It’s December. How is it already December? That came around quickly didn’t it?

Well, seeing as the march of time seems intent on moving at it’s usual unrelenting pace, how about spending your Christmas present money on comics and handmade things?

Should you wish to buy anything of mine from my store (excluding the eBooks) you will receive this exclusive Christmas postcard with a nice quote from Men Of Tomorrow by Gerard Jones on the back:

Yay comics! You can also buy a pack of 10 for £3 should you have a few comic fans as friends.

There are a couple of other things with my work in which you can pick up this Christmas including the extremely well received Nelson which had some lovely press in The Observer and was even recommended by Baroness Mary Warnock in The Guardian. I also have a one pager written by Anne Holiday in the latest Paper Science which can be ordered here.

My own work aside, might I also suggest heading over to Marc Ellerby’s site and picking up the new Chloe Noonan (you could also commission Marc to do a bespoke illustration for a loved one). You should also go buy some amazing Kristyna Baczynski prints/badges/zines/posters/wrapping paper. Or pick up Filmish from the wonderful Edward Ross. Or purchase The Peckham Invalids by Howard Hardiman, Sarah Gordan and Julia Scheele. Or maybe give some of your hard-earned to Katie Green who has some extremely gorgeous hand-made items at her Etsy store.

What I’m saying is, y’know, support the UK comic scene this Christmas. There’s some incredible stuff out there and they would make for some unique and delightful gifts.

Happy Christmas!

Tx

The Hangover Lounge is a lovely post-excessive-Saturday-night haven of good music and good food held at The Lexington in Kings Cross every Sunday from 2pm.

I was commissioned to produce an A3 poster for the club and to DJ a short set on Sunday October 2nd. One hundred copies of the poster will be available for FREE during the afternoon, after which point I’ll have a few copies to sell on my website if you’re interested in having one.

Here’s the poster design:

I also made a version that felt more striking but suggested a two-in-the-morning-on-Friday-night vibe rather than the Sunday afternoon mood I was after so ended up putting it aside. I post it here for the sake of sharing my love of that pink though:

As you might expect from the image for the poster, my DJ set will be formed exclusively of songs with handclaps. Embrace the twee with me on October 2nd and say hello.

(also: Withered Hand will be playing live at The Lounge this Sunday – the 25th September – and you’d be a fool to miss it!)

Been a busy month. One of the pieces I’ve been working on is a self-portrait for Orbital Comics. The fantastic London based comic shop is putting on an exhibition of comic artists’ self-portraits – all of which will be unveiled this Sunday (the 19th September) from 6pm – read the flyer below for further details. The idea of small press comic artists doing self-portraits (many of whom are either auto-bio artists or started out drawing auto-bio comics) is a lovely way of challenging the idea of the self-portrait and challenging the artists to provide something surprising. I have no doubt everyone involved has met the challenge head-on and provided something interesting and unique. I feel intimidated to be involved.

My piece is a relatively standard one page illustration – inked with a secondary gouache ’spot’ colour. Not too dissimilar to the spot colour we’ll be using in the upcoming Solipsistic Pop (but used here for a very different, very specific, illness-based, nausea feeling). Here’s a small preview:

And while I’m talking about Orbital – I was interviewed for their recent podcast and joined the regular hosts (Tom and Simon)  for a discussion about comics, Solipsistic Pop and the weeks releases. I had a lot of fun on the day and I hope that translates to an enjoyable listen. It can be found here and you can subscribe to the regular podcast here.

I’ll also be exhibiting the original artwork from my 69 Love Songs comic (Absolutely Cuckoo) at Flashback Records in Crouch End as part of the We Are Words + Pictures music related comic exhibition (organised by Sean Azzopardi). The private view is on Friday 23rd September from 7pm. Maybe see you there!

It’ll take me a while to properly process what’s happened this week here in the UK. It feel like so much has already been said elsewhere that I’m not sure I have much to add right now. So here’s an illustration instead.

The one thing I do want to say is that the people who are using terms like “as simple as that” or “pure and simple” as a postfix to whatever ill-considered, reactionary, and pernicious comment they’ve just made – those people – they should be treated with extreme suspicion and/or ignored.

Simple... The riots this week were – and are – anything but.

Can we please not throw around ridiculous notions about how owning a blackberry and being poor are mutually exclusive? Maybe refrain from talking about water cannons as if they are acceptable? Or at the very least stop suggesting that anyone attempting to discuss or understand the reasons for the riots are somehow tacitly condoning them?

Simple...

If ever there was a time for the need to appreciate complexity and nuance it’s now.

Sharon Lintz worked as a copywriter in the adult entertainment industry before being diagnosed with breast cancer. Sharon wrote about her experiences of both in Pornhounds – with some funny, bleak, unsettling and uplifting results. A different comic artist was asked by Sharon to illustrate each chapter of her book – including the excellent Ellen Lindner and Nathan Schreiber.

I was commissioned to illustrate the inside cover – here’s the results (for a little context, Sharon’s chemotherapy took place in Tampa, Florida – with the royal palm trees and constant heat adding to an already pretty unbearable ordeal):

Yes, it was a lot of fun drawing palm trees…

Festival of the Spoken Nerd is a wonderful comedy night presented by Helen Arney, Steve Mould and Matt Parker. They’re taking the show to the Edinburgh Free Fringe this year and commissioned me to produce a two-sided flyer and poster for the event. I also produced a version of the poster for a run of FOTSN at The New Red Lion Theatre in the autumn.

As a little additional bonus – here’s what I originally planned to use for the image on the back of the flyer before we went with the beakers. I ended up inking it and adding a bit of shading anyway:

I was asked to illustrate an article about benefits – how they work, what you may be entitled to, and why they are a *good* thing – for the latest issue of Moneywise Magazine. I tried to mix my style with the colours and shapes of some Socialist Constructivism without being too beholden to a particular aesthetic. I think the balance worked out well:

Sadly, Adam & Joe have taken another break from 6Music on Saturdays. I’d always have their show on as the start to my weekend and it always managed to make me burst out into embarrassing fits of giggles. A highlight of my week – as sad as that sounds. So it’s a shame to see their recent run on the station end so soon.

But luckily, Andrew Collins and Josie Long have stepped in for five weeks and their show is a lot of fun. I was listening to the first show last week when conversation turned to things people found in the street – leading Josie to relate Jack Noel’s strip from Solipsistic Pop 2 and give a nod to the book while doing so. It sounds extremely silly, but I can’t tell you how excited I was to hear mention of the anthology on 6Music in that slot.

Josie asked me if I’d give her a couple of comic artists to recommend the following week and the producer of the show also asked if I would do an illustration for them to use of the website. I was more than happy to do both so here’s the illustration:

I suggested Luke Pearson, NoBrow Press and Kristyna Baczynski as the artists to highlight. Josie was wonderful enough to mention them, the illustration, and Solipsistic Pop again on the show this week, leading to another Saturday of rolling my wheelie chair around the studio in celebration (ah, if only I was kidding) – you can listen to it – this week only – here (listen to the whole delightful show, but if you’re pushed for time it’s at 2 hours 15 mins in).

In other news: It’s been quiet here on the blog lately. Mainly due to the amount of work I have on. Got lots to show, although some of it can’t be revealed until a lot later in the year sadly. Will upload what I can over the next few weeks. Suffice it to say, I think I’ve been doing some of my best comic and illustration work over the past few weeks and can’t wait for people to see it all.

I recently drew this illustration of an Icelandic landscape as a gift – I was really pleased with how it turned out so thought I’d share it here…

I’ve been thinking about getting a limited run of prints made and selling them through my online shop – what do people think? Let me know if you’d like one of these on your wall!

UPDATE: The illustration is now available as a limited edition print and can be purchased here. Be quick!

Just got back from Hay festival having taught a comics workshop with the We Are Words + Pictures team. It was a lovely, if exhausting weekend which I might write more about at some point soon.

In the meantime, here’s a quick illustration of Juno.

Timothy Winchester asked me to contribute to his Wizard Week recently and, not being in the mood to draw an actual wizard, I decided to do this. I think I had Ellen Page on the mind having watched Whip It! on the plane home from Toronto. Fairly happy with how it came out considering it was a warm up sketch but a shame the likeness is a bit off. Hope there’s enough youthful cynicism in the facial expression for me to get away with it.