Fear not, I am alive.

I'm extremely aware of how horribly neglected this blog has become. Not wanting you to think that I hate you all (I don't: you're all lovely), and to prove that I'm really excruciatingly busy I thought it would be quite nice to post up some of the work that I do during the week. Of course it will all be unforgivably self-indulgent, but it's my blog and if you can't be self-indulgent on your own blog, then what's the point? That's what they're there for really.

I had a really busy weekend starting with Saturday morning when I inked two pages of comic-work which I needed to get out to my colourist pretty sharpish as she was going on holiday in a week's time. I've been working on this series over a year now for a part-work magazine. I'd rather not say what it is in case I get googled and sued for showing the artwork early or something. Anyway, it's a regular strip based on a famous children's author and his exploits in life before he started writing.
Drawing this strip has been a real rollercoaster ride; as I say, I've been drawing it for over a year now around about once a fortnight, sometimes once a week. Sometimes they turn out so terrible as I try and keep to tough deadlines that I wonder at how I kept the job! But it's been a fantastic learning experience and after about 30 issues I really feel I'm starting to hit my stride.

This page shows our hero just after he crashed his plane in the Second World War. (I get a rough thumbnailed script, so I have little to do with creating the storyline.)

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Trying to keep it loose (in the spirit of a certain illustrator) and coherent is the toughie with this strip. And they want it to look all zappy and manic.

After I emailed the finished pages, I needed to crack on with writing Derek the Sheep. I'm coming to the end of writing and drawing a big six part story for Derek, and I'm finally getting to the end of it all. The tough part with the last episode is tying up all the story strands together so they make sense and make sure there are no big holes in the plot. AND make it finish on a suitable enough big ending worthy of six parts! No pressure round 'ere though. It'll be on your desk next week ed. come hell or high water.
Unfortunately I can't show you those pages as I don't want to give anything away (and it might infringe rights etc.), so here's a page from my sketchbook from the previous story (Everlasting Cola) that I edited out from the final narrative.

Derek is showing off his great new book "A to Z of the Countryside. for Idiots", and ends up insulting Bert Worm by calling him "a common worm".

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I also popped over to The Thing in Bethnal Green Saturday afternoon, a Small Press Expo thingummy for East London, got a bit drunk, then got up early Sunday morning and drew lots more Derek!

So you see I did squeeze in a bit of fun in between drawing, so it's not all bad.
Tomorrow, what I get upto in the week!! How exciting!