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…

One of the things I’ve been working on, well, two of them actually, comes to leave my hands and go to the hands of others soon enough.

The first, Dr Sylver and the Tapestry of Time, hits shelves in April after the most protracted birth of any of my projects, ever. Oh boy.

The second hits shelves before hand, despite only having been worked on since Christmas in any real sense. It’s been a theraputic piece of work in some ways, exciting in others. Ladies and Gentlemen meet Wombat and Wambot. It’s the tale of a small, furry amnesiac and his large robotic counterpart. Fairly obviously the name came first and the story… Well, there’s a little bit of this and a little bit of that in there. Sometime soon it becomes my own and then, shortly after, it’s going to be given over to others: much like the Big Book Draw the fun of Project Wombat is that others will fill in the middle up until the last page or so. That part will be the most fun of all. I had intended to show the project off sometime in the Summer but with the release of Brushes on the iPad in a months time it makes more sense to try and hit before then which has compressed my stretching out and relaxing time to a small, stressed ball of lack of time off. Still, I do love working on a project so hey ho, all part of the game.

Anyhow if you’re so inclined you could join the twitter feed at @wombatwambot or add the facebook page here… The more the merrier (and of course the more would help me out in showing the project off to others in the future so any adds would be gratefully appreciated).

So, apart from the fact that my wife was sick as a sick pig today, and it was my dad and daughter’s birthday, I drew this on Brushes. It reminded me that it was drawing a card for my dad’s birthday that started me off on Brushes in the first place so here’s a post with the first image I drew in Brushes (two years ago? One year? Wow I think it was only a year… ) and the most recent one I’ve done today. Hopefully they’re pretty easy to work out which is which.

One of my mates has just had a double eye operation so I did this card for her to take the shades off to.

I… um… probably don’t have to say what software I used to draw it with?

‘Twas explaining the brushes feature in Pixelmator to one of my students and this came out of it (well, 50% of it did, I finished it off a little while ago). Modern art? How about bids start at $500,000 thank you very much.

In other news: going to the leaving do of two more colleagues tonight. I don’t think this day is going to end well… We’ll see. Straight from that to youth group so I’m now booked in for the next 14 hours.

I think this may be the project I go onto after Zombies and Wombat. Maybe… It’s certainly grabbed my bonce for the moment but hey, things do that.

In other news had some kind comments after I posted a somewhat sombre Facebook comment earlier, being cold and wet and having walked for an hour in the rain to have a bookshop tell me they didn’t want to have a look at samples of Sylver 3. Am warm and dry now, so two of the three issues are now fully resolved so, hey, it’s not all bad. And the positive comments always make things roll a little smoother. Have picked up a couple of hours more at college too, which I don’t have time for but could do with the money, so again things not so bad I guess. Onwards, anyway, albeit to sleep now.

Friend of mine is going in for an eye operation on Thurs hence the desire to do a get well soon card. This makes more sense to the person it was sent to but you’ll have to take my word for it that it probably raised a smile. If you’re so inclined prayerful thoughts on Thursday would be appreciated, by me more than her, but hey, it’s still good to keep these things in mind.

He needed his own background so here it is…