PJ Holden's Blog – Page 5 – Comics, Drawing, Writing and more (or less)

Goodby chocolate my old friend.

Well, it’s hard to get conclusive proof for anything that causes IBS – irritable bowel syndrome – I mean it’s by definition unknown what’s causing it (it’s the fall back condition when everything else has been ruled out)

But through diet changes it was obvious that wheat was a big trigger for me, and now, I think, I can also add chocolate to that list.

And I know that because.. well, a few weeks ago after my last attack I went off chocolate and I’ve been symptom free then day before yesterday had a twirl (a lovely lovely twirl) and immediately rushed to the loo, then Yesterday had some more chocolate and last night was pain. Lots of pain.

So that’s it, me and chocolate are no more. Slowly. Little by little, every pleasure becomes a pain point.

Anyway, that’s why the blog is late today!

PJ’s Progress

Pretty good day yesterday work wise, for F&McB ep 3 pages 3,4 and 5 finished in inks. That’s a good day. Three invoicable pages! (I mean I think page 5 needs some more background so will get to it. This is a 10 pager (I only send an invoice when a page is complete), and if I hadn’t been knocked on my ass by IBS I was hoping to get another three pages inked today. With a plan to finishing it all for Monday. But we’ll see.

Oh I need to do about 18 invoicable pages of work per month to earn a living. Not a massive living, just enough to cover bills and things. No luxury dining for me. And this month I’ve done … 13. Ok. It looks bad. Not all pages are created equal and I did four pages of Terran Omega this month too, which doesn’t count because I earn nothing from that. But still. Need more.

Oh, yesterday I realised I needed a new nib and I haven’t been very good at tracking my nib usage, so I ordered 20 nibs – £25 on ebay. G Pens. Never order one thing of a thing you use in physical tools. Always order as many as you can afford.

On Comic Artists maintaining Newsletters and Social Media

Was chatting with John McCrea today about the merits and difficulties and purposes of things like newsletters, and patreon and social media.

Sometimes talking to someone helps me coalesce my own thoughts around these things.

For artists, I think you need some sort of motivator to get a newsletter and patreon up and going. The barrier to starting talking on social media is far lower. You can quickly find the people who want to find you on bluesky (and previously twitter, and facebook and instagram) and that becomes a motivator, plus it’s so frictionless – you can just pop in whatever random thought you have. No need to worry about marshalling your thoughts into a paragraph or two – you can’t.

But, as we’ve all seen social media come and go, I’m not entirely sure it’s the right answer.

There’s a philosophy of post once publish everywhere – and tools that can help, but it’s not the same, it just feels like now you’ve got to do more work.

And really, most artists just want to post their silly fun pictures and get on with things.

Patreon

For me, I think what really helped with patreon was having a project to do – a one year long graphic novel allowed me to post properly to patreon three times a week – once the b&w, second the colour and third the artists edition (and colour and artists edition are for paid members). So far, that’s helped me build up 360+ patreon followers in a decent amount of time.

And so, if I want to keep patreon I’m going to have to come up with the next project and the next, etc. Which is good, because I’ve no hit a reasonable feedback loop of doing something and having the readers to justify it.

Newsletters

I think there’s probably a sweet point of readers on a newsletter to justify its existence, but talking to John I feel like the problem with a newsletter for an artist is … what do you put in it to make it worth reading? Especially if you’re already posting this stuff all over. That said, I think a newsletter (and a blog) may be the only independent ways to connect to your audience. In the “post once publish everywhere” your starting point should he the blog or the newsletter. And I suspect the newsletter needs something unique in it to guarantee it’s worth looking at over and above the blog/patreon.

So that’s something I’m going to work on figuring out. Maybe exclusive monthly sketches? That might be the thing to help. Maybe allowing the readers to suggest the sketches? Yes. That might do it. That at least will make it worth while looking at the newsletter… hmm.. ok. That might be the plan for me…

Anyway you can subscribe to the newsletter at pjholden.kit.com and if you get in touch and ask me for a sketch, I don’t care what it is, I’ll pick one at random and you’ll see it in the NEXT newsletter. (These sketches won’t be for sale, I mean, unless you want to buy one… but if I pick your suggestion it doesn’t mean you’re getting a free sketch – only that I’ll draw it, I’m not made of money, or sketches)

Social Media

You know, I’m really coming to think of social media as the least important part of a comic artists outreach. Once upon a time it had the biggest audience, the widest reach but now … well… algorithms throttle the outreach favouring posts that encourage activity – and the posts that encourage most activity (a fact I think we’ve all known since the very early days of the internet) is outrage. A nice picture of Judge Dredd? Not much traction, the president who shall not be named ai altered into a Dredd outfit, shooting someone in the face? Boy I’d expect that will travel pretty far and wide. But for what?

And the thing is, the answer to non-nazified-algorithems isn’t no algoritehsm because now the reach is much more like standing in a crowd and shouting – sure the people who hear you at that moment will react but also there’s thousands of people (and often your followers) who might hear it faintly as background noise. You need large numbers of followers to get that to have any traction.

And any that sits in between that … along will come Zuckerberg, or Musk to buy it up before it becomes too popular (that’s how instagram went and how whatsapp fell)

So I have a very different attitude to social media. It’s my thought collection bucket and I’ll gather them up and post them here.

Which neatly brings us to …

Yesterday In Social Media

So I’m tired and don’t have time to do the screen grabs I’d normally do so instead I’m going to embed some stuff, with the caveat that that makes these things brittle. If bluesky stops working, if their profiles become hidden, if the delete their profiles, then these embeds stop working.

Way back at the very early dawn of what I laughinly call my career, I’d done some work on a small press fanzine called the Class of 79 – created by much missed super dredd fan (and my mate) Stewart Crofts-Perkins, Stu went under the nom-de-plume of Logan, anyway, on the fanzine I first met Rufus Dayglo who would go on to do great work for 2000ad, among other things, and Jake Lynch – who cocreated the Co79 fanzine with Logan. Jake was, for my money the best artist in those early issues (no mean feat, Rufus was incredible and Henry Flint – at the time working for Tharg’s mighty organ – also made an appearance) but Jake’s art held so much promise. Somehow I broke in to 2000ad before Jake, who had real life stuff to do before he could really return to comics. But he did return, and for my money one of the best on Dredd, a unique voice too – which is damn hard to pull off on Dredd.

ASnyway, Jake posted this

Look at that sexy Lawmaster design. God Jake knows how to draw vehicles.

I spotted this and thought “I WOULD READ THIS COMIC – assuming all the nazi’s get their comeuppance in the end”

And I guess that’s all the news fit for print (on my blog, which isn’t print). See you on the flip side! (tomorrow I might even tell you why I keep saying that phrase, maybe you can guess!)

I’ll not be there for you.

How many best friends in the whole world have you got? I often feel like I miss having a best bud. Someone I could scheme with. I suspect it’s more a reflection of getting older, the intensity of those friendships and the excitement of the future bound together. Of course you don’t have a chum to scheme with, you fool, you’re 56 not 16. Or maybe it’s a reflection of how my brain chemistry works.

That’s not to anyway demote the great friends I have now, but certainly the spending every minute of free time cheek by jowl and talking nonsense about the world and how you’re gonna do great things is a joy that leaves as childhood does.

In my childhood my best mate was GIGO (the nickname only a seven year old could come up with) that friendship was intense and sacred and lasted with that intensity until I moved school. Every day was a new way to play war. Rather pleasantly he got in touch a few years ago and we’ll still chat. But conversations now are about work and kids and the only bright future is retirement.

In my teens I went through a few best mates, Keven in first year (modern day year 8 I think) I don’t remember that we had a great deal in common only that he was a fairly big lad and I was and remain not. and then Walshie and I were inseparable. Though none of these friendships overlapped with all of my interests. I think walshie was also in to computers but we walk around school and the get our lunches and we’d be happy kids (doesn’t sound like much but our school was hell on earth)

We moved when I was 16 out from belays to Strangford and new school in downpatrick were I knew no one and suddenly I was no longer part of any double acts. I made plenty of friends and some of those had the promise of being co conspirators but really we were only there a year before we boomeranged back to Belfast and suddenly I knew no one.

One anchor to Belfast was working in a computer shop and I became best mates with a guy there Karlos. This is right around turning 18 and so that friendship was cemented in booze and parties. And what a great time that was.

At 19 I think, I met JT and we were that tight co conspirator team. He wanted to be a writer. And I wanted to be an artist. But journalism was his future (and mad stories of the war in Bosnia were ahead of him whereas I liked my war stories safely on paper)

Later in my 20s I didn’t have one close friend but I did have lots of friends and that was great. Then I met my wife and none of it seemed to matter much because this was my future.

I think I just miss my youth.

Anyway that got melancholy faster than I’d intended!

On to…

PJ’s Progress

Finished one page of F&McB inks (most of had been done the previous day) and completed a page of inks and then started and left unfinished another page. So, actually roughly speaking two complete page of inks. Not bad. Not bad.

Yesterday on social media

This might just be a lot of embeds, let’s see…

More space stuff! This is fascinating, no?

A bon mot from yesterday

APEUOTF. (All pens end up on the floor)

Turns out a lot of my yesterday was taken up with screaming into the void about AI.¹ I have a lot of conflicted feelings about AI, best summed up with “I wish it would go away”.

I think it has no business involving itself with creativity of any kind. Art and culture come from a human place. We replace that with machine learning, civilisation becomes a grinding spiral, lacking any forward movement. Not just for creatives who are the engine of the possible, but for people who like to read and watch things. All art is a communication between the creator and the person looking at it. If you replace the creator with AI, what then?

I suspect that the problems we all have with Ai in its environmental impact will eventually be solved – like many computer problems moores law will probably kick in somehow. (When China released their Ai model that had slurped up open ai’s model and somehow had become more efficient, stuff like that I suspect will keep happening)

It’s copyright slurping – too late to fix it. We’ve all been stitched up on that front, but legislate to keep it out of creativity, or delightfully, ensure anything with AI can’t be copyrighted.

But, I dunno, to quote Lord of the Rings:

“I wish the ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.” “So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.

I have no mouth and I must scream. ↩︎

Wednesdays child is full of Woe

Car insurance woe. One of the drawbacks of being a proper adult is dealing with insurance. There’s so much insurance admin – car insurance, house insurance, TEETH INSURANCE! I PAY FOR TEETH INSURANCE! (I mean it’s not really teeth insurance it’s a thing called Dentaplan, you pay monthly because the NHS dentists have all decided to quiet quit and now all NI dentists are largely private, and sure private dentists are for rich people, but they’re also for poor people now!)

Car insurance renewal came through, at least it lacked the insulting “great news this year we’ve added even more savings to your car insurance” and then proceeded to quote something twice as expensive as previous years.

My insurance should be going down, been driving without¹ accident for nearly 30 years, and yet somehow my quote this year was £860 (up from £550 last year). So no thanks tesco insurance – I went elsewhere.

One of the most blissful fortnights I ever had was when my car packed it in and I couldn’t drive, for two happy weeks I had no responsibilities. I drive because I have to. I do not enjoy it.

Like running.

PJ’s Progress

Running today, we’re back at coach to 5k, week 5 day 3 – 8 minute run, 2 minute walk, 10 minute run. I couldn’t do it. Couple of walks in the middle of the run, for a minute or two. So Friday I might go back to week 4 day 1.

Work – Got Terran Omega Page 23 finished, inks, greens and letters. Took longer than it should have. But it’s a fun looking page with a striking visual. I’ve tried my best to write this with an eye to cool striking visual imagery, I think I’ve largely succeeded. I will forever think someone else could draw this better, but then no one else would and then it wouldn’t exist. And it does now. Because I made it.

Also inked a page of Fargo & McBane for 2000ad. Didn’t get it finished. Backgrounds are my kryponite, but will get it finished today.

That means Tuesday I earned $0. Quak quak.

Today planning on finishing that and getting two more pages inked. They might be fast. They might be slow. I will not know until I give them a go. POMODORO TIME!

Drawing Bits and Pieces

In which I will occasionally post some art. Yesterday one of the (many) things I struggled drawing was man on a chair from a high angle. I knew what I want, but I couldn’t quite get there. So I quickly threw a 3d model together to get it. Look at that models pert little cheeks. The saucy minx.

Yesterday in Social Media

John Allison, the epitome of everything great about the English (honestly, 800 years of oppression aside, the ones I’ve known have all been decent spuds) is serialising one of his many very funny strips on Tapas

tapas.io/series/solver Solver is now on Tapas! Enjoy it all over again, every Monday, on your telephone screen.

Mark Sweeny over on bluesky is a font of knowledge on Clip Studio Paint

I suddenly remembered I did a bunch of fun one pagers that I uploaded to patreon on my birthday.

Hey on my birthday this recently[sic - I'm pretty sure I meant "this year" then edited it because it wasn't this year, but also last year suggests it was a long time ago, any way I'm spiraling - back to the post] I posted a bunch of fun one page comic strips over on my patreon - they're free, you might enjoy them www.pauljholden.com/patreon.php?via=bs&post=one-page-146865644&campaign=onepagers

Look at the things science can do!

Simon Roy remains a big inspiration for me for his mad science fiction stories

Chapter 4 of "THE ANCHORESS" is now up for your reading pleasure - Junior Scribe Jibrael digs deeper into the mysteries of the Santo Elisabeto Abbey... www.webtoons.com/en/canvas/griz-grobus-and-other-stories/the-anchoress-chapter-4/viewer?title_no=741329&episode_no=96

Via Matt Highton

And I think that’s everything, right? Right. See you tomorrow!

Edited to entirely change the meaning of this, originally I wrote ’with’ and not “without”. I once accidentally ignited a flame war on alt.comics.2000ad when I accidentally omitted the word “not” from the sentance “america should not invade Iraq”. The worst thing though is because of the slightly vague and angry responses I vigorously defended my position even though I hadn’t noticed the typo. Idiot. ↩︎

patreon.com

Hi If you’ve arrived here it’s because I, like an idiot, have typed in the proper address wrong! Not to worry the correct link is right here.

Stormy Weather

Storm Chandra has hit, and yesterday I got to phone my 17 year old son at 8:30pm to let him know his school was going to be closed tomorrow due to the weather and, since he was with his mates, it sounded like I’d just announced the end of WWII over the phone to someone in a bar in New York

It’s wet out.

But it’s beginning to feel like it’s always wet out.

Tuesday Recap

So, yesterday I had plans. And here’s what happened:

Mon – pencil a page, pencil and ink and letter a terran omega page. Go for a run.

Pencilled the page. Pencilled Terran Omega. Went for a run. Drove son to dentist which, somehow, wiped out two hours from my day.

Didn’t get anything inked. Today is the day for that.

Amount earned yesterday: $0. But I did upload a finished DC page to their servers so that will pay for a few days of living.

I paid my taxes yesterday, lowest my tax bill has been for years – which sadly is not great news. (I tell you, readers, not to elicit sympathy but rather so you understand how perilous freelancing can be)

When I started this career I promised myself I’d always maintain three months worth of salary in the bank (this, I reasoned was the sensible amount – if work dried up, I’d have salary to cover one month of looking for work, one month for doing work and one month for waiting on the invoice being paid) and when it dipped below that I’d have to really think about what the hell I’m doing. Well, right now I have no months of salary (though some invoices are due). So that’s a scary position. Luckily I can draw my way out of it, but it requires me to draw.

Yesterday In Social Media

The world continuous to burn, and in full view of everyone so Social Media, understandably has been screaming about awful stuff going on everywhere but right now especially, the states.

So please enjoy this one insight I had:

Nigella Lawson replacing Prue Leith (who previously replaced Mary Berry) on the great British bake off is the Uk equivalent of Marisa Tomai playing Aunt May

It’s Monday! Let’s start the week!

Or go back to bed for a nap. I know which I’d rather do.

This week the plan is:

Mon – pencil a page, pencil and ink and letter a terran omega page. Go for a run.
Tues – ink 2 pages
Wed – ink 2 pages
Thur – ink 2 pages
Fri – Ink 2 pages
Sat – ink 1 page, colour 1 page of terran omega
Sun – ink 1 page, pencil ink and letter terran omega page 23

I gotta be honest, I don’t fancy my chances.

Oh, I started work on the Terran Omega Cover… This will be a journey, I’ve already about six versions of this damn thing.

This is what I currently thing looks best (thanks to some input from Pye Parr, one of the greatest designers of books/comics oft he 21st century and very much under looked)

Tron vs Mitchells vs The Machines

I tried with Tron: Legacy. I really did. I think I remember watching it at the time and not being terribly impressed, deaging cgi just sucks very very hard. But with the distance of 16 years I thought, maybe it’ll be better. Readers, it was not better. In fact there’s a point where Flynn’s son is stood on some sort of metal beam on top of a building where a puffy overweight security guard (who by rights would’ve taken one look at that beam and gone “sod this for a game of soldiers” ) got up on the beam only for Flynn’s son to reveal “hey I’m the major shareholder” and then he sort of jumps off the beam with his parachute ready to open and I just thought “this film has watched too much the matrix and Batman Begins”.

So I turned it off, and switched on The Mitchells vs The Machines, which is a much much better film. Would recommend it. Funny, great animation, and real heart.

Yesterday in Social Media

Not much to report in the world of social media aside from oh-my-god-America-is-slipping-into-a-civil-war but, fellow Belfastian Phil Boyce has been maintaining a blog on the British comic Oink for longer than the comic was in print, and yesterday he posted:

On this day in 1994 in no.8 of Jurassic Park it was the back up strip that caught my eye! Originally published in b&w, Mark Schultz’s Xenozoic Tales was coloured for the UK by Steve White. What an incredible job he did! You can check out more in the full review from 2022 on the OiNK Blog. 🚗🦖🖌️🐽
link: https://oink.blog/2022/01/25/jurassic-park-8-pure-escapism/

Right, that’s all. It’s Monday and I need a nap.

+++END OF LINE+++

Murmurations

Yesterday my wife and I went out to witness our local murmuration of Starlings. It’s pretty spectacular, happens on the Albert Bridge and you can see them slowly congregate and then swoop in vast clouds of black splatter up and around over head. Finally they tear off into the bottom of the bridge where they’ve mostly made their homes. I mean it was amazing. Several years ago, I got caught in a murmuration of starlings on a beach in Rathmullan. We’d gone walking and found at some point close between the sandy beach and the forest where tufts of harsh green grass had made its home the starlings where swooping up and down and around, and getting very close the ground. I stood and watched as they swooped around me. It was an incredible experience.

Prior to the vast murmuration small clumps of starlings appeared, smaller murmurations, which, by rights, I think, should actually be called a murmer of starlings.

Oh, also got interview by the One show just before the murmuration began, unsure if I’ll be on, but if you see a doofus in a Gorillaz hat, that might be me.

Terran Omega Cover

I very quickly drew up a cover for the first Terran Omega. You’ll see it soon. It’s funny but sometimes the most promising visual is the quickest. I think pencils and inks took 30 minutes.

Newsletter Blast off

I’ve just sent out my first newsletter. It’s still in the untested rocket being shot in to space and may face an unscheduled demolition at any point.

Yesterday In Social Media

In some sort of attempt to look at anything else but the world at large I went scouring for stuff to laugh at. And found this great story:

"Bob had gotten to the point where he never drew anything. Never drew anything on the Batman comics, anyway. [Sheldon] Moldoff was ghosting them all and when he didn't, someone else did. The only thing I think Bob ever drew was when we'd be out somewhere, in a restaurant or someplace, and a pretty girl would come over to him and say, 'Are you really the man who draws Batman?' Then he could whip out a little sketch for her, a big sketch if she was wearing something low-cut and would bend over to watch him draw. One day I'm over at his house to discuss this newspaper strip idea we had and he's talking about who we might get to draw it. I was going to write it and we were going to get someone else to draw it. I'm not sure what Bob was going to do on it except sign his name. I said to him, 'Bob, isn't it disappointing to you that you don't draw any more? You were once such a great artist.' He wasn't but you had to talk to Bob that way. He said, 'Oh, no. Let me show you something.' He took me into a little room in his house. It was his studio. I didn't even know he still had a studio. It was all set up with easels and things and there were paintings, paintings of clowns. You know the kind. Like the ones Red Skelton used to do. Just these insipid portraits of clowns, all signed very large, 'Bob Kane.' He was so proud of them. He said, 'These are the paintings that are going to make me in the world of art. Batman was a big deal in one world and these paintings will soon be in every gallery in the world.' He thought the Louvre was going to take down the Mona Lisa to put up his clown paintings. I didn't have the heart to tell him. So a few months later, I'm up at DC and I ran into Eddie Herron. Eddie was another writer up there and we got to talking and Bob's name came up. Eddie said, 'Did you hear? Bob's getting sued by one of his ghost artists. I said, 'How is that possible? Shelly Moldoff's suing Bob? But they had a clear deal. Shelly knew he wasn't going to get credit or anything..? Eddie said, 'No, not Shelly.' Bob was being sued by the person who'd painted the clowns for him..." Arnold Drake (via arecomicsevengood)

Bob, you scally.

I think it’s hard for me to really understand how much money people could make in comics once upon a time (I mean I know people doing phenomenally well right now – but the money in those days would’ve been insane, but honestly most artists and writers I know are struggling to make a sort of average sized income – certainly I am) the days of wild excesses are probably long gone.

I’m a sucker for any joke that plays on classic artwork. This by Jaseomcn on blusky made me laugh.

And finally, leaving you with a free comedy special by Gianmarco Soresi – one of my fav new comedians, who, please god, doesn’t seem like he’ll wander off in to very dodgy territory (LOUIS CK I’M LOOKING AT YOU … no wait, stop doing that Louis — I’m no longer looking at you, jesus christ man. Still I’ve got my classic Woody All… oh god.)

Time

We’re in a super accelerated world now. Time just seems to whizz past. December felt like three days. Pre-Christmas, Christmas Day and post Christmas.

Maybe this is an age thing, maybe this is just the stage of life now where instead of summers that last for decades when I was 12 they last for two BBQs and lots and lots of rain. Maybe it’s because covid felt like the world paused – at my age that felt like a breathing space – and then whoosh things moved faster. But for my son, especially my youngest – it happened it the most critical moment of his growing up. That period when you spend your days living in the pockets of your friends and doing sleepovers. He missed that. As did every one in that generation at his age.

It’s weird I can barely remember covid now, but it was a major formative event for him and his friends. What will it have done for them for the rest of their lives? I don’t know.

Time’s relentless march and my facing another 12 years of work before retirement (official work age retirement, I will still be doing everything that I do now, there will be no change!) is one of the reasons I bit the bullet on finally doing my own creator owned project. There’s never an ideal time to start doing something like that, a thing if I’d done when I Was 18 or 25 or 30 or 45 would’ve allowed me to build up a library of creator owned books. But I’ve started now. You should probably do the same!

Colouring

I was asked if I wanted to colour the DC strip, YES PLEASE! It took seven hours. SEVEN HOURS. Counter to what I’ve just said, some things seem to take forever.

I generally try to avoid colouring, I’m not fast at it but I do enjoy it. This page isn’t complex, though I will admit, I think it’s quite pretty.

Traitors

There’s not many things my wife and I will sit and watch together. Partly because so much of my time is spent drawing. But we’ve watched the last few series of Traitors together. It’s a fascinating watch, both for what the show is like (it’s delightfully silly for a thing that really is so low stakes, though I suppose you could win up to £100k so it’s not low stakes to the contestants)

This years show ended in such a way that you were routing for the traitors, no matter where you started it’s hard sit and think “why are these two traitors who have lied their entire way to this pot of money … why am I on their side now?”

Anyway, was great.

Yesterday in Social Media

Over on the Guardian there was an article… look just read the headline:

Victoria Beckham tops UK singles sales chart as fans show support over Brooklyn feud

How does this work? What if I want to support my friend through a separation but they don’t have a single out? AM I A BAD FRIEND IF I CAN’T MAKE THEM CHART?

For future reference if I end up in a terrible feud in the future I’ll be putting out an all new dance mix of Lukas diner. That’s if it’s a family feud. If it’s just like a social media flame war? I’ll just re-release something from the back catalogue. Not bothering recording anything new for that.

Here’s on of those little bon mot thoughts that pop in to the old noggin:

“About 15 minutes in the air fryer” is our generations “about 3 minutes in the microwave”

My mum when asked about the microwave would always say “about 3 minutes” one day it occurred to me that this was her answer to pretty much everything I asked her about cooking in the micro. Soup, meat, bread. Three minutes (“and if it’s not hot enough try it for another minute”). I said “You always say three minutes, no matter what it is” and she burst out laughing like she’d been caught in a tiny lie by a child (I was maybe in my early 20s)

Our airfryer defaults to 15 minutes and there are very few things we don’t just press start and do in 15 minutes, despite the highly complex programmable timer for sundry food stuffs that are all available on the super complex touch controls. Nope. None of that bollocks. 15 minutes in the air timer.

Our kids never ask us how long things take because they don’t need to. 15 minutes it is.

Oh man, do you know how long I’ve been drawing for? Do you know how long I’ve fetished drawing tools for? DO YOU KNOW the weird tools I have? (10 point divider? CHECK! Rapidoraph drawing pens? CHECK? Ames Ruler? CHECK!)

BUT I’VE NEVER HEARD OF THIS…!

Via Meghan Hetrick on instagram “My absolute favorite art gadget”

https://www.instagram.com/p/DTtjZxQDhON/?igsh=MWx2Y2kzdmowMHZiYg==

It’s called an ACU-ARC and is for drawing ARCS ! ARCS!

I’ve never even heard of this, like a full I’ve been using French Curves (terrible) and freehand (slightly worse) BUT this looks amazing.

Invented in the 50s too, so I can’t claim ignorance cus it’s new!

Dave Cook posted this over on Bluesky (it’s time limited, so don’t dawdle!)

And that’s your lot.

Tomorrow I’ll send out the first of my new Monthly newsletters (COLLECT THEM ALL!) signup at pjholden.kit.com

If you’re following the blog, that’s great. The newsletter is a “In case you Missed it” blog post for the whole month. (With maybe a little paragraph of two talking about the month gone) last sunday of the month!

Gonna go before this turns in to a proper irish goodbye (one in which the leaving party spends several hours saying goodbye to friends)

Hair Today

I have a note with a suggestion for today’s blog, it simply says “haircut”. Why it says that, I’ve no idea. I know that I got a haircut yesterday and I know I had something I’d intended to say about it – what that was I don’t know?

I’ve already talked about haircuts before, I even wrote a comic strip, but do I have anything new to say on the topic? Probably not. I’ve been getting a haircut once per month every year since I was 14. With the exception of the covid lockdowns – which means I’ve spent in the region of £5k in that time on hair.

I complain endlessly about my hair, it’s a thick matt of animal rug, slightly receded at the front, but not so you’d notice. There’s a little bit of grey, again not a lot, and what is there is usually less visible when I’ve recently had a hair cut. It comes to a widow’s peak. When I was younger, I’d get a flat top hair cut and two odd little side tufts would look like the little bits of an owl that look like ears. Twit twoo.

Yesterday In Social Media

Per Joanne Harris

Unsolicited writing advice, no. 21456: There are two kinds of writer: the ones who write for love, and the ones who do it to get results. In a world in which writers are paid less and less, results are often uncertain. But if you really love what you do, you'll keep going.

And, with a bit added by Gareth A Hopkins

This holds for comics, too.

I mean, the horrible reality is doing it for what you love is also going to pay less. But at least you’ll starve doing the thing you love.

Yesterday was trailertastic day on youtube

Here’s the New He-Man and the Masters of the Universe Trailer.

Honestly, I missed He-Man, it came out just as I’d aged out of playing with toys (I mean I was 11, what did I think I was gonna do?) I think I’d gotten in to comics and He-Man just seemed a bit silly. Even his name, for gawd’s sake.

My youngest brother at the time (another brother would come along much much later) was well in to it though. I think when I was his age we were quite a poor family, but in the meantime my dad was doing much better and now he had everything – He Man, Castlegreyskull and I’m sure all of the figures. He’d also gotten every single star wars thing you could get, death star, millenium falcon, everything.

Though to be fair I’d never felt like I didn’t get the kind of toys I wanted as a kid – largely anything Action Man related.

Anyway, longtime friend Ross pointed me towards a trailer for another movie, Death Stalker.

Every bit as silly, and much lower budget and yet this looks more fun.

My mate Rob has a new creator owned comic out from Dark Horse, I’ve read the first issue, it’s enormous fun (and gorgeous)

I dunno if it’s obvious but I’m trying to ignore the state of the world, and the news in the blog. There’s enough of that out there. This is a place for imagination and happiness and joy, and oh sod it, ok, one little thing (and I’ll explain why in a second)

Musk, at Davos:

“My prediction is there’ll be more robots than people… everyone on Earth is going to have one and going to want one… who wouldn’t want a robot to… watch over your kids, take care of your pets… we are in the most interesting time in history.”

And Alex Andreou response:

Isn't this a telling aspiration? To want robots to look after your kids, so you can do stuff, rather than robots to do stuff, so you can spend time with your kids? The darkness inside these shrivelled men must be like a gaping unfillable void.

To me, this is the bleakest possible 2000ad Futureshock, a clever four pager by Alan Moore with dark broody artwork by Jesus Redondo – a kind of inversion of the One Christmas in Eternity (where humanity has invented immortality, and so never die, but conseuqentially, no one is ever born and there are no children, except the little artifical boy you get to have at christmas to open presents with)

So, this lead me to thinking that actually the future shock format is a wonderful short story format that I don’t think enough people play with. It can be quite formulaic, but once you crack it you can pretty much write it indefinitely – Alan Moore certainly did. If you want to write (and I say to this to myself) you could do worse than scour the news (and focus magazine, and new scientist, and any journals you spot – all available in the libby app or your local library) for a a couple of articles that you can tweak in to a future shock style story. Biting irony, twist in the tale. Doesn’t have to be good, just do it for a while and see where it leaves you.

Ther rhythm of a four page future shock to me is setup, escalate, ironic twist. There’s not room to do much more than that.

Set up :

A world where robots can do every job.

Escalate:

But there’s one job they can’t do, we see the world the robots have made.

We see children running around and robots doing everything to help them they love the kids. No adults anywhere.

Escalate: We see the adults, they are in lock step, walking towards some giant factory. Wearing Robes. Maybe a younger male is talking to an older man “First time, huh. Just turned 18? It’s not so bad. They feed you”

Escalate/twist: the robots talk, they love children, it is entirely the purpose of their existence to look after them, they love them.

Which is why it’s so important that they maintain a good breeding stock of humans to keep the children coming.

That’s it. (Is it good? maybe, certainly you’d want to polish it more and more, and maybe throw in some wilder twist? maybe an adult escaping from the breeding farms and seeing life, which he remembers.= – maybe the children on reaching adolescence get their minds wiped, and one man remembers it as a dream?)

But a news story should get you thinking.

Anyway, use the news, don’t let it use you.

Rain Down On Me

Ireland, as I like to tell people, is called the Emerald Isle because it’s always bloody wet and everything is covered in moss.

Went to go for a run this morning, and it’s bucketing down and has been all week so I turned back. Now, I actually like the rain, I think though the constant dark is getting to me now. The sunset is getting later, but when the hours during sunlight it’s overcast and grey, hooboy.

I mean, as befits a Norn Iron native, I will always complain about the heat and too much sun, but I promise this summer I will not. I welcome it. I welcome light. I welcome warmth. I welcome ice cream.

But, again, a joke I’ve told a billion times, sure if you wanted nice weather you wouldn’t live in Northern Ireland.

Patreon Hits 350!

That’s it, the headline is the news. We’ve hit 350 followers on Patreon. Now, I would love, before I launch a kickstarter or take Terran Omega further to keep pushing that number til it hits 500. I think it’s possible. (And oh lordy,

DC GOES MAD

I don’t have a lot to add to this, but yesterday it was announced a 64 page Mad about DC. Mad Magazine, which I’ve loved for a very long time, though getting it in Belfast was largely a question of luck, when you did stumble across on, hooo boy!, is gonna be filled with DC Characters. I can’t tell you what I’m doing, or who I’m doing it with or … well… can’t tell you much (but I will say; my bit is very very short)

DC is proud (and slightly concerned) to announce MAD About DC, a 64-page one-shot arriving April 1, 2026. Yes, April 1. And no, this isn’t a prank—unless you count letting Chip Zdarsky run this thing as its Guest Editor a prank on the DC Universe itself. You’d have to ask Chip.

“They say at DC there’s nowhere to go but down after writing Batman, and, yeah, it’s true,” said Zdarsky. “It’s very true.”

Yesterday In Social Media

On Writing

Turns out writing every little disconnected notion for all sorts of stories means that when you've got a story and you want it to be two parts but can't quite figure out what would make it interesting enough sometimes that little notion becomes a crucial part.

Ah! Yes! Nearly forgot. So, I have a notes app on my phone and I’ll just add little notions as they occur to me, thinks like “Terran Omega faces off against a space Gorilla” – largely they’re simply visual ideas that I think will be fun (I mean that was a silly example, but Terran Omega faces off against an army of space gorillas, that’s got something.

Anyway, been thinking about the next Terran Omega story and I have a delicate little 11 page story that is more poem than story, and I had mulling it over and thought about how to extend that out and I did, I got to something like a 22 page strip (by also using it as a way to explore her backstory) but it still felt a little conflict free, like it needed something (the back storyu filled with conflict, the present just a nice little journey). So I was rereading some ideas and ahaha! there it was. A foil. A thing that was visually striking that would have present day implications that turned it into a two parter. And it was an idea as simple as “Terran Omega meets …”.

So ideas are not wasted, they just need to find their moment.

Tron

Was gonna watch tron Ares. And thought maybe I should rewatch tron. 5 minutes in and I’m thinking oh wow. This film is terrible. I loved tron when it came out. LOVED IT. Visually still knocks the socks off all the sequels. (For me).

I persevered! And actually, despite a very rocky start (and very silly metaphors that I suspect worked because people didn’t know a LOT about computers in those days – imagine a world where people didn’t know what a network was!) I really enjoyed it. I’m still 20 minutes from the end (watched it in bed and was just knackered) will finish it at lunch time.

I am going to watch Tron: Legacy (which I remember being sort of meh about) and then the animated series (which IS great) and then Tron: Ares (ugh). I think the thing Tron has going for it are the arresting visuals (though in the original sometimes scenes just seemed so weirdly empty). I think the later stuff sort of loses a lot of the charm of the first one. (And Jeff Bridges¹, who I love, in CGI is weird and uncanny)

Make Stuff

And via Dennis Detwiller (creator the RPG Delta Green)

Morning, bitches! 

Some upsetting statements on #creation from management 
-The larger the creative team the less likely the work will be notable 
-Great #art is almost always created independent of corporate requirements 
-Art that changes the world is usually what no one knew they wanted at the time

Continued: 
-if you create something great for a corporation it’s far more likely you’ll never get the credit or the money for it as opposed to making it on your own 
-corporate creative jobs are neither stable or a method of “making it” as an artist 
-owning your work is key to success as an artist

Dennis can be very forthright in his worldview, but actually I don’t think you’d go too far wrong paying heed.

That said, with the “You should own all your work!” statements I always think of Survivor Bias. We’re not all Kirkmans, or Detwillers… but I DO think the smart money is keeping something back for yourself. If not for the money (which will likely be small) but for your soul.

BBC Bits

And as a final out, a couple of delightful things for you – BBC’s Winterwatch is taking place in Northern Ireland, in Mountstewart on the banks of Strangford Lough. I’ve been up there quite a few times on the hunt for a red squirrel sighting, Like Marshall Law though, “I hunt heroes. I’ve never met one yet”.

Anyway Winterwatch has some live cameras you can keep an eye out for them, but the website is here.

And I leave you with another BBC offering (look, it has it’s problems and I know lots of people deeply resent the bbc licence fee arrangements, but actually I think it does a lot of great things and I don’t mind paying it…. I certainly resent paying it less than I do paying for amazon prime… )

It’s the Traitors Soundtrack! Good dramatic, over the top! Perfect for writing/drawing to!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0mvgzkg

Accidentally typed Jeff Goldblum when I posted this originally. But that’s fine. I also love Jeff Goldblum. ↩︎