Category Archives: General

Where It’s At

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I’ve had a bit of a rethink over Flat Land. Decided to step up my game. It was supposed to be a stepping up in game anyway, but having basically finished about the first third (quickest third too), it became apparent that it is no where near as good as it could be and I’m trying to rush it because it takes forever to get stuff done. Here are points:

1 – Not enough establishing of the landscape/atmosphere. It’s supposed to be pretty empty and bleak at first but this needs to be established. Also, the landscape has to play more of a part once the action starts.

2 – Characters not consistent enough, especially the boy, but I’m used to drawing them now and know what they should look like so hopefully I can iron that out.

3 – Too many profile views. I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing but there are a bit too many and whilst they make it easier to tell what’s going on they make it less dramatic and interesting to look at.

That’s my main 3 gripes I guess. I started planning it all out properly but then I lost interest in that again when I got excited about redoing stuff. I have also not really finished the story properly, but it’s all progress and maybe this is just my way of working. If I don’t maintain my interest then I’ll never get anywhere so skipping about might be the only way I can move forward.

Anyway, as a treat for reading that you can have the new first page of the story:













It has a poem on it that I wrote when I was looking after cows in the fens. The whole story is a distillation of that time. I suppose I was a bit lonely, but according to my stories I’m lonely all of the time.

Mummy Hands and Technical Blams

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I got well dirty hands yesterday:










See. That’s what you get when your job is rummaging through dirt. They look all craggly like desert mountain mummy hands in the museum.

This is the desert mountain mummy “Julia Roberts” :












She has hands like mine.

On a lighter note, check out my consumer electricals:










Blam. This is because my Ipod was in a bag with a hammer and my laptop got dropped down the stairs. It’s okay because now they have matching screens.

Another Graphic Comic Update

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I have actually finished it and it’s about to go up on the website so I am rushing this post in before it does and then it is actually like it’s a proper work in progress kind of update. To see my last update look here. Or look just down. I hear that linking to past stuff in your blog is good for your blog. Probably doesn’t count though if you can just look down. It’s good to practice things though isn’t it!

Look, work in progress:

non coloured This is when I had done all of the pen but before any colour. It’s quite obvious if you look closely because there isn’t any colour.










This is with some colour. After this I didn’t take any more photos :(










And then I finished it. I used acrylic and watercolour. I hadn’t intended to use acrylic when I started so I had to go over all of the black lines again when I had finished so that was silly. For the rest I used watercolour which is brilliant now that I have waterproof ink. It makes it so easy. Quentin Blake told me about it in this video, isn’t he a lovely man.

How to Illustrate a Page (Unprofessionally)

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By now you may be wondering “but how can I do the illustration?!” or “what on earth does it work like?! I simply don’t understand a thing!”

You are right to think these things, it’s not your fault.

And so now for your benefit here is a tutorial:


1: What The Fiddle Am I Going To Draw And That

I’m basing this tutorial on one of my own pages. So that’s what we’re drawing. This is good for you because you don’t have to do anything. I have a narrative that is finished as far as I can tell, and that will have to do, and so now the first thing is to decide how to fit that onto pages. The professional, decent, proper and polite thing to do would be to storyboard the whole book as this would chuck up any continuity errors that could arise around how you design all the content or whatever. It would also do a bunch of other beneficial things. Anyway, that’s far too daunting, so I do it on a page-by-page basis and try not to worry about it. It’s not like it’s going to get published and needs a specific amount of pages or anything. Whatever.

2: Rough It Up Well Good

Do a quick sketchy sketch so you know how many boxes and how big and where and what’s going on in them: Like this!:

Looks pretty rubbish right? But it totally doesn’t even matter!











3: Do Some Proper Stuff For A Change

Now you need to plan out all the boxes on nice clean paper. Make sure you keep it clean. If it’s dirty then chuck it in the bin and then burn the bin. When you’re done this is what it should look like:














(I don’t know if you can see anything on this photo. Maybe if you click on it and look around.)

4. Good Pencil

Now it is time to start proper drawing. What you will do is proper draw everything first before putting any ink on. This is very important because you still might change your mind about stuff.














5. Get Impatient And Put The Pen On Anyway Because Your Happy With What You’ve Just Done And You’re More Scared Of Doing The Next Pencil Than You Are Of Starting To Pen.

Like so:














6. Realise That You Should Try To Do It Properly And Pencil It In Till Half Way Before Getting Bored And Impatient Again.

You did real good, you tell yourself, and I see no reason why you shouldn’t pen some more in. Nothing’s going to go wrong.

Also notice how I’m working from left to right even though I’m left handed. This is so I’m more likely to smudge everything I’m doing.










7. Finish And Then Realise There Are Perhaps Little Changes That Would Have Been Preferable But On The Whole It’s Fine Like You Thought It Would Be.














8. Do More

I went back and added some more to it. Like an unprofessional.

Well, I hope this was educational for you. It feels like it probably was very educational. Indeed.

Picture Story Book Update

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The website is now updated with fresh story beginnings. A quick one and and big one. The quick one should really be finished but I got distracted by the big one. I was going to say that big things are generally more distracting but then I thought that quick things are very distracting too. Like if there was a big elephant you would be distracted by it but then if a mouse ran really quickly around it’s feet and caught the corner of your eye you would be like hey look it’s a mouse but then once you realised what it was you would then be distracted by the elephant again because of the contrast between the two is massive and then if the mouse was still around you would be distracted between the two probably for ages.

I illustrated it because it’s a hard concept:

distraction

Westerly Windmill

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I went on a “research field trip” the other day to Foster’s Windmill for the new story and had an absolutely delightful time. Being inside a windmill at any time is automatically delight enducing but when it’s going roundy round and grinding grain and all that it’s just wonderful. Quiet too, just the odd creak and thump and squeak and the sound of the stones cruising over each other that’s like an intensification of the wind driving the mill. I had a helpful talk with the miller too who pointed out bits and pieces and explained how parts worked and so thank you to miller. Thank you miller!

lovely