Grey Doodleland

I'm going to start doing a series of black and white ink drawings with the intention of selling them. For years, I've been colouring my work using photoshop and the disadvantage of this, is that there really isn't any original artwork left fit to sell. It all ends up on the hard disc, so that only prints are available to buy. Not only that, but it's so long since I last did any crosshatching, that I've basically forgotten how to do it. So the image below is a sort of half and half picture, where I've tentatively tipped my toe into crosshatching again, before launching myself into the depth of a real non-photoshop ink drawing.

Grey Green Orange Town Drawing

It's been awhile since I've tackled a big drawing. So here is one. Pencils, pen, and then photoshop for the colours.

Art Tips

Art tips. These days I draw on A4 sheets of photocopy paper and I use Pilot techpoint pens to ink with. All pages are scanned into the computer, where I adjust the linework and drop in the colours, using photoshop. You can spend a fortune on art materials or buy cheap stuff and find that works just as well. There's little point in following what other people do as, in the end, it's what you yourself feel comfortable with. Try a load of different things and see what works, is my advise.

Some early drawings from a time when I'd just started to use photoshop.

Diablo At Activate

Two pages from my continuing webcomic The Streets of San Diablo. Check out Activate for the story so far.

Death And Uncle Bob

I've written a number of stories over the years about Uncle Bob. In which, the aged Robert Merrison tells tales of his extraordinary long life, to his two nieces. I gave up writing them a few years ago, disheartened by my lack of success in getting a publisher interested. The stories are possibly too dark and violent for the average nice middle-class children's publisher. Kids seem to love them though.

This short tale is unusual in that it doesn't involve Bob telling any sort of story

Return To San Diablo

After months on hiatus my continuing webcomic, The Streets Of San Diablo, is finally back on Activate with a four page bumper episode. The strip will continue every Monday until it's finished (Probably in the spring).

ACTIVATE.

Plans 2010

Having finished Psychiatric Tales, and sent off the artwork to the publishers, I now feel strangely directionless. I'm in an odd twilight zone between the ending of the work and its publication in Feb. It isn't that I've nothing to do. I'm restarting my strip The Streets Of San Diablo for the Activate webcomic collective. I had to put the superhero/western/horror story on hold for a while, so that I could finish Psychiatric Tales. San Diablo will return in a four page episode this coming Monday. Expect mindless violence.

There is a secret, secret thing happening with Psychiatric Tales which I'm not allowed to mention yet, as it it is a secret. Hopefully, very soon, I'll be in a position to announce what this thing is.

My plan is to launch Psychaitric Tales at the UK Web And Comix Thing in March, where I'll have a table . I note that many of my comic book pals will also be there.

My long term plans include a second volume of Psychiatric Tales. There's still a ton of subjects I would like to talk about, including substance abuse, Electro Convulsive Therapy, borderline personality disorder, types of dementia, OCD, amongst others. There's plenty to get my teeth into.

I've also got good idea for a children's book, The Girl Who Cried Diamonds. I'll need to collaborate with another artist on this one, as my own style wouldn't quite fit the subject matter.

A recent photo. Yorkshire mist.

Antisocial Personality Disorder

Here's the reworked Antisocial Personality Disorder chapter of Psychiatric Tales (previously know as Mad Or Bad). Eight pages of which only three are left from the original version. As ever, feel free to point out any errors you see.

All done now. Apart from renumbering the pages and a few other annoying tiny jobs. It'll be out from Blank Slate in Feb.

San Diablo

News. I'm restarting The Streets Of San Diablo on Activate.com. The strip will return at the end of November and appear every Monday. http://act-i-vate.com/index

I've been so busy with my Psychiatric Tales book project that I had to put San Diablo on hiatus. However, now that book is almost finished, I can get back to my freakish Western/superhero/horror mash up tale. Yippee!

Psychiatric Tales: Last Chapter

Here, at last then, is the final chapter of Psychiatric Tales. As ever if you spot any mistakes or have anything critical to say, then please let me know. I tend to think of these online versions of the stories as beta versions, which still need debugging. So all comments help.

The book still isn't finished. I have to redo much of the lettering in the first half of the book, correct spelling mistakes, plus rewrite and redraw four pages of an earlier chapter which, as it stands, is factually confusing.

The book will be out from Blank Slate in Feb and will be available through their website and various other places.

Last Chapter

I've now started work on the last chapter of Psychiatric Tales. Which is good. I've also decided that I'll have to go back and rework one of the earlier chapters, due to some factual confusion. Which is bad. However I will only have to redraw four pages of that chapter to correct it. So it's not as bad as it could have been.

Here's a panel from the last chapter.



It's all going smoothly, both the writing and the drawing. I'm very happy with all the publicity I've had. It's turning all this attention and good feeling into money that's the difficulty. I'm currently having to make ends meet by doing agency work two days a week. This means going up to a local care home for dementia sufferers and wiping bottoms for a living (work that keeps me grounded in reality if nothing else). If it wasn't for the fact that I'm staying at my parent's house I wouldn't be able to manage at all. I'd have to work full time and there'd be little chance of doing much in the way of cartooning.

A few noters in the past have offered money to help me finish the book. So for those who might have any spare change lying around, I'll give you the chance to donate to me via PayPal. Even small amounts of money will at least help me buy new ink cartridges and that sort of thing. I thank you in advance.

Northern Town

Three photos of the northern town where I live.

Suicide

This chapter on suicide is different from previous chapters, as it's much more personal in tone. It's not meant to be a piece giving you facts and figures about the subject. Nor do I attempt to give any advice. Such a strip may in fact be written by me in the future, but this strip is about how the subject of suicide has touched my own life.

This is the penultimate chapter of the book. The last chapter will be a long piece detailing my own mental health struggles.