Festive Greetings!

HELLO ALL MY FRIENDS!

I am seriously rubbish at festive as you probably know, but I do love you all very much and so I am painting a stack of small bookmarks, and if you meet me in January or so remind me and I will give you one, or hopefully I will remember anyway before you remind me (hmm, unlikely), and I will post some as well in a slightly random but loving fashion, but if I forget it's not because I don't care. Feel free to remind me. It'll be a total shambles but hopefully it'll kind of work out to a general scattering of appreciation and well-wishing and that.
Have a brilliant new Year and don't get too cold (or hot if that's your problem, or wet or whatever, depends where you're at).

Painting for fun today

Shark and Lobster's Amazing Undersea Adventure, 1996

My first picture book was "Shark and Lobster's Amazing Undersea Adventure", I think it came out in 2001.

I started working on it in 1996 when I was still in school in Germany.

Early picture book script, 1996

Weird, huh?

We had a leak in the studio above my storage boxes, that's why I am going through all my old scraps and notes and artwork. Lots of fun stuff.

Childhood photo of me working on a travel journal.

Me as a student, 2003 or so

OPEN STUDIOS! TOMORROW!

ANXIETY: letter

you may have been told that life is a game

and that you can win it or lose it, in some way you probably almost understand but not quite

(which is worrying)

and that love is a reward

I would like you to know that a mistake has been made there

life is not a game

love is not a reward

love is a tidal thing

and if you don’t know this you will be like a child crying on the beach because the sea went away

because the sea didn’t like you

we often don’t know what strange moons are dragging

at the reservoirs of love held by those we wish to rely on

cancer moons and money moons and that big old sky-smothering satellite that drives our parents mad

but

generally speaking

it is probably not about you

most of the time

it would be a strange world in which it is all about you

and where everyone carefully checks how much love you deserve before handing it over

sometimes we try because we are silly and we have been told lies about life and love, too

but frankly we are far too self-involved to keep track

unconditional love is so much easier

Father Christmas doesn’t keep a list

you are loved

not by everyone all the time

but this world is full of decent people with hearts that have been broken enough to be quite elastic

and they will not let you go without a fight

they will write stories for you and give birth to you and carefully do your dental work

they may notice that you are sad and maybe not even say anything and maybe kick you in the shin because they think it might help or they may do the right thing and one of them might be your dog and some of them are probably imaginary but it’s a strong team working shifts

and they won’t let you go without a fight

even though they are scared

like you

you can help not let them go either

once you got some rest

you are welcome

sleep well.

From notes for the Anxiety comic I am working on, which should be a book before long. More drawings soon!


P.S. The other file I found is this - I have no idea what that was for.

Look at this awesome deep sea diving robot.

Here's a blogpost I just read containing a review of my book "Welcome to your Awesome Robot", but much more impressively containing a very Awesome Robot.

Photo by Joy Corcoran. Robot by Noah Tanatchangsang

Emma Carlisle

Hey! Here's an advert. Emma Carlisle, who used to be one of my students, is making AWESOME THINGS. Her latest venture is pet portrait accessories. You can commission her to paint your cat, dog or dinosaur to wear as a brooch.
Here's my cat:

See? See???

She also does ceramics.

You can't have this one though, it's mine.

Busy Autumn

I hope you are all cosy, and that you are making nice things for autumn., and if you live in London I hope you can afford heating.

I am finishing a book, "How To Find Gold", and after that I'll start shaping the Anxiety comic into a graphic novel.

There are some other very exciting projects on the horizon, I'll tell you more soon.

Playpublik Krakow

Ellan and I went to run a cardboard maze building workshop at Playpublik Krakow. The festival was awesome, we met so many lovely people, played games, marvelled at things... and Krakow itself was very cosy indeed. I ate more dumplings than anyone could believe.

Rules for Secret City - the main game we ended up playing in this maze. It was a quieter, gentler maze than usual, somehow. more of a castle than a burrow or an ocean.

Ellan, building

Me!

The Mighty Hamster (or The Funny Beaver, as it came to be known somehow)

Treasure changing hands

I loved the giant hopscotch games that appeared in town (by Agustina Woodgate)

All the organisers and designers. WHEE

I'm so glad we got invited to do this, and I hope we will build many more mazes and fill them with people next year!

All these photos are by Martin C Welker, here's the whole album

INTERNATIONAL HENRY FINCH!

Check it out check it out CHECK IT OUT!
They'll be for sale on the first of January, but THEY ALREADY EXIST AND THEY ARE AWESOME LOOK!

KAWAKAWA

Here are some pictures from the album launch of Kawakawa's new album, "Island Species".
It's beautiful, and we had a great evening.
There were some very strange birds present...

All photos: Peter John Morgan

IS THERE A DOG IN THIS BOOK? - OUT NOW!

Yep, it's PUBLISHED! YOU CAN GET YOUR COPY!

How do you make the face look the same from panel to panel?

Dan Berry's excellent Make It Than Tell Everybody project ran part one of an excellent article today.

I get asked questions occasionally about the process of making comics. I’ve passed this particular question on to a handful of the people I’ve interviewed for them to answer, and I’ll post up more as they come in.

How do you make the faces look the same from panel to panel?

I remember this being a big concern of mine when I started drawing comics, and I get asked this pretty frequently. Probably more of a concern that actually telling a story if I’m honest. I think this is a question that gets asked a lot because it is so apparent when the characters don’t look consistent. Here’s how John Allison, Viv Schwarz, Glyn Dillon and Sarah Glidden tackled this topic...

Well how do we? Go read.

And then subscribe to Dan's podcast, it rocks.

ANXIETY - grounded in reality

This episode actually doesn't have any Anxiety in it.

ANXIETY - update

Hey there!
It seems like time to give you an update on this comic about Anxiety I am doing.
In short: it's still going on, tehre weren't many updates because I am working on a picture book, but I have planned and written and collated and thought. There will be more soon, and there will be a book eventually.

Life is good, I have a great studio now, and I'm really enjoying my projects. Inbetween drawings and writings I am building kites.

From The Penguin Book of Kites

Sode kite

research

Kite made from pigeon feathers, staws and string

Experimenting

I won't have much time at all to do the artwork for this book, but that's fine. I know how I want it to look, and it will be a lot of fun.
At the moment I am painting with brushes made from horsehair. It seems to suit it. - I'll need to dig out my lightbox so I can follow my roughs a bit more closely. This drawing was made free-hand on top of a rough colour sketch, which explains why the crocodile is skipping more than he usually would - I was following the jaunty watercolouring I'd put down first.

Whisper Down the Lane

Photo by Laurel Turton

I had the pleasure to perform in an Opera-Happening by Catherine Kontz and Ellan Parry who have made many strange and beautiful things in the past...
"Whisper Down the Lane" was a fringe event at the Tete a Tete Opera festival that's running around Kings Cross at the moment.

"Do you believe everything you read? Can you verify the source of the information and how it was passed on? Can you follow the trail? Is it a spin? Is it rumour? Is it actually true?
Even the most trivial snippet of news, however manipulated or bona fide it may be, is promoted to a worthier level as soon as it is written down in black and white. Unlike the elusive spoken word, evaporating instantly and leaving behind only the memory of its sound and meaning, the printed word weighs heavier, lives longer and comes to be literature! It becomes the truth. But can you trust it?
Expect fun tongue twisting imbroglios and misconstrued iterations 'whispered' around Kings Cross."

Photo by Claire Shovelton

Photo by Catherine Kontz

Photos by Laurel Turton (unless indicated otherwise)

STORGE day one