Notes for 2026

February 2026

Now I see why Hans Holbein the Younger put that stretched out skull in The Ambassadors. He had a technique, in his case Anamorphosis, and it seems that he wanted to use it no matter what. I have been learning some drawing techniques lately, one is how to draw patterns of linked curves and it is so satisfying that I want to draw linked curves on all my comics no matter what. When I feel this way it is usually time to stop looking for new techniques and start applying what I know. As it stands I can draw in one, two and three point perspective and I can make some nice curved shapes with a compass and ruler. So this month it is time to start applying some of these techniques to settings in the comic story I'm currently drawing and ease off of learning (too many) new ones.

I went to the Norwich University Fine Art Student show in The Undercroft and there was one artist exhibiting at the very far end of the gallery who had a ring-bound folder full of castles and cavernous halls and stairways inhabited by lots of different people all hand drawn in pencil on printer paper. This student had made a world of their own with a brilliant enthusiasm and it was a good reminder that passion does come through when someone sets their imagination free.

I thought I would share a little bit about how the comic I am currently working on came about. The Stilton story started by being about fragile knowledge and a home that doesn't work. It was one of the first things I wrote where the setting created the characters and the characters created the setting. One character responds to being in an uncertain world with a driving enthusiasm to solve problems, using all the tricks at their disposal to bring a little group together shaped by delicate knowledge that mostly disintegrates as it is touched leaving only what holds true. Another mouse balances the safety of being alone with a deep love of showing others how to do things for themselves. One mouse explores the art of suggestion partly by accident. One mouse explores the dangers of the world through dreams that span the entire story. Another mouse has had strange experiences that they are trying to reconcile. All the characters are trying to understand their situation and each other and it this interconnection in the story that I really enjoy.

That brings me on to how I respond to my own uncertain world as a cartoonist. At the end of last June I went to MaccPow comic festival. The organiser Mark has been building up MaccPow over the past ten years and that's what it takes to make a vibrant small comic scene, they don't exist unless someone with passion commits to building something where nothing existed before. This personal website is a first step of building something as a cartoonist for me. I committed to making this site as easy to maintain as possible and it seems to be working, there are still many improvements I can make but the basics are here. A next step I thought could be to add a web ring for a small comic community. I have seen some nicely designed web rings that look manageable so it seems right to give it a try.

January 2026

Once I was drawing with my nephew and he invented a new character called Ticking Pup: a puppy dog with the face of a clock. The character came out great the first time he drew it, so my nephew went about filling in some background details. He drew a room with a chest of drawers and then realised that all the drawers and all the handles of those drawers were so boring to detail when you have a character, like Ticking Pup, sitting right there ready for an adventure. I can relate to wishing that a background would just fall into place like it does in life as you are simply living.

Then I think about how it feels to read a comic or watch a movie. The first movie I ever watched, the very first movie I sat down, watched all the way through and enjoyed, was Splash at my friend's house. It was amazing to see the apartment building Tom Hank's character lived in and the department stores he shopped in and the restaurants he dinned in. As a kid who grew up in a tiny village with a four mile drive to the shops, Tom Hank's city life was just as new and amazing to me as Daryl Hannah's portrayal of a mermaid. My friend had successful parents and they had just moved to a much bigger house. Her mum, who owned a fabric shop called Dress and Design (chic), had decked the place with the most beautiful soft furnishings that mesmerised me and I saw the first computer in a home, it was a beige BBC micro with an owl logo in dots that my friend's dad had invested in, in his capacity as a headteacher. So my senses were overloaded with new places that day and it felt really good. Since then most films and comics I enjoy are because they transport me to new places through attention to detail and great execution of backgrounds.

I mentioned before that I need to come up with a home for the mice in the Adventures of Stilton comic: my comic about risk taking. I like the ideas behind this circle house that was designed by Steven Holl and Dimitra Tsachrelia. I like that they built spaces inside the house like a section of a sphere in the living room making a sort of bay window only visible from the inside and that the windows in the bedroom floor mean that light shines through different levels of the house. For the story I am telling I need the house to be mysterious and having shapes you might not ordinarily expect is part of that. I have several ways to draw a basic box-shaped room. But to make it more interesting I have been trying some shapes cut into the room. There is no shortage of good techniques for drawing shapes, like I found this great way to draw an isometric sphere and I found this very pleasing way to draw an egg. These shapes are subtly nicer looking than guessing by eye. So my challenge is to draw some curved spaces in the straight lined room with nice weighty thick walls and unusually placed windows. I'll let you know how I get on.