birds

birds... they aren't easy to draw and anders nilsen hasn't made it any easier for anybody. in his 'big questions'-series a lot of the characters are birds. i would go as far as to say that when people think of birds in comics they think of nilsen's birds. they are good birds in a good story, no doubt about it.

sketch for pigeon non-fiction

on my way to work the other day i came across a piece of non-fiction involving a pigeon. it was too good not to make into a short comic and so i google-image-searched the web, observed a visitor to our garden and got to work.
i've drawn my pigeon the only way i know how. all i can do is hope that noone will compare my pigeon to anders' birds.

i also came across the image below, which i have tried to stop myself from posting. you have to choose your battles carefully, i suppose.

news of all varieties

20th century first holy communion card

when i went to sleep last night i promised myself a lie-in. i was still tired from meeting a deadline for a course i am doing and i felt as if i was coming down with something.
at 0930 hrs this morning there was a knock on the door. still groggy and far from fully rested i stumbled downstairs to open the door to what i was hoping to be the postman with a parcel. instead two kind individuals were wanting to bring me good news. not wanting to encourage anybody instead of my usual 'sorry, i am an atheist' i went with 'sorry, i'm not interested'. they nodded and moved on.

however much i wanted and needed i could not get back to sleep. so i got up, made myself some breakfast and started reading the new york times. there i first came across this article, and then this. coincidentally both articles mention the influence of the in this case roman catholic church on respectively women's and children's rights and science.

two friends

although i could not find the excellent guardian supplement on abortion, which i think was published in 2006 and which featured one or more very eloquent articles by zoe williams. some other articles she wrote for the guardian on the subject of abortion and reproductive rights can be found here.

serious business

jimi gherkin made me aware of the fact that chapter 2 article 49 of the coroners and justice bill is currently being reviewed by parliament. there is some concern as to how this may affect comic artists, writers, publishers, readers and retailers.

please sign this petition to ask the prime minister to take these concerns into account.

quality is not a chance

this weekend i ended up joining hin chua on one of his photographic exploits along the thames. we stocked up on pasties and jumped on the train to gravesend from where we wandered to higham. it was a bit of a trek but the sun was out, the company good and the food mediocre, what more could anyone ask for?

the aptly named gravesend owes its fame to being the last resting place of pocahontas. who we found immortalised in a mural just outside the station. (that's her on top of the bearded ginger white man on the left.)

on our way to the thames we passed an industrial area, where on the side of a van we found the following sage advice:

a couple of meters on we took this short course in hand signaling:

and rambling and clambering on, passing a power station and shooting grounds, dangerous waters and three separate forts we encountered some more signage. i was impressed with the trepidation of the wee man looking over the edge at the water and the other little man's balancing act.

it's not quite gravesend but in february i spent half a day in amsterdam and came across the image below outside of madam tussauds. if i'd had some time to spare i would have taken barry up on the offer.

i like knowing that all of the text and images above were carefully crafted by someone somewhere. someone woke up one morning and half asleep thought 'chance...choice...quality... eureka! quality is not a chance it is a choice!' then they got up and spent the rest of the day feeling chuffed.

we do what we can.

anders nilsen on a roll

so anders nilsen has been at it again. 'monologues for calculating the density of black holes' the follow up to his stream of consciousness comic 'monologues for the coming plague' is out. now. go get it.

if you are willing to flog your bike and ipod you might also be able to afford sammy harkham's latest editorial effort 'kramers ergot 7'. it is big and i haven't dared look inside it yet, but it is supposed to be good.

nourishment

last night i made it through the slush of trodden snow to a front row seat at an adrian tomine talk at the ica. toby litt led the talk, which covered adrian's own work as well as his work as the editor of drawn and quarterly's yoshihiro tatsumi series. after the talk tomine signed books in the shop and i had the chance to not only talk to him briefly, but also to have a chat with paul gravett.
paul organized the talk and although i had seen him at just about every comics related event i've been to in london i'd never had the pleasure to speak with him. it was lovely talking with him, and i left the ica full of encouragement and positivity.

since my bike is broken and i didn't know what bus to get the small spring in my step helped me on my way home. pondering the evenings events i walked from the mall to shoreditch, there i jumped onto the 149 with some vietnamese takeaway tucked underneath my arm.

it's difficult to put into words what i take away from these evenings but they always result in new considerations and observations.

the same goes for a meeting i had today with sarah mcintyre, who i met at one of last year's comica events. we had been meaning to meet for lunch for months and today we finally got round to it. over sarah's blt and my spanish omelette we chatted about comics, people in our lives and self-censorship. and she gave me an excellent idea for promoting my comic. altogether a luxury lunch.

alternative press fair and snow or viceversa

view from my window, snowcovered rubber cat on washing line, view of the garden

when i woke up at 0645 this morning my eyes were still heavy. the golden pink light i had noticed coming from the window during the night had all but faded and when i opened the curtains i did not expect much more than a thin layer of snow to greet me. i was wrong.

for a moment i paused to consider how much earlier i would have to leave the house to get to the bus stop in time and then i got myself some breakfast.

as usual i perused the guardian online while eating my cereal and i was struck by a small sentence in an article on the weather, it mentioned public transport not working. so on i went to the transport for london site: all buses have been withdrawn from service due to adverse weather and dangerous road conditions.

the rest of the day consisted of snow-fights, hot chocolate, more snow-fights, chips, hot chocolate and some more snow-fights. i honed my skills, turned my competitive disadvantages into advantages, plotted and employed the most ruthless of tactics. a large part of my strategy was based on the flooding of parts of the netherlands by the dutch during the siege of leiden in their fight against the spanish occupation in the 16th century.

we'll see what weather and bus services tomorrow brings. but first: the past.
yesterday i finally got to know what it is like to push your wares at a comics and zines fair. after checking out what else was on offer i helped out at the 'communal' table for a couple of hours.

watching people shuffle past, picking up every- and anybody's comic or zine but yours is quite a sobering experience. at one point my faith in humanity was severely compromised, when even people who looked like they might like my comic on account of their coat or hairstyle didn't go near it. in the end i did sell and swap some copies and my faith was redeemed.
next time i'll have to put some more effort into promotion, maybe a wee stand will help.

some of the work i picked up by virtue of it being well-drawn, funny, disturbing or something else includes: a malcy duff story in 'tegne' issue 2, 'the smoking eyebrow' by chiu, 'curtis and terrorist' by mr. l, 'up a blind alley, part one' by scott smith, 'giant clam 3' by ralph kidson and 'where i come from that makes you a bully and a coward' by andy luke (i was behind the table with andy and ralph).
the lovely sarah mcintyre was there as well and she gave me issue 14 of the dfc, which has characters from her comic 'vern and lettuce' gracing its cover.

the day ended with an open mic nite hosted by the man who (together with peter lally) organized the whole event: jimi gherkin. opening act was twent or trent miller, who played some feeling cash-esque diddies and who on closer inspection turned out to be an italian named gabriel. it is him in the photo above. i didn't stay much longer, but i boarded the bus home with a feeling of camaraderie and joy.