Hello there. Gosh it’s been hot hasn’t it? I hope you’ve all been enjoying the weather and the extra days off. Rather inevitably as a freelancer, I’ve been too busy to take much time off although I had a brief break from working and went to Whitstable for a couple of days last week – it was lovely – but I didn’t do much work in my sketchbook so you’ll just have to take my word for it.

I’m also moving into my swanky new studio. Once I’m all moved in I’ll post some pictures up here. It’s all extremely exciting and I can’t wait to get stuck into the screenprinting and letterpress facilities they have on-site. There will be open days and workshops going on throughout the summer which I’ll be sure to flag up here as and when they come up.

In the meantime, here’s a little info on my whereabouts over the next month of so:

First up, is the Sci Fi London festival this weekend at the BFI. I’ll be on a panel with Tony Lee, David Hine and Al Davison discussing the progression from self-publishing to more mainstream publishing (please accept my apologies for the flawed taxonomy here but I’m in a rush). I feel a bit of a fraud being there considering I’m still self-publishing right now but I’ll hopefully have something interesting to say on the matter. I’ll also be helping to run an informal Drop In & Draw session afterwards with the We Are Words + Pictures team. Be lovely to see you there if you’re free on Sunday (April 30) morning. Here’s the blurb from the Sci Fi London site…

11am – Small press to mainstream

Al Davison & Tony Lee (IDW Doctor Who comic), Tom Humberstone (Solipsistic Pop) and David Hine (Batman) talk about how working in small press comics has lead to work for mainstream publishers, but also provided a home to publish alternative titles throughout their careers so far.. Chair: Matthew Badham (Tripwire Magazine)

Followed by ‘Drop in and draw’ activities for first time artists wanting encouragement in creating comics, run by Tom Humberstone

Then I’m off to Toronto for TCAF 2011! Extremely excited about returning to one of my favourite comic shows and the city itself. Regular readers may already be aware of how much I’m in love with Toronto. If you’re going, please do stop by and say hello. I’ll be bringing Solipsistic Pop Volumes 1-3 and may be on a panel or two although that’s still to be confirmed.

After the festival (May 7-8) I’m hoping to go camping with some friends and plan to give my horrifically neglected sketchbook some much needed attention – I’ll throw the results up here if they’re not too embarrassing. Also: check out the amazing poster by Jillian Tamaki:

Then on May 24th I’ll be speaking at the Flash Symposium at Birkbeck University about short stories. Should be a fun evening so do come along for that one.

All of which will culminate with a weekend at the Hay Festival (May 28-29) with the We Are Words + Pictures team again. Running informal comics workshops. Here’s a blurb from the WAWAP site…

Hayfever is the children’s version of the immortal Hay festival. Packed full of all manner of events and activities, WAW+P will be adding to the mix with a two day Drop In + Draw workshop over the festival’s first weekend on the 28^th and 29^th May.

Although it’s a very informal, drop in workshop where you’ll be welcome whatever you want to draw, we’ll be focusing on creating comic characters.

Create your own comic book character

Make stories with words + pictures

What would a character that you made up from scratch look like? Would they have a beard or tentacles or tiny pointed feet? Would they be tall or chubby or have piercing blue eyes? Well, the We Are Words + Pictures team are here to help you decide and put your ideas into practice. With established comic artists and illustrators on hand we’ll get you designing your very own comic book character and developing a story for them to feature in.

Tom Humberstone, Edward Ross and Anna Saunders, Ted Brandt and I will all be in attendance over the weekend. We’ll be positioned in the Hayfever Courtyard, right opposite the Giant Wallbook which, I’m told, will tell you everything you need to know about the earth.

Phew. And with that, I shall leave you with a small section of the first page of Ellipsis which is coming along nicely…

Hopefully see some of you over the next month or so!

I’m fulltime freelance now and – inbetween illustration commissions and indulgent whims – working exclusively on my next book, Ellipsis.

Ellipsis is a collection of six short, standalone but interweaving stories. I’ll refrain from revealing much else for now, but I’m really enjoying the writing process and looking forward to showing bits and pieces of it on the blog as it all comes together.

I was hoping to get it ready for TCAF in May (did I mention I’ll be appearing at TCAF this year?) but the stories continue to grow and evolve and the book is looking like it’ll be around 100 pages or so now – so it’s unlikely to be ready before the end of summer. I may take a free preview along with me but it’s unlikely as I feel revealing one story without the context of the others wouldn’t be wise.

For now, here’s a couple of quick character studies/warm up sketches and colour/process tests I did while taking a break from scripting – doubt they’ll appear in the book so thought I could throw them up here:

Now the collected How to Date a Girl in 10 Days is sold out, I’ve made a pdf ebook version which you can order for £2.50 from my online store.

It contains the full 50 page comic plus two short post-script comics that have only been seen here on my blog.

Here’s what a couple of people said about How to Date when it came out:

“I’m a 33 year old man in a stable relationship and am about as sensitive as an extra-safe condom. How To Date A Girl In 10 days reminds me of when I wasn’t – when fear of boys with guitars, of meta, of balloons, of everything filled my life and made it worth living – or, at least, made it the life I was living and I knew damn well I didn’t have (or want) a choice. It’s full of blessed friends who know nothing, blessed friends who are righter than you’ll ever be and blessed, blessed London. It’s funny and true and necessary.”
- Kieron Gillen (Phonogram)

“Touching, awkward, funny, a beautifully drawn slice of real life.”
- Leah Moore (Wild Girl, Doctor Who)

As of today, the first part of a series of three comics about the protests against the rise in tuition fees – by myself and Anne Holiday – has gone online at Cartoon Movement (a wonderful website that supports and highlights political cartoons and comic reportage).

Drawing the line: London during the student protests is a project Anne and I have been working on for about a month now and we’re both incredibly proud of how it’s come together. The first part – Warning – is up and the next two parts will be uploaded over the next two Wednesdays. I’ll write more about it all once the entire feature is online, but for now I hope you enjoy this first story…

UPDATE: Parts two and three are now online and the full nine page comic can be read here.

It’s been a pleasure working with editor and political cartoonist Matt Bors on this. Mainly though, it’s been wonderful to continue to collaborate with Anne. I don’t usually like to work with another writer on comics – generally preferring to work alone. But Anne and I have a great working relationship which is continuing to grow stronger with each comic we work on. The line between writer and artist is becoming satisfyingly blurred the longer we work together.

We were both very much on the same page with what we wanted these comics to be and hopefully that focus comes through in the stories. Anne’s written a little bit more about this on her blog.

We’re already planning more comics together and even starting to think about a much larger project further down the line. Watch this space for more!

One of the many reasons for irregular updates of late is Solipsistic Pop 3. The UK comics anthology that I edit and publish. I also contribute a short comic to each volume. Because I’m the editor. And I’m nothing if not nepotistic.

Below is a tiny preview of my contribution to SP3. It is called Have You Swung Over The Top? and is based on a short story by Anne Holiday. I’m really quite proud of this short and have to say SP3 is shaping up very nicely…

It occurs to me now that I never blogged much of my contribution to SP2. This, again, was based on a short story by Anne and was our first collaboration. Here’s the first page:

You can read the rest by buying SP2 here and SP3 will be available to pre-order at the end of the week. This week also sees a bunch of previews going online – follow the daily updates here.

These images have been sitting in my sketchbook since last week due to my laptop charger dying on me. Only just got a replacement and catching up with some scanning today. Did you know it’s £60 for a MacBook charger? £60! For. A. Plug.

Anyway. It’s Saturday!

Off to Scared To Dance tonight. Might even do some drawing. Maybe see you there.

I double dare you.

As promised, I’m continuing to draw daily comics now and again. After yesterdays Latitude comic (which I’m counting as day 101) I’ve decided today is day 102 and all these journal/visual diary comics from now on will be titled Worth Recording (rather than labelled as Hundred Days comics). At some point I’ll explain why and organise this all somehow but for now I’m just running on post-weekend enthusiasm and need a chance to think it all through first.

I think it’s becoming clear I really enjoy documenting my life this way. I found myself sketching away tonight without even thinking about it. There’s something more… permanent about capturing great evenings like this using comics instead of a camera. Looking back over the other comics, it’s amazing how they trigger so many memories…

I may not do it all the time. And sometimes may not share the more personal ones. But I’m going to keep doing these as and when it feels right. Very possible I might challenge myself to do another 30 day run now and again too.

Go listen to Allo Darlin’, Antarctica Takes It! and The Smittens. They’ll put a smile on your face.

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

UPDATE: You can now buy the full 100 Days comic – over 150 pages – as a digital eBook here for just £1.

The final day tomorrow!