return, I’ll be doing a bit of housekeeping on this blog and my website to make it all more up-to-date with the kind of work I’ve been doing over the past year or two. It feels like the right time to do it.

Orbital Comics will also be rehanging an updated version of The Art of Solipsistic Pop exhibition this weekend with new art from both volumes of the book. Do stop by if you’re in London and curious to see some original comic art.

I’d just like to say a huge thank you for reading and for the lovely feedback and support you’ve all given during this whole thing. It can be a tough slog doing a daily comic sometimes so those emails/comments/tweets all make a massive difference when I’m scanning in lineart at 2am and doubting my sanity. Do leave comments on this post with your thoughts on the whole thing – very interested to hear what you all made of this exercise. And hope you stick around for any future comics!

Until I get round to doing a proper overhaul on the blog – here’s a nice, easy way to read through all one hundred days (and here’s a quick Spotify playlist to listen to while you read… indulge me…)

Day 01 | Day 02 | Day 03 | Day 04 | Day 05 | Day 06 | Day 07 | Day 08 | Day 09 | Day 10
Day 11 | Day 12 | Day 13 | Day 14 | Day 15 | Day 16 | Day 17 | Day 18 | Day 19 | Day 20
Day 21 | Day 22 | Day 23 | Day 24 | Day 25 | Day 26 | Day 27 | Day 28 | Day 29 | Day 30
Day 31 | Day 32 | Day 33 | Day 34 | Day 35 | Day 36 | Day 37 | Day 38 | Day 39 | Day 40
Day 41 | Day 42 | Day 43 | Day 44 | Day 45 | Day 46 | Day 47 | Day 48 | Day 49 | Day 50
Day 51 | Day 52 | Day 53 | Day 54 | Day 55 | Day 56 | Day 57 | Day 58 | Day 59 | Day 60
Day 61 | Day 62 | Day 63 | Day 64 | Day 65 | Day 66 | Day 67 | Day 68 | Day 69 | Day 70
Day 71 | Day 72 | Day 73 | Day 74 | Day 75 | Day 76 | Day 77 | Day 78 | Day 79 | Day 80
Day 81 | Day 82 | Day 83 | Day 84 | Day 85 | Day 86 | Day 87 | Day 88 | Day 89 | Day 90
Day 91 | Day 92 | Day 93 | Day 94 | Day 95 | Day 96 | Day 97 | Day 98 | Day 99 | Day 100
The Pledge

I don’t think this will come as much of a surprise to anyone, but every single one of these one hundred comics is dedicated to Harvey Pekar, whose death was sadly announced today. It’s almost impossible to overstate his importance and contribution to comics. When I heard the news, I think I felt much the same way as I did when Joe Strummer died. The art that both men created had affected me in such a way that I thought them immortal. As Douglas Wolk remarked on twitter – “America is a little less splendid today”. A true original and a huge inspiration:

“Essentially all I’ve wanted this to be is a journal of a life, because I think that sort of thing is worth recording” – Harvey Pekar

That’s what this daily comic – whatever shape it takes – will be called from this point by the way. Worth Recording.

Hope some of you can make it along – it should be a great evening!

MUSIC FROM: SLEEPING STATES // TRISTRAM // DOGTANION
WE ARE WORDS + PICTURES DJ SET

COMEDY FROM ROBIN INCE // LIVE DRAWING
BUY THE BOOK AT A REDUCED PRICE
MEET THE ARTISTS // FREE SCREENPRINTS FOR THE FIRST 20 CUSTOMER

7PM WEDNESDAY 28TH APRIL // £3
THE CROSS KINGS, KINGS CROSS, 126 YORK WAY (GMAP)

SOLIPSISTIC POP 2
Contains 64 pages of sequential art from some of the best comic artists, illustrators and designers working in the UK today. With a 12 page newspaper insert, gorgeous gatefold cover and specially designed tote bag, it’s a must have for any comic fan.

CONTRIBUTORS
Kristyna Baczynski, Becky Barnicoat, Adam Cadwell, Stephen Collins, Joe Decie, Marc Ellerby, Sally Hancox, Anne Holiday, Tom Humberstone, Philippa Johnson, Daniel Locke, Lizz Lunney, Jack Noel, Mark Oliver, Luke Pearson, Octavia Raitt, Anna Saunders, Julia Scheele, Matthew Sheret, and Matilda Tristram.

PRE-ORDER SOLIPSISTIC POP 2
If you are unable to make the launch night, you can pre-order the book here.

REVIEW SOLIPSISTIC POP 2
Email solipsisticpop@gmail.com to acquire press copies, arrange interviews, or for more information.

STOCK SOLIPSISTIC POP 2
Email solipsisticpop@gmail.com to order copies of the book for your store.

Sunday 14 February at the Notting Hill Arts Club

Drop In + Draw 3pm-7pm; £1 (under-12s free)

Illustrators Adam Cadwell, Jamie McKelvie and Tom Humberstone

Illustrators, writers and animators of all ages come together for an afternoon of comic book art and fun. Featuring group-draw sessions, comic-themed activities and one-on-one tutorials, Drop In + Draw is open to all ages and artists of all abilities.

The illustrators coming to Drop In + Draw are among the finest young professionals working in comics today.

Adam Cadwell’s The Everyday is an acclaimed auto-biography web-comic that’s grown a loyal and devoted audience over the past three years;

Tom Humberstone won an Eagle Award – the ‘BAFTA’-esque British comics award – for his How To Date A Girl in 10 Days and spent two months following the US Presidential Primaries for My Fellow Americans with journalist Dan Hancox;

Jamie McKelvie shot to attention illustrating Phonogram, quickly being picked up for work on Marvel and DC titles and working on signature characters like Cable, Robin, Nightcrawler and most recently S.W.O.R.D. His creator-owned series Suburban Glamour will start its second volume in summer 2010.

All will be on hand to offer advice to amateurs, aspiring professionals and kids of all ages throughout the day. Even if you can’t tell Batman from Manbat, or don’t know which end of a brush pen to hold, come on down and we’ll get you making comics.

Here’s the flyer I made for the event:

In the evening, bands take over the stage for the Modern Romance night. Hosted by comedian Robin Ince.

You can find out more information on that and see Julia Scheele’s flyer here.

Hope to see some of you there!

As Dan wrote on his blog:

“It’s 20-odd months since Tom Humberstone and I hitched our way through sub-zero temperatures to see prospective Democratic Presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama speak at a rally in the snow-caked fringes of Iowa City. Fuck it was cold that day. Few thought it would be possible on 3 January 2008, the day of the Iowa Caucus, but yesterday President Obama addressed the UN about his vision of a multilateral American future, about leaving the Bush era behind, and everyone nodded. Of course he said that; we knew he was going to say that. It’s funny how quickly extraordinary events become normalised. The New Statesman’s myopic, Clinton-obsessed US editor decided (from the comfort of his desk, naturally) Obama was finished within a week of the Iowa rally. Ha.”

We had no copies left to sell, nor did we have any business cards or, in fact, anything to promote our work. In a way, that seemed to be for the best. Equal parts shambolic and noble. The My Fellow Americans way.

It was a great weekend. Many thanks to the organisers and everyone who helped out on the day. There were many moments where Dan and I felt we were getting a chance to relive the My Fellow Americans trip – for which we were grateful. Sitting around in bars, re-reading the book and discussing anecdotes ahead of the talk… there was something very enjoyable about it all.

Of course, we were a little anxious when it came to do the talk. But it went extremely well. The hour flew by. People seemed genuinely interested in our journey. And they laughed in the right places. An hour-long Q&A followed in which we offered as much political insight as we could, and then we headed to the bar to relax before our journey home the next day.

A new experience for the both of us, but one I can see us happy to try again at some point. In the meantime I need to get started on making My Fellow Americans available to download as a pdf. The kindle and e-book readers are the way to go at this point I think.

Due to our nerves, we didn’t think to get any photos from the weekend so I’ve chosen to throw a few from the trip itself on here.

Meanwhile, Matthew Sheret has reprinted one of the blogs with some accompanying illustrations in his mini-anthology Paper Science – which you can pick up here.

There’s also an interview with Dan here – with some of his thoughts about My Fellow Americans and grass-roots reportage.

I’m slowly recovering from the Alternative Press Festival last weekend. Both events (Collaborama on the Saturday and the Alt. Press Fair on the Sunday) were fun and roaring successes but I, as always with comic shows, found the entire thing exhausting. It hasn’t helped that I’ve been ill recently, but I also just find the process of selling my own work emotionally and physically tiring. That said, Jimi, Peter and the other organisers behind the five day long festival put on a wonderful show so a big thank you and congratulations to them for putting it all together. Long may the Alternative Press Festival live.

It would also be remiss of me to mention that while I love to moan about my relationship with comic/zine shows, I also end up coming away feeling vindicated, encouraged and inspired. There were a lot of great zines and comics available throughout the weekend which always makes me feel the need to work harder.

My favourite thing though, is that handful of people who stop by and offer feedback, or support, or just some wonderful conversation. I had some genuinely lovely chats with genuinely lovely people and it really makes that day of watching-people-judge-your-work-and-nonchalantly-walk-away go a little bit easier. Thanks to all of you who came by supplying me with much needed respite and sorry to that one person about the mistaken Canadian accent – I’ll never live it down.

During Collaborama on Saturday all exhibitors were asked to provide a page or two of art for an A5 zine that would be compiled by the end of the day. The very talented Footprint Co-operative folks then took that artwork and printed it. They had red and black inks so I decided to draw a secondary tone on separate sheets of paper to get the effect you can see below. I think it came out well. The pages were drawn very quickly and inbetween peddling my wares to unsuspecting passersby so bear that rationalising caveat in mind when reading.

I picked up a few comics when I got the opportunity to wander away from my table. My recommendations: Browner Knowle by Paul Ashley Brown, Dancing Eye and  Your Filthy Jesus Christ Made These Tits by Mark Oliver, Tight Fit edited by Sarah Duncan, Powered By Robots by Julia Scheele, and finally Nose Picking and Beard Book by Sarah Gordon.

Since Sunday I’ve been getting some orders for books people weren’t able to buy on the day and I’m now totally sold out of My Fellow Americans. If you see Dan Hancox prowling the streets of Dalston you may manage to get a copy from him but I think he is similarly low on copies. We won’t be going to a second printing without a publisher but it’s still possible to read the unedited blogs we produced while on the road here. I’m also looking into making a PDF and Kindle friendly version for e-book owners.

My next comic is a short, entirely fictional, story which will be around 6-8 pages long. I’m so excited about it and really looking forward to doing nothing but working on it this weekend. However, I doubt it will be ready to upload on here for about six weeks at least. I’ll continue to post illustrations and sketches and any further news here but this blog may be a little light on new comics for awhile. Brace yourselves accordingly.

I decided, on a whim, to print up the recent work I’ve been doing for the 69 Love Songs Illustrated project in time for the Alternative Press Festival this weekend.

The prints, I’m glad to say, turned out very nice indeed. The extremely limited full colour A3 prints will be available from me during the Collaborama (Saturday) and Alternative Press Fair (Sunday) events for the modest price of £2. There will only be 30 of each print so get there quick! I won’t be selling these on the website.

Next week sees another five day comic-related event happening right here in London: The Alternative Press Festival 2009.

The Alternative Press Festival 2009 begins on Wednesday 29th July and runs to Sunday 2nd August. You can read about all the events that have been lined up at their website here.

I’ll be exhibiting my comics at the Alt. Press Fair on the Sunday but also taking part in Collaborama on the Saturday.

What is Collaborama? Here’s what the organisers say:

We hope you’ll join us at the Collaborama (as we’ve affectionately come to know it!) an all day event which will comprise many elements of the small press coming together. Tables will be set out in the main space downstairs at the miller for zinesters, comix and small press creators to exhibit their work. There will also be space where any combination of visitors and exhibitors can get together to create pages which will be used to create a zine of the day. The garden will have a barbeque and the upstairs space will be used for workshops, film screenings and talks. In the evening Resonance FM’s Radio Orchestra will be performing a piece written by Ed Baxter which will be interpreted and illustrated live by two teams of small press artists on overhead projectors!

For information on venues and times, check out the Alternative Press Festival site. Hope to see some of you there!

It’s a little belated (which isn’t my fault!) but I thought I’d write a little about my experience at TCAF this year.

I was lucky enough to be given a shared table with Becky Cloonan in the massive Toronto Reference Library to which TCAF had moved after 2007’s UOT location. Becky was a lovely table mate and her work is definitely worth your time – I’m sure I caught a lot of secondary trade from the long queues waiting for her to sign their books.

The weekend went incredibly well and I met a lot of lovely people during the show and at the after-parties. Thanks to everyone who came and bought something or just said hello.

When it came to Sunday afternoon I realised I’d agreed to be a part of panel talking about studying comics at university. I was ridiculously nervous about it beforehand but by the time I settled into my seat in front of the audience, I managed to descend into my ‘rambling bore’ mode and somehow got through the hour by never shutting the hell up. Ross Campbell and Lucy Knisley joined me and I think/hope we managed to cover a wide spectrum of options, opinions and advice for prospective comic artists. I’m glad I did it and think I might even be less stressed if I ever agree to do another talk.

Among my favourite picks over the weekend were my Michael Cho print, Lucy Knisley’s ‘Pretty Little Book’ (absolutely wonderful – make sure you pick up ‘French Milk‘ as well), Taddle Creek’s comic issue, pretty much all of Tom Kaczynski’s comics, and… well… let’s stop there shall we? I could write several blog posts about the amazing comics that were on display. Inspiring stuff.

A huge thanks to Chris Butcher for inviting me again this year and organising what is possibly the best alternative comics festival ever. Of course, a gentlemanly hat-tip to everyone else who made the event such a success, including all the delightful volunteers – some of whom I feel I should hire as my agents, such was the vigour with which they encouraged people to check out my stuff. It’s possible they just felt a bit sorry for me…

Pen Club TO

I spent a few days after TCAF hanging out in Toronto with friends. As always, I had a wonderful time. Below are a few sketches I doodled in various patio bars, Future Bakery (which is where the Torontonian Pen Club is held), and wandering around High Park.

Here’s a photo from Pen Club. Also pictured: the Oreo cheesecake I had. A foodstuff fit for gods.

Post TCAF press

My visit to TCAF is briefly mentioned on about.com (I was tired. It was early. Excuse the photo) and there’s an interview with me conducted by Pen Club founders Cton, Steve Wilson, and Aaron Leighton on Open Book Toronto.

These annoying technical problems have been even more infuriating for me than they usually would as I’ve been preparing to use this blog a lot more frequently lately. I’ve decided I tend to use it simply to advertise new events I’m organising or show off new work. Which isn’t explicitly a bad thing, but I’d like to write a bit more too. Use this blog the way it should be used. I have a few pieces I’ve written for other sources that I’ll be posting here, alongside some new thoughts I’ve been having about various aspects of the comic industry – so keep an eye out for all that now that I’ve got a working computer and blog…

Comics for sale

In the meantime, you may have already noticed images of my books down the sidebar of this blog. Clicking these will take you to the individual pages for each book where you’ll be able to order them. International orders are slightly more expensive due to postage I’m afraid. Of course, if you live in London you can still pop into Orbital Comics and save yourself the postage costs. I’ll also try and drop a few copies into Gosh! today. Those of you wondering where Art School Scum is will be interested to hear that the fourth (and final) printing is now sold out. There are maybe two or three copies in Orbital but otherwise it’s gone. More about this and why I won’t be printing it again in a future post.

Book launch pics

A couple of friends who came to the book launch gave me these pictures which I thought I’d upload for anyone who’s interested. The exhibition of my original artwork has remained in Orbital all month and will be taken down at the end of tomorrow so stop by if you haven’t already. Thanks again to everyone who came to the launch. Those of you who didn’t make it are dead to me and shall never be forgiven.

(photos by Rachael and Chloe)