Have you been out today?

Just wanted to plug the coming weekend's Independent on Sunday magazine which apparently will be comic-themed and as such features work by and/or articles about m'good friend Mr Tom Gauld, m'good friend Mr Matt Broersma and m'good friend Mr Nick Abadzis. So good for them. (Bastards). It's all tying in with the upcoming Comica events at the ICA, organised by the UK's excellent comics ninja Mr Paul Gravett. Other features include interviews with Marjane Satrapi and Kevin Smith and a profile of Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie and their recent book Lost Girls.

...also I may well be remembering it wrongly...

"Many more fingers
Many more thumbs
Many more monkeys
Drumming on drums"

...many of them in fezzes.



(Sorry about the quality. I was scanning at relatively low res. for speed and it rather shows in places).

Blimey, I feel as if I'm kind of busy (or at least just on the verge of it). I'm currently:

awaiting a response to the latest version of the cover for the 4th of Joshua Doder's Dog Called Grk books ("Grk: Operation Tortoise" - and the tortoise which may or may not be included on the finished cover is probably my favourite bit of the current version, that or the frigate birds);

about to colour the second of two monkeys in fezzes for Non-Working Monkey;

expecting a brief later this week from Inside Soap magazine to draw an aerial view of Albert Square (came a bit out of the blue that one);

working out how best to proceed with the fairly secret project* which was the subject of a meeting I had with some very fine folk in Oxford a week ago.

There's also ongoing work on coding the forthcoming revamp of the desperately moribund daveshelton.com (quite liking how the new version is looking so far but it's a ways from being ready to unleash on the public) and, hopefully at some point, some new Edwin and Molly strips (by moderately popular demand) to draw and some other strip ideas gently fermenting. And of course, once I have some more Edwin and Molly strips then it'll be time to sort out their own website...

Phew. Maybe it's time to experiment with my plan for a 6 day week (each of 28 hours - thus saving one night's sleep per week - I'm a genius I tell you) that I had a while back...



*Beware: somewhat misleading link.

Lovely fellow Darryl Cunningham, cartoonist, photographer and maker of handcrafted goodies, now has a website (as I should have mentioned a little while ago).

Dapperest man in all comicdom, Woodrow Phoenix, has written a splendid and beautiful book about Japanese toys (as I should have mentioned a little while ago). And while we're about it he's illustrated a children's book too.

Non-Working Monkey is very funny indeed. And I'm not just saying that because she's commissioned me to draw a monkey in a fez. (A monkey in a fez! It's all downhill after this).

Oh I know how futile and silly it is to despair of the brutish colonials of Hollywoodland despoiling the cream of British cinema but when I find that they're making this into this...

No, no, no, no, no, very no...

The only possible consolation I can envisage is that Mark Kermode is likely to be quite entertaining when he reviews it.

I have been bitten by some type of bug on my left elbow and there is now an angry lump of red itchiness there. And it seems to me that this year of all the insect bites I've endured (up a bit from previous years due to time spent at the allotment, a trip to a friend's boyfriend's parent's place in Norfolk and an evening in a marquee by the river playing ukulele with a bunch of lesbians - all sites rife with tiny carnivores) my elbows have had far more than their fair share. Now, I have good elbows I like to think - functionally sound and aesthetically not too shabby, generally fit for purpose - but still I have to wonder, from the point of view of the sophisticated insect diner: what's the attraction? Are my elbows the tastiest bit of me? Are they the talk of the insect world? Are there tiny insect flyers distributed to tiny insect homes reading "Eat at Dave's (elbows)"?

And is it just me or are elbows everybody's prime cut? In primitive cannibal tribes are the hoi polloi fed the usual cuts while the elbows are reserved for their gods, their chieftains and the stars of their soap operas? "Waiter, I'll have the fillet of elbow marinaded in bursal fluid and pan-fried with foie gras and truffles please. And chips."

I guess I'll never know. It transpires that trying to discreetly nibble on other people's elbows is frowned upon (as the magistrate made very clear to me) and I can't even get a lick of my own.

I finished the page of doodles for the fellow in Vienna.



Here is a bigger version.

(Ooh, I really must rub out the pencil marks).

The G2 section of yesterday's Guardian had this picture of Mr David Hockney on its cover



and I couldn't help noticing that these pens



appear to be, unless I'm very much mistaken (and we're talking about pens here so the odds of me being mistaken are unusually slight), the self same Pitt artist pens that I myself have been favouring of late (alongside the old faithful Pilot DRs, obviously).

Rumours that Mr Hockney has been reading this blog in the hope of picking up a few tips are, as yet, unconfirmed.


photo by Jim McHugh

A page of doodles. Now this one's finished I can start on a new bigger one for a buyer in Vienna (the brother of the previous buyer in Vienna).

Hark at me, the international art dealer...



Click here for huge big massive version.

Blimey! According to The Guardian [scroll down to the bottom here] the film rights to the Grk books by Joshua Doder (covers to the first 3 books by D Shelton, number 4 currently in progress) have been sold to Trudie "Mrs Sting" Styler.

More than that I don't know but congratulations to Josh anyway.