I didn’t mean to… I just had thirty minutes between finishing off sending out a couple of review copies of Sylver and getting back to do the school run (spoiler: walk) and the idea seemed too good to avoid. Actually it was nice, not stunning but pleasant enough and it gave me a good opportunity to grab the iPod touch and start drawing:

and take a couple of pics while I was at it.

Then, before I knew it I was back on the treadmill again. And now to sleep….

Couple more pics. Showed another class the massively lovely Harmony page and it was a lot of fun to see a new group pick it up and play. To explain how it worked I pretty much did this pic and just finished it off over lunch. Hurrah

Wish, wish, WISH it did vectors so it could upscale but hey ho, you can’t have everything and that’s like saying it’s a shame David Beckham can’t play the saxophone. What Harmony does well it does brilliantly

Man I should be on commission

That said it’s a free piece of art playfulness so commission wouldn’t buy me the luxury Sushi I crave.

Also: team Pixelmator – if you ever read this please get this into a future iteration of Pixelmator Would love to have things like undo, shading, higher detail etc…

(incidentally – finished in Pixelmator as always )

Had forty five minutes waiting to cover a class which never turned up so carried on with the trees pic. Here it am:

Well into a new html 5 website called Harmony. It’s a fabulous piece of web code which allows you to draw on the browser and export your images. Here’s a couple of sample images doodled in a state of happy scribbling.

All Wombat related of course – I’m a little focused on that at the moment – but different stuff to come soon, honest.

(edit: in the interests of complete transparency the images have a smidge of Pixelmator updating: each has a gradient overlay added but apart from that it’s Harmony all the way).

Been a productive day all round…. And this is the final pic of the night. Sat with a friend explaining how to use brushes in Pixelmator and this fell out as a result.

And now to sleep

Ahhhh the class of ‘09. Sometimes a good year, sometimes not so much. I look back on these guys with mixed feelings but a huge amount of happiness and joy.

I’ve been thinking about ex-students and the Book Draw a lot over the past couple of weeks. I’m coming up to the final months of, possibly, the last classes at my workplace and a number of students have been asking if I’ll miss them. Spoiler warning: (I will) and who knows what will happen in the future. I do know that some of the guys and gals I have worked with this have have been entertaining an fun to be with.

Which leads me to these guys: the class of ‘09 Big Book Draw version. It was a wonderful day (click on the Guildford Book Draw tab to the right for more details) but a project that often nearly broke me. For a start I had huge dreams – as with any project – and I really must learn to stop doing that. One of the dreams was to have a launch party with a difference. I made forty copies of the book (and since each copy took at least an hour to make that’s a fair chunk of time when times always a pressing). The idea was to have a night out where people who had helped on the day could be given their copy of the book at random. The next step on this project is to wrap each book in brown paper and post them to recipients and give them to those more local. It was a lovely plan. Added to that I wanted to have a storyteller there on the night to read out the story of the Dragon and his Princess and the Fish’s Library (a story I’m quite pleased with ) and it would all be lovely.

Of course it wasn’t to be. I tried but hey ho, some dreams fly too high and the reach of my net feels very limited. But I do still intend to send the books off to people, at random, and with a bit of luck the people who receive them will photograph themselves and their book and email that back to me. Then, and only then, will I know who got what.

It’s been a funny old road but one that’s kept me amused through some dips last year. Now I’m onto the semi-sequel (Wombat and Wambot) which, again, is a youth work venture and, again, will be drawn by teenagers who I’ve yet to meet and can’t wait to do so, and hopefully I’ll look back on the project in the Summer as I wrap it up and smile as much as I do with the mini-books above. We’ll see. I’ve yet to learn to stop dreaming but, since the dreams help me with the ideas in the first place I can hardly complain when the rough goes with the smooth I suppose.

In other news the final, FINAL copy of Sylver went of to the publisher today for print and release in early May. More on that when I have the time to type but youth work calls for tonight so it’s time to plod onwards on a different path…

Wifey makes characters out of socks and these are three of them. I think they look uber cool

So life is fun, full and crazy at the moment. Loads to do, loads being done. Yet more Sylver background stuff prior to however it’s taken up from when released and occasional Wombat doodling as well.

Which leads me to this, which has nothing to do with anything. The idea just sprung to mind so I drew it out while having a half hour chill out.

Brushes as ever and may make no sense to anyone not in the UK maybe…

Youth group last night was interesting. Normally I spend all week doing ‘the creativ stuffz’ so I tend to then do youthwork in the two non-creative rooms on a group night playing either football or Rock Band.

Last night was different as wifey – who does lead the creative stuff on a group night – was stuck for ideas so I said I’d do computer art with the kids. Actually it was  a lot of fun. We did a good amount of Photo booth, a fair bit of Photoshop liquify face mangling and a smidge of Pixelmator brush painting. This is possibly my favourite image from the night and came from Paige and I throwing Brushes around. Twas fun.

And once this is uploaded to work. I may well upload the Wombat pics up here but that’ll be a later job (sorry Pants) as they’ll all need resizing.

Work proceeds apace on Wombat Wambot, my online comic drawn almost entirely in Brushes. It’s happening now at: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Wombat-Wambot/373739641256 with one page a day uploaded (weekdays, I deserve a break now and again) from now until July.

Or so the plan goes…

Also: Oh Apple why do you taunt me with a ‘buy your iPad now’ email when you know I am in t he UK and cannot buy one until the end of April when it’s released way off in the future two months

Updates soon, honest, but for the moment Wombat’s sit heavily on my brain.

Edit: Also also, should I post the pages here? Would that make sense? I wonder…