how-to article

And here's the last in a series of How-Tos I did for Last Hours magazine when it was a print zine. Unlike the others, this is more of an article than a comic - it was a bit of a struggle to fit so much information into 2 pages so it's more text heavy than I prefer for zine layouts. The other how-tos I did were 'How to pee standing up', 'How to make DIY tattoos' and I did a 'How to build a pizza oven' for another zine. Then I ran out of shareable skills. I think the DIY tattoos one is getting put in a book but not through any effort of my own - I'm pretty bad at self-publicity.

Anyway, here's the article, click on it to read the text. I put this together when I was living on a narrowboat which was easily one of the most challenging places to draw/make stuff because of the lack of space and storage for clippings and materials. I'm about to move back there, yay!

quick collage

A birthday collage for a vegan friend. Two woodcuts out of a library book pasted together and then photocopied to make it slicker - who needs Photoshop, eh?



Scuse 6 months between last post and this one - balancing working in A&E, a precarious housing situation and as many climbing trips as I can get in while its sunny hasn't left much time for trooping around getting my camera, a lead and a computer in the same place.

Xmas presents

Here are some Christmas presents I made:


This was just an excuse to put a book in the industrial guillotine in my basement in the dead of night. My mum liked it though.



Photo frame for my brother. The papercut is made with an old map, I knocked up the frame in the last 45 minutes of my woodworking night class, then painted it black to hide the mistakes. The photo's just one I had lying around of some owl thing in my room that I got from Muji.



Just a tiddler, about 2" square, that I made for my mum... The image is based on an old woodcut - it's not exactly as I'd like, but it's all learning, innit. Went a bit squinty after this one.

I also made my dad a silhouette picture like in the previous post, but of the Lake District and a little papercut for my sister. My haul included some sexy typography and art books, mushroom pate and a bird box. Score!

Xmas present 1

Hooray! Christmas and all that crap is finally over, so I can post up all the stuff I made for people. Except that those photos are on another computer. So for now, there's just this, which I made for a friend. It's the view from Idwal Slabs in North Wales where we went climbing a couple of months ago, made from layered black paper and tracing paper. The more tracing paper you put in front of the black paper, the fainter it gets - I saw the idea in a kids craft book a few weeks ago. I made one of the Lake District for my dad too - its an idea that lends itself well to landscapes I think.


Oh yeh, Happy New Year. I saw 2008 with a glass of Buckfast and hundreds of drunk punks at the 1 in 12 Club in Bradford... sweet.

and finally

For my last post in this update binge, here's a papercut I made for my grandma two weeks ago. My mum called to say she'd had a fall and was in hospital, but not expected to last long. She booked us a train down for the next day and I got to packing, which left a long quiet evening wishing I was already with her. So I sat down and made her this. It's not perfect at all - I've worked out a 300% better way to stick down papercuts since then, and the artwork is pretty much straight copied from an illustration in a book - but I found the devotional aspect of relatively mindless activity focussed me and calmed me. My grandma taught me to knit and sewed countless quilts for her large family by hand, hence the image.

We drove 3 hours from the train station to get to the hospital at 2am - she actually held on until after I'd come back up north and died on the Sunday morning. I put the card next to her bed - I don't think she saw it, but it was good to be with her.

some papercuts

Super into making papercuts at the moment. I'll have more to post after Xmas when the recipients have seen them.

First one I made, and the only thing I could think of to do with it.

First page of my new sketchbook, a quickie but like it.

detail of my favourite yet - unfortunately a rather private present for someone so this is all you're getting.

Just got a surgically sharp scalpel from Fred Aldous when I was in Manchester a few days ago, so everything is going to get more intricate from now on.

More flyers

Some old posters I dug out. Sorry they're photographed, not scanned.

Summer 2005 - I had this bike in front of me to draw, first time I used any kind of reference in a drawing and it felt like cheating.

Summer 2005 - beginning of my thing for drawing hands.

Drawn with a biro in Barcelona, late 2006. Someone else did the lettering. Drawing with the wrong pens is so painful, and I blame this shonky effort on that.