Statement of Intent!

Pics from Redesfest Comics Drawing Workshop (& a farmer getting his face painted).

Having returned from a spontaneous holiday with Greek Laura; Vicky & her stinky VW campervan; 'The Captain' who sails tall ships out of St.Malo ( & who seems to base his life on the adventures of Corto Maltes, whose graphic adventures fill his bookshelves ); & ill Ian who collected a drillbit from Nuneaton,

I DO DECLARE:

> I will get a scanner sorted to copy some images in here - NO MORE UNACCOMPANIED TEXT!

> I will get NEWCASTLE ZINE REVIEW re-done/re-printed in time for distribution at Seripop!

> I will travel around the free bothies of Northumberland and write & sketch along the way, thus producing A ZINE ABOUT BOTHIES BEFORE AUGUST IS OUT! YEAH!

> I will root around my boxes of unfinished projects in order to get half-baked zine ideas printed IN THEIR HALF-BAKED STATE! Yeah, semi-cooked vegetables combine the vitaminous qualities of uncooked with the minimal mastication requirements of cooked, alright! Thus will appear, within the school holidays, several papery things such as FENHAM ZINE! INGATESTONIA! & EXAM ZINE 2!

> I will finally post off those zines & bundles & postcards I've got littering my house, finish those letters, visit those old friends, meet my new nephew, communicate with people, turn up to meetings, and start doodling something at least once a day! DOWN WITH FULL EMPLOYMENT, UP WITH HUMAN LIFE!

> I will produce a couple of page-or-2 strips for contribution to, for example, the 'This will explain everything' anthology. And draw a couple of things in readiness for Christmas presents.

> I'll go places, which I'll list once I've read Narc/The Crack/my diary, including doing some illustration workshop thing at REDESFEST, 1st August at Rochester on the road into Scotland, between Otterburn & Jedburgh. A kids' camp at Ruperts Wood, Building Festival at the Star & Shadow, hopefully do some Forest Education up at Harestanes over the border, local fetes, local gigs, pagan memories & veggie barbecues.

> I will also get my allotment in order, sleep well, eat healthily, wear scruffy clothes, get in a store of pritt-stick & drawing pens, tidy my room and do all those day-to-day things that don't seem to happen these days. I will also quit wasting money on bad planning & take-away sandwiches, & finally pay my rent.

All this I do declare, having woken up at 6pm in the evening in Newcastle, a magnificent city.
I Thankyou.

The Result:

Broken laptop, rain on the radishes.

Borrowed laptop from one housemate, borrowed scanner from the other. See what I can do.

It's the last week of school and my body is relaxing. I am full of dreams and looking forward to the lie-ins that will let me act on them.

See what I can scan in here from the schoolkids before the scanner's reclaimed.
(and I've lost one camera on a train, and left the memory card for the other in some institutional computer, and even my good drawing pens keep getting borrowed by kids who bust the cap or don't give em back, little shits. After the revolution, children'll be first up against the wall.)

Oh, the laptop don't have the scanner software, sigh ...


Here's some images from this year's exam papers, not sure about an examzine2.

black south shields

I am in my last month of schoolteaching till the summer, a black hole that sucks in creativity & makes it disappear.

I have had to get 2 taxis already this week, at £30 each on top of my weekly £33 transport costs, due to (a) a person climbing up a tower on the metro threatening to kill himself and (b) today, that fantastic electric storm flooding south shields and blacking out every fish shop, taxi rank and metro system in the area. Some stinky thawed-out fish await the noses tomorrow.

I am also doing exam marking in the evenings, hence no blog posts or recent zines. But, promise, I WILL reprint more of the zine reviews; I have other ideas fermenting (or fomenting) in my head; and I'm even dreaming of taking 3 months out at Christmas to focus exclusively on creating an actual comic of my own.

When I asked myself 'what do I really want to have achieved this year?', my answer seemed to be 'create a unique, beautiful comic'.
If you ask yourself the question, what in you responds?