In other news, I’m pleased to reveal I’m planning something exciting. I seem to have stumbled through life being late to every cool party around. Never been entirely sure why this is, did I really lead such a sheltered upbringing in the grim north? Or have I spent most of my life going from day to day with my eyes to the floor, so lost in my own miserable little existence that everything I SHOULD have been into completely passed me by.

Whether it was music, literature or art, my eyes were only really opened when I first moved to London back in 2000, and even now, I’m still only just clumsily stumbling across things I wish I’d discovered years ago. Now, when I was a kid, I loved to spend hours making my own comics and magazines, writing my own fantasy stories and badly copying Frank Frazetta’s art to accompany them. But as I got older, a lot of that DIY mentality lost the great battle and was sent cowering to the caves at the back of my consciousness by things like girls, video games and horror movies. I still loved to draw, and that’s never gone away, but all my creative efforts began to be self consciously hidden away from the cruel world in sketchbooks, and so it was until I discovered the London street art scene back around 2002.

So it wasn’t until a couple of years ago that I discovered something else almost completely new to me. Zines. I saw people printing their own little mini comics before but the penny never really dropped. Not only did I not realise that these small run, indie publications had been created by people just like me, in their own time, with their own dime, BUT this is also something I could do myself, just like when I was a kid.

So, late to the party as usual, I’m about to crash through the door with annoying enthusiasm, good intentions and a shit bottle of wine. My journey into the world of non-profit and extremely time consuming self publications is at hand, and I’m excited.

In the coming months I’ll get together the first issue of the Freak Show zine, and if all goes well will hopefully go on to release around 3 issues a year. Each and every copy will be a signed and numbered limited edition with screen printed covers and pull out posters, Gocco printed postcards, badges, photography, comic strips, illustration, stickers, mindless articles and anything else that seems like a good idea at the time.

Sketched, scanned then colour added over the top in Photoshop on a new layer set to ‘multiply’. Never worked that way before but quite enjoyed the looseness of it. I also use a Wacom tablet with shape dynamics selected in the brush settings.

So here it is, page number 1 from this morning…

I bought a Chinese ink stick and grinding stone last week and have just started using that with a Raphael Kolinsky #1 Sable brush. I love the detail you can get in with the brush and the ease of different washes you can work into the page. The quality of the ink produced is a bit better than ready made Indian ink but I think I need a bit more practice with the actual ‘grinding’ side of things with the ink stick but it’s a really interesting process, and one of the oldest in the world for drawing which is cool.