Yup, I’ve been quiet, sorry… Time’s been tight, there’s been some bad things in the background which I may blog about but probably not for a year and, well, stuff.

In one piece of news I’m now head of graphic design teaching at the place I work at. This is both a good and bad thing: for the past 3 years we’ve had 100% student retention and success and that’s down to me in some ways, and in other ways it’s terrifying because every year we’re supposed to do better than the last so, as I can’t do better that 100% my class size has been doubled.

Interesting times.

Anyhow… Image. For the past couple of weeks I’ve been working on a pic off and on, when time allowed. It’s the most intricate and time consuming piece I’ve done and, because of that, all I can see are the problems. That said I’m now full time back at work and have to save, render and finish. It’s time to get back to teaching with fewer distractions, well, this one needed to be stopped anyhow: I could have pottered about with it forever.

A short history about why it’s at the top of my mind. I can trace (ho ho) my drawing love back to a couple of things: for animation it’s Don Bluth and teams Secret of NIMH, for comics it’s Ian Gibson’s lovely artwork on Dredd and for drawing it’s spending a lazy day trying to recreate an Indiana Jones film poster by the amazing artist that is Drew Struzan. In comparison I’m weak sauce indeed by to go back to staring at his work and trying to get a little bit into mine was fun.

Brushes app, which I still love to pieces, gave me one of it’s VERY infrequent headaches. For only the second of third time in hundred of pictures it crashed and lost the pic. Fortunately I’d managed to get a screenshot so could start less from scratch than I might have. Brushes is still the most fun you can have with an iPad or iPod though and it’s not worried me too greatly. One thing that did help me immensely though was picking up a Pogo stylus. Oh boy that’s helped and I won’t be without one to draw on from now on in.

Any more waffle? Um? The fab Jon Black allowed me to use a song for the soundtrack, which was kind…

Anyhow, tired + very achey eyes. Pic and vid. Night night

Just wanted to upload this before going out to youth work for the day…

Trying not to demoralise myself too much reading all of the sdcc tweets. Hey ho…

It’s been a while since the last update and I’ve been fairly busy. Nothing exciting really, lots of marking and college stuff and something that’s happened in the background which I’m not really ready to talk about just yet, if at all.

I have been drawing off and on to keep the fingers moving This was one I did today in a break from friday holiday stuff.

and another couple I did the other day at a gig. Last week was pretty good for gigs which was useful – I needed a break and something to distract my brain – and I managed to see Midgar and Hero Management at the Boileroom and both were excellent. One of those gigs led to this:

and finally drew this on a couple of my bus journies. It’s of Alan Moore (just saying, bearing in mind the recipients of the previous image were pretty dismissive of whether it looked like them or not… Hey ho). Moore’s one of the most fascinating characters around and this seemed to fall onto the screen fairly smoothly.

More to say but shall stop there for a mo’.

Lovely night out last night watching the footie and sketching on the iPod touch. Had been invited out to a gig in the evening so went to see the footie and walk from one place to the gig. As it was I should have stuck with the gig venue throughout because they were watching the football too and the crowd there was awesome. One more pic to come (have to scan it, was a pencil/paper thing – shocking I know).

Now with added Octosquid violence.

A new scribble! Drawn on the iPad on the bus journey yesterday. Sort of worked/sort of what I wanted. Still trying to get fully into the larger screen but still feel much more comfortable on the smaller one. I know this sounds like a very small whinge in the scheme of things, and it is, but it’s funny how such a small thing can nag at the back of your mind. Every time I pick up a new art package I end up asking myself if I can even draw at all and whether I was any good at this in the first place. The something clicks and I go back to massive egotistical business as normal

Spidey. One of my two or three favourite comic book characters, certainly the one with the more interesting pyjamas…

One of the dream projects I have stars this lil fella. TBH I’m in one of those moods where I wonder if any of my hoped for aspirations will come to be but these things come and go.

Back to the iPad, not quite there yet but not so far either…

It’s (in case anyone was wondering) the Mandarin from the Iron Man series. I’ve always had a soft spot for characters with power rings for some reason or another (what with him and GL too) and enjoyed the new comic with Mandarin starring front of stage. That said the story wasn’t exactly a happy ending but it was  a strong tale and reminds me that, of the man dreams I’ve yet to see realised and feel less likely than ever to be able to do so, writing and drawing for Marvel is right up there…

Doodle done in between bouts of miserable marking…

Pixelmator, which is WAY more fun than marking work is…

Interesting couple of days which, sadly have seen wifey taken to A+E to have a splint fitted

((in as much as she did a fair amount of gardening on Saturday morning which led to a bizarre instant RSI thing coming on. Very quickly her wrist swelled up to a fair old size and became unusable – which made it tricky to drive for a start – and on Sunday she stopped trying to tough it out and went for advice. Better now that she can’t move it and has a splinty type support)).

Some parts of the weekend have been lovely ((a picnic on the green with some lovely church friends and a meal the day before with some equally lovely work one +1 )) – some less so ((autism + inability to cope with anger = not chilling of atmosphere)). Anyhow just on here for a sec ((plus bracketed edit)), add a vid then off to pack kids up for school tomorrow (hey it’s ALL about the preperation…

Naaahhh not really but one of the littleys is off to the Lakes for a school week away tomorrow early so have to organise for that now.) ((That side of things all went off fine, phew)).

Anyhow, drew a  picture that always comes to mind when I listen to the beginnings of the Joystiq podcast – one of my faves. Edited it while cooking dinner (how’s THAT for multi tasking gender stereotypists) and uploaded while … well, I deserved a bit of a break…

So: the Joystiq podcast It’s three game geeks – well, sort of geeks – chatting about games and having a laugh while doing so and it’s fabulous fun. It also comes at a very specific time of the week for me being released on a friday night for me to download once I’ve finished the last youth group of the week… So I generally get home tired (very tired at the moment because I’m drafted onto football most weeks now ) say thank you to the babysitters (without whom the youth group couldn’t run) and download the podcast. Then I tend to drift off while listening to it on my iPod before listening to it all over again the day after.

My exciting life, eh?

But it’s good, they are the soundtrack to my youth work in many ways and an excellent way to close the week. This pic is often the one that comes to mind as it begins to shut down (and I used to take aaaages to chill out after a youth group night – now I listen to Joystiq and fall asleep within half an hour or so). Thanks chaps