Bar-B-Q

I drew this big old picture (too big to put on the blog, click this link to see it), now I'm trying to figger out what to do with it. I started drawing it a year ago, became disconsolate (I'm not sure why), found it today, and filled out the remaining 2/3 of the pencils and inked it. I might sell it, or I might colour it in, or I might bury it in the garden then fire bullets into the ground where I've buried it. You know me, I can never decide.

Digital

You may remember a story I did right at the start of 2005 about The Child, where the bald, sexless infant said "things are going to change", over and over again. After that story, something did change, but no one spotted it, and I have spent many nights hugging my sides and weeping as a result.

What changed was, I started drawing people with the full complement of fingers rather than three-fingered Simpsons hands. I only point this out because in looking for a book to read last night, I found an old bookmark from 2003, on which I had drawn one of those three fingered hands. It looked pretty strange, but after all, "strange" 'is just "change" spelt slightly differently.

My message of change has gone nationwide since then. I leave you with an alarming photograph from the Conservative Party conference earlier this year.



UK residents: don't buy any new gloves.

SING OUT

I'm not sure what drawing this really achieved, there were meant to be bats but I got tired and forgot. I will draw bats later. MUCH LATER.

Almost (almost) there

After months of wrangling and worry, I finally have copies of SGR book 4 in my hands. They won't be on sale until they get off the boat from old Colombia in about 4 weeks (no pre-orders), but hopefully at that point someone will want to buy one. I can tell you the following facts about them:

* They feature 216 pages! That is 16 more pages than "Skellington"!
* They will cost £10, just like all the other collections!
* There will probably be new combo packs but don't ask me what they will contain because I don't know!
* There are lots of new drawings, a couple of new comics pages, some sketchbook pages, and chapter commentary by Shelley!
* It features all the stories from "Election" to "Battle Of The Bands", apart from the Oldbourne story! That one wasn't very good!
* And etc!

Ingress & egress

My travels to and from the USA on this particular voyage have been tricky. I was stuck for about ten hours at Newark last week because of the weather, and on the way back I now find myself having missed my flight home and "on standby" for the last gosh-darn bus out of town. Where? NEWARK. How can this be? It seems that Freedom comes at a price, and that price is incarceration in an airport in New Jersey for an indeterminate time frame.

"On standby" means "riven with stress". It is a semantic thing invented by the airlines to distract you from the uncertainty of your immediate future. I only hope my strict adherence to the principles of freedom throughout my visit will grease my departure somewhat. I love freedom, even though Newark International Airport is trying to make me hate it.


FREEEEEDOOOOOOOOM

I am not sure why I keep doing these

I have started to do some paintings to sell at MoCCA next weekend. To the best of my recollection I've never sold more that one painting at a show (maybe two) but that kind of drives me to try to be less of a failure at it. Anyway here is what I managed so far.



Tomorrow: MOON MUMMY DILEMMAS

Continental drift divide

Firstly, let me apologise for the lack of blog updates lately. I spent a lot of time getting book 4 off to the printers and sorting out proofs and Fed Ex and greasing certain wheels in the "underground" to make sure things turn out extra good. And next week I am off to Massachusetts and New York for MoCCA Artfest, which requires a certain amount of preparation (mostly ironing). Plus I have been marshalling approximately 8 million entries for SGR Idol, all of which required careful scrutiny by the jury. But now I am back back back to tell you that everything is going to be okay. It's going to be... okay.

I wish I had more to report but you don't get to have any adventures when you're ironing. Apart from the accidental, painful kind.