PJ Holden's Blog

A week of slight frustrations, where I’d genuinely thought I’d lost the ability to get work done at any sort of speed. Felt like a slog some days to even get two pages of crude pencils done. 

BUT! ultimately – 20 pages of pencils done, one final page and that’ll be the last page of the last chapter of bad Magic – the Skulduggery Pleasent graphic novel done and it’s on to inks. Really looking forward to getting it finished (there’s some fun pages to ink too)

Monday I’ll get that last page done, then spend a couple of days doing the leopard from Lime Street. 

We have mice again. Flipping mice. So some amount of time was spent just laying traps and reassuring my wife who is freaking out.

Once Bad Magic is done (I’m planning for it to be finished Mid-March) I have a couple of scripts I can do, but I’m waiting on more things! It’s that time where you start looking around and snuffling for work. It’s hard because you find yourself in a position where your criteria for a project is more than just “can I get paid for this” you have to consider “is this a good use of my time” “does this progress my career in some hard to define, blurry fashion” and also “can I get paid for this”

ANYWAY… I leave you with a silly reference photo…

I do love a scifi cliche. This is just a late night unfinished doodle.

Not sure where I was, but I was in the mood to do colour sketches (these turned up from a de-duplicate image search on my ipad.

Ugh. What a disappointing work week. I thought I could slip a couple of non comics gigs in there, and of course, it through my entire schedule out of wack. Really I’m at my best when I’m drawing comics and know the work I’ve got to do and just get on with it.

Pencils / inks completed this week-  1 page pencils and inks (and even that was 90% done on the Sunday prior)

I did do a cover, which I needed to do. And some film stuff that will probably not happen, but you never know. And some other stuff that is a bit odd and may or may not happen, we’ll see. And took a couple of full days off (it’s mid term here, so both kids off school, next week they should be going back, but eldest is currently ill – maybe covid, maybe not and the youngest has exams but also half day on Tuesday because of a teacher strike (I fully support))

What I’m saying is next week may turn out to be rough. And page 1 of the new pencils which I should get done tonight starts with four panels and a crowd scene on each panel which is exhausting and slows you right down and is not the best way to start back in to work after a week of not working. I’ll get it back. I will, dammit.

(I could’ve drawn 10 pages of art this week, and now I’m annoyed any weeks I don’t – which is stupid, but you’ve got to let yourself off on stuff like that)

Anyway, onwards!

(Oh the pencil numbers in the boxes were my estimates of when I’d’a finished the previous chapter of bad magic, but obv I got that done ahead of schedule, so they’re not inked in…)

So far this is the only time I’ve drawn Sinister Dexter for 2000AD and it was around 2014-2015.

I’ll be brutally honest, I don’t think my art was in a good place – or at least – I didn’t feel particularly happy about it. There are charms in it, and I think it was all digital, so I was still finding my way (and frankly, still am) but it’s so chonky. Made worse when you see it in context, where more polished art sits – it’s available in Volume 7 Sin Dex of the massive, I-dunno-how-many-parts Hachette 2000AD collection out soon ish.

Every panel felt crammed, I was drawing figures much larger than they needed to be and inking them so crudely they looked like I drew it all half size and then blew it up.

Anyway, it’s out there now.

I thought I already uploaded this, but somehow it’s not there. So apologies if you get this twice.

Think the background, ground needs more of something, but I dunno what. On the other hand the book is gonna be … book sized? I dunno, anyway it’s likely you’ll miss anything too detailed.

Update : I will never be finished. I’ve added woad, which I think works better. 

This is a WIP (foreground mostly done and background I’m working on) I like the textural nature of it (which is probably ruined in this image) and I lioke the colours, so far… 

 I think I like it… 

(But I’ll probably change my mind…)

WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR? A reasonable part of my career, it turns out.

Anyway, 2000Ad have announced the new Battle Action specials (five issues!), and just for you, here’s some art from it.

True story, I completed this entire story (which is not about Tanks, but does have them in the background) and got an note (not from the editor nor the writer) about the tanks being the wrong ones. So I redrew them all…

I suspect you know who it is.

Anyway, just wanna reiterate, all this stuff is between us – art and inside stories, I like sharing this stuff, but can only do it if I know it’s not going anywhere!

https://comicbook.com/comics/news/battle-action-garth-ennis-2023-rebellion/ 

Ok, the headlines, I suppose… 

Inked pages this week to date: 19 – pencilled pages this week: 1

To be honest, there’s an hour to go of this week, and I’ve got half a page to go and there’s a chance I’ll get it finished around 12:45-1am, so I’m calling that this week. That’ll  bring me up to … 20 – all of it Chapter 5 of Skullduggery Pleasant.

Tomorrow off for the day with my wife, won’t be leaving home til around 11:30 so there’s a chance (a slim one) I’ll get a last page of inks done then, but otherwise it’ll be Tuesday.

Generally 3 pages of inks per day. Frustratingly slow (which is stupid because ask any artist – 3 pages of inks today? brilliant amount of work)

I am starting to feel like my brain needs new nurishment though, maybe one day in a spa will do it (that’s where we’re off to)

If things go according to plan, I should have wrapped up 21 pages of comics in about 13 days. Final chapter still to go, and then on to … we’ll I’ve got some more Leopard of Lime Street and then, fingers crossed, some Dredd.

I’d quite like to get back to some paper and ink for some of what’s coming up, but  I suspect I’ll chicken out at the last moment when I can’t make the drawing tools do what I want them to.

TV diet this week, man, I watched a lot of tv. Perks of inking – not a lot of thinking. So I get to watch telly. 

On the Beeb, watched Ancient Civilisations (6 part doc though only five parts on tv right now, last part on tuesday) 

On netflix, I sporadically watched Lockwood & Co (which is great, but I keep thinking “I’m so old” when I watch it. I feel more sympathy for the old ghosts)

Also watched Girls5Eva. I’m not proud.

Oh, on sky, I watched Midwhich Cuckoos, which was pretty good, I thought. Love me some John Wyndham.

On radio I generally listen to Radcliffe and Maconie on radio 6 (I don’t listen to a lot of radio, and they only do two shows a week so that suits me)

I’ll try posting more art next week. Toodles.

I found this skull for £12 on amazon, I was about fifty pages in to the book (where the main character is a living skeleton) and wish I’d bought it sooner. Super useful.