I’ve been doodling around on odosketch, which is an online drawing application, that tries to emulate natural media, it has a great Scott Campbell kind of palette and is mucho fun to fiddle about on. Best of all, with the press of a button you get to see your drawing… being drawn, in a replay, stop motion kind of animation… I’m a sucker for that kinda thing.

‘Nao news’ just in… I heard back from Mrs. Shelly Bond at DC Vertigo, who was right up for doing it after seeing the first eleven pages… but Karen ‘Big Boss’ Berger thought it “too indie” for them… which is fair enough. I hadn’t originally thought that they would be the best publishers for it, but Shelly did a real good job of convincing me of their merits, so I kinda got into it. And I do think it would’ve been fun to work with Shelly again. But we had to wait for Mrs. Berger to come back from her summer vacation before the final rejection could be delivered.

Not to worry. It wasn’t meant to be. And now I feel all the more determined to get cracking on the first draft… but not until I’ve faffed around a bit, doodled in online applications and sorted out my wife’s birthday present.

Onward and upwards

Been busy doing some boards for Stacy Wall and a certain big beer company.

There’s recently been talk of a ban on alcohol advertising in the UK, which would cut out quite a few clients for me.

I wonder if that ban would make much of a difference to our ‘Broken Britain™’/Anglo Saxon ways.

*Except in Utah, Minnesota, Kansas and Oklahoma where a 3.2% alcohol by weight (4.0% by volume) strength is available due to state laws.

In trying to find an old acquaintance I found myself having to join Twitter… So if ‘tweeting’ is your kinda thing, you can find me here. And my good friend Fluffy has helped me set it up so that any new posts here are automatically ‘Tweeted’… it’s official… I am now truly embracing the 21st Century… Still avoiding Facebook though.

Last Friday I decided to get back to doing some ‘Nao’ artwork… I spent the afternoon drawing up Gregory’s dream, I drew it in the kinda style that you’ve seen already, like in the Pg.8 Underground post below. By the end of the day I was kinda pleased with the actual drawing but something didn’t feel right. Over the weekend I kept thinking about it and it started to get me down… I couldn’t get in early enough on Monday, determined to throw that one out & start again… but I still wasn’t sure how to tackle it. Then the moment I arrived in the studio I spotted the Kuniyoshi book and I realised it’d be great to do it in a similar Ukiyo-e, ‘Floating World’ style. Then it all happened really quickly… I drew it up in a day & then coloured it the next and now I’m really pleased with it.

Sorry for not posting the whole picture… I really want to hold this one back until we can all buy it in our local bookstore….

There’s to be a character in Nao that was a freelance signwriter/painter back in the sixties, just as my Dad was. This is a rough that I’m going to ask my Dad to paint up properly for me. It’s definitely going to be in the book… but the real reason I’m asking him to do it, is so that I get to own a beautiful piece of intricate sign work by my Dad, something I can show to my son & say this is what your Grandad did for a living. It’s such a shame that it’s a craft that’s all but dead now, plastic & vinyl lettering have completely succeeded in killing it off. I’m gonna ask him if he’ll do it for me as a Christmas present, so hopefully I’ll be posting a photo of the result in the New Year. And Dad, if you’re reading this… sorry I was just about to call you