I went on a brief holiday a few weeks ago, and while out and about, I improvised this beautiful three-part comic. There could have been a fourth part but I resisted. I felt that it was going in a direction best described as "unfestive".
2021-09-09 18:49:46 +0000 UTC
View Post
The PDF is linked under the cover image - let me know how you're enjoying the story in the comments.
The next episode is due to appear here on October 25th.
--
Cover by Jorge Monlongo, colours this issue (cover excepted) by Sammy Borras
Working with a different inking technique. You've seen a few tests here over the last year but I'm starting to feel like I'm getting somewhere. I'm trying to reduce emphasis on line weight to focus on my shapes more.
I've enjoyed refining my inking on Steeple (a process that started with the Boom!Box issues of Giant Days I drew - the holiday special and issue 48) but I've started to feel the call of something a little scratchier of late. Where it'll end up, I'm not sure.
I've not got a lot to offer the Patreon this week. I'm getting towards the end of work (27 pages to go) on Steeple volume 3, which constitutes Christmas With Clovis, the Lottie/Shelley crossover, and 88 pages of Clotted Crime. It's been a very intense period of drawing, on some very detailed (for me at least) pages. I've learned a lot over the last year but I'm also keen to draw something easier for a bit once this spell is over.
But I always have some old shite I MEAN SOLID GOLD for yo...
2021-08-31 12:52:39 +0000 UTC View Post
A cover rough where I tried out some techniques in Procreate on the iPad. I'd like to do a whole comic that looks like this. Maybe in colour, maybe not.
2021-08-26 17:16:23 +0000 UTC View Post
If there's one thing Shelley takes against, it's being asked to toe the company line. She marches to the beat of her own drum.
So, a fifth Rave On and a fifth method of drawing it. I just drew this one straight out like Here Comes Gothy or Cattywampus. With the previous four, I tried to do it properly but the tight format forced me into compositions that I knew were sub-par. I think it works be...
2021-08-23 23:01:02 +0000 UTC View PostHere's a second pencil practice page just for patrons. This one's a Murder She Writes page. I feel like I got somewhere with this one. But again, I doubt I could do it twice in a row.
In July, I made attempts to harness my other drawing style for comic pages again. All I really want to do is a short story this way. But I still can't squeeze out more than a single page before the wheels come off. Above is an experimental page.
Between the first and the second page, an argument begins between the part of my mind that finds drawing like this effortless when it is for no particu...
2021-08-23 15:28:17 +0000 UTC View PostSteeple: Clotted Crime part 2 will go up on Patreon on September 6th (for $3 and up patrons), here's a super sneak preview of the cover, by the amazing Jorge Monlongo.
You'd think the limitations of this format would make drawing these quick but I am fast being reminded that the more characters you draw in a panel, the more quickly it becomes a 2-dimensional game of Twister.
This was part of a recent experiment that ultimately went nowhere but I liked the drawing.
Here's a third one of these. I absolutely believe there can be a fourth. Don't forget there are a feast of Shelley and Nemulon history comics at destroyhistory.com.
A second instalment of this powerful new tale.
A new fun comic begins today. If you're not familiar with these series, they leak out slowly, starting in protean form, before gaining their shape. I'm not sure when the next page will emerge but it'll be along eventually.
This story was conceived by my girlfriend Laura Snapes, who gave me the plot elements in the same way that you might throw a selection of stock vegetables at a chef, then hit him over the back of the head with a pan and tell him to get on with it. I will do all I can ...
2021-07-27 16:56:05 +0000 UTC View PostOn the train on Saturday I drew two really spiffing fun comics. The first one is a minor entry in the series but part 2 is top-hole. Beezer.
With the first one, you must understand that I wrote the words "having fun with Hardware Harrison" with no idea who the titular HH was or what he might represent.
Now you're intrigued. My impression is that Hardware Harrison was given an hon...
2021-07-20 19:18:42 +0000 UTC View PostThe PDF is linked under the cover image - let me know if you enjoyed it in the comments. There should be another one of these in early September.
In other good news, Dark Horse have agreed to publish a third, much longer, Steeple volume 3 in 2022.
(COVER BY JULIA MADRIGAL)
I've done a variant cover for issue 4 (September '21) of Image/Skybound's SIX SIDEKICKS (by Kyle Starks and Chris Schweizer). The covers were meant to be in the style of different print magazines, so I did mine as a pastiche of my favourite New Yorker cover artist, Bob Staake.
I drew a loose sketch first then painstakingly...
2021-07-14 17:03:09 +0000 UTC View PostOn Monday evening I sat down with a blank sheet of my drawing pad and a pen, and half an hour later, this existed. Powerful social realism with a message of justice.
Want to see more JACKIE SMASH? Let me know!
Blew a gasket last weekend and couldn't toil any more. I'd worked myself to a standstill. It's not been a very holidays-ish period over the last year and a half, has it? When people start saying "you're so prolific", I should remember that that means I've gone mad.
Anyway, here are the drawings I did this week as I sought mind peace, recovery, and renewal. As you will see, they speak to a certain discombobulation, then a mild bounce back.
I have found a talented colourist to...
2021-07-03 17:35:21 +0000 UTC View PostHundreds of people have contacted me to say that they can't find the final issue of Onion Dan in stores. This doesn't surprise me, as there is a conspiracy to suppress this, my most important work. So here's the pivotal page - disseminate it as widely as you feel is safe.
NOTE: I know that the "beast" in panel 6 has lost its ears. My choice not to draw them was a "political statement" very much open to interpretation.
2021-06-26 07:55:46 +0000 UTC
View Post
Very sad news, Patreon friends. Onion Dan has been cancelled by Image Comics as of issue 5. There will be no more Onion Dan. Apparently "it was too extreme" and "it made people feel sick." According to my (former) friends at the publisher, they want to "get out of the John Allison game" and "concentrate on characters who are not onions." The bloody cheek of it!
I'm still practicing with pencil, pen and paper. Here's an improvised comic, I started with the car and worked outwards, then made up some dialogue once I'd coloured it in. I'm having some eye issues at the moment, the result of a year and a half of staring at screens almost without a break, day after day, so I may be forced to switch to drawing with traditional materials for a few months ...
2021-06-19 15:35:06 +0000 UTC View PostI've started to get a little busier of late, a deadline has appeared for a new book, plus a few illustrations on the side, and some distant thunder on other projects is starting to sound. This has combined with pretty brutal eye strain from a year of staring at screens for work and play all year, so I've had to set strict computer time limits (which writing this post contravenes - don't tell the optometrist) and restrict my playtime drawing to pen and paper. The results have been... baffl...
2021-06-13 08:45:09 +0000 UTC View PostI did quite a lot of drawing in my ink-only sketchbook in May. Below is a themed selection. Why is the sketchbook ink-only, you ask? Because it's wire-bound and if I keep it in my bag for drawing out and about, pencil drawings smudge. THAT'S WHY, ALL RIGHT? I don't make the rules! There are no rules.
1. Road Franks
2. Ideas Man
...
2021-06-06 08:21:36 +0000 UTC View Post
More pen and paper practice. I broke a page of my practice script (Giant Days 38) in half and added some new dialogue to make a strip, because doing full size pages was proving a bit much. I think I inked this one a little bit better, following some reading around technique. When I finished, I liked how it looked like a little webcomic from from the past.
My eyes are still going blurry when I t...
2021-06-02 16:52:39 +0000 UTC View PostPDF link at the bottom... enjoy! And let me know what you thought in the comments. There should be another early-release PDF in a couple of months.
Here's the second part of WHEELIE: Rhyme Masters, which I drew while watching an episode of Midsummer Murders with my parents. You try writing rhymes while DI Barnaby is "on one"! There's not a lot of crossover between the two franchises.
Here's the last of the New Bobbins e-books. There are a few scraps that weren't collected in these, when I next have a bit of free time I might do an odds-and-sods collection, but don't hold me to it. I'm much better at generating new nonsense than I am at curating old nonsense. PDF link below!
I've been on a much-needed break this week, mostly away from screens, getting it together in the country. But I've drawn a few comics straight out into my sketchbook, watching TV, just like I might have done as a child. And this one is exactly the sort of comic I would have drawn as a child. I ran into a panelling issue at the end but I gave myself permission to draw some assistive arrows which is... not professional.
Below: the genesis of RHYME MASTERS
2021-05-23 08:14:11 +0000 UTC
View Post
