Have you been out today?

So if William Blake wrote a girly romance novel with some devil-worshipping thrown in... would it be a dark satanic Mills and Boon?


I'm so sorry.

I think pen number one is set to expire sometime during page five but it's trudging on heroically for now...

(Click image for large version)

Inconsequential and extremely lo fi recording I made some time ago (featuring somewhat distorted ukulele and clapping and, praise the lord, no singing) here.

Doesn't really go anywhere and it goes from too quiet to too loud and, ooh, so many things wrong with it but I'm kind of fond of it just the same.

(6.4 MB, if that's a concern).

I'll do something else soon, honest.

(Click image for large version)

(Click image for large version)

I had an idea a while ago to take one new pen and use it exclusively in a new sketchbook until the last drop of ink had departed its valiant, ragged fibre tip. The pen may not be used outside of its dedicated book and the book may not be marked with any other pen (at least not until this one's dead and gone). No pencilling allowed, no proper work, just aimless doodling like I used to do a lot of but don't so much any more. Them's the rules.

Bought a new A5 sketchbook (a really very nice one by Fabriano) for the purpose last week, uncapped pen number one and here's page one. More to come as they fill up.

(Click image for large version)

I've had a (foreseen and planned for) quiet spell workwise lately. Naturally I took my time before launching into developing any of the various ideas that have long festered at the back of my mind. There was a lot of serious shelf-tidying to be done before I could do anything so frivolous as drawing. But lately I've been taking a bit of a prod at three projects that I've been thinking about for a while. Early days for all of them but I'm beginning to feel like I'm making some progress at least. Should at least have something involving The Bear and The Bird to show you, ooh... sometime in the first half of this year. Probably. I've taken to staring out of the window to draw people lately too, which is at least a step on from the more usual practice of just staring out of the window.

Alongside my own stuff I do now have a job on too. Andersen Press want me back to do the cover for the third book in Joshua Doder's Dog Called Grk series. I just read the manuscript this morning (unlike with book two where I was drawing the cover before the book was written) and it's a jolly tale. Just have to remember how to draw the durn dog now.

Don't know what he's after.

I've been drawing this bird and bear on and off for half a dozen years now and I'm hoping soon to do something more substantial and public with them. As such I'm trying to get into the habit of drawing them with some type of consistency instead of making them slightly different each time (The Bear in particular seems to be very prone to sudden weight gain and loss). Also, there's been huge variation in their relative sizes in the past with The Bird being anything from about a quarter up to a half of The Bear's height. After a good deal of experimentation I seem to have settled on five twelfths as the optimum Bird/Bear ratio. I defy you to disagree.

Pictures now, words later.