A Very Good Twenty Ten To You All

To quote oner of may favorite authors

"May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't forget to make some art -- write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself," Neil Gaiman

Have a happy new year and very best wishes for the coming year.

Henry Playing With Train

A quick sketch in pen and photoshop of Henry playing with a model train. I did this about five minutes ago.

Pencils And Magic

Forgive me for "thinking out loud" on my blog but I find I do my best thinking here. I'm going over my plans for the year. I do this every year and every year my plans fall through because of projects falling through, family illnesses, having kids...Anyway, ever hopeful I've made plans this year as well. This year I'd love to build up my portfolio of pencil drawings. Some of my favorite of my own work are pencil drawings and I'd really like it to be a more significant part of my portfolio. I don't do a lot because I get intimidated by the lengthy, difficult process. But it's also a process I enjoy. I'm hoping too that these pieces might help me make some money while I work on the Flying Boat comic, enabling me to eat and wear clothes.

Art To Pay For Illustration

I'm currently amassing pictures to sell to help finance my comic book work. Which is odd and backwards but everyone's got funny twists in their careers. Above is a teeny ink and watercolour on handmade paper. It's about five inches by three and a half. I'm thinking of ding a bunch of these and selling them. They are so much fun to do. I love monsters. Also, I've started a series of pencil drawings to sell. These will be mid sized detailed pieces. Work I love doing. Has anyone tried this? Any advice, thoughts?

Archives

Trying to get back on track with work. I've taken the last two days pretty slow and have been distracted by a bunch of new ideas for art and related projects and researching artists and reading etc. Which is what happens when I can't be at my drawing board. I've felt very compelled to start using pencil again so I may start that the coming year.

Above is an old watercolour. I'm not sure how old, between five and ten years old. I think it holds up well.

Stealing Some Moments With My Sketch Book

Having a son who is at the sage where he can appreciate ripping Christmas wrapping to gory shreds I had a lot less time for drawing this Christmas then in the past. Here are some doodles that happened when I'd sneak away.

A Boy And His Tree

Wishing For Some Peace, Love & Joy For Everyone

Wishing Everyone a wonderful Christmas.

More On The Boat

A few more notes on the announcement about Flying Boat and Top Shelf. One important thing to tell people is that this will take awhile. A year and a half or more. I want to make the best book I can and so does Top Shelf and that'll take time. It's going to be about 140 pages long and fully coloured which is time consuming as well. Another thing is that I'll have to work on other projects while I do this in order to make ends meet. I have a number of other projects lined up and am already making schedules and working out my own deadlines and time lines. However, I'm hoping I can post lots of pictures and bits of info here while I work. This should be a fascinating process I'd really love to share. Stay tuned!

Harry And Silvio And Maddy Join The Top Shelf Family!

I received great news in time for Christmas last week; The Flying Boat graphic novel will be published by Top Shelf Productions. Top Shelf is my favorite indy publisher and one of the best, most esteemed publishers in the world. They publish such great books as League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Owly, Swallow Me Whole, From Hell, Essex County, Box Office Poison and many, many more amazing books. I've actually been working on the story with editor Chris Staros for some time now but just signed the contract two days ago. I'm not exaggerating when I say this is exactly what I've been dreaming of since I was little.

Totally Brilliant Sunday

I'm having a lazy,pleasant Sunday for the first time in recent memory. Henry is caged into the living room with chairs, settees etc. and we are lazily sitting on the couch drinking coffee,reading and looking out the window.

Some Book Ideas

Some great books I read this year that would make fantastic gifts.

How To Feel Like a Little Kid.....

This was so awesome to get in the mail; Mike Mignola's From The Vault 2 signed by Mr. Mignola himself with a sketch!! Merry Christmas me.

Chugging Along

Working away on stuff. I received the green light on a webcomic at Tor.com with Jeff Vandermeer and I've been putting a few finishing touches on Jeff's Bellysnatcher sketchbook. I'm putting together a few samples for a collaboration with J Torres and waiting for word back from my editor on the latest draft of the Flying Boat graphic novel, which has changed it's name from The Great Goldfish Adventure to The Great Spadefoot Adventure because toads are fun to draw and the goldfish was getting too cute. This seems like a lot of work but it's actually not, since loosing the contract on the children's book I was working on I suddenly have a lot of free time so I've been reading more, which is a great Holiday past time. As for The Great Spadefoot Adventure and it's publication I' have a verbal agreement with a publisher, one of my favorite publishers, and we're just working on polishing the storyline until an agreement is signed.

BellySnatcher

These images are from a year long project I've been doing with Jeff Vandermeer, an author whose writing has had a tremendous impact on my work and thinking, casing me to look at the world a little deeper and with greater wonder. BellySnatcher was started about a year ago based on a dream Jeff had. Jeff dreamed that he was collaborating on a book with me called BellySnatcher, so I I illustrated a book based on his dream. I've used not only his dream but my responses to all of Jeff's amazing work, his writing about hidden things and people and the dizzy, scary depths we face. The mixture of deadly serious and ridiculous. I hope that I've captured some of Jeff's wonderful sense of humour as well.

I'm touching up a couple of images today and scanning the book and then sending it off.

Jeff talks about it here. I would encourage anyone who likes books and has a sense of literary adventurousness to read Jeff's blog regularly.

Collage Humour

Another piece from the Vandermeer collaboration. There is something about his writing that causes me to respond with collage and humour (collage Humour?)....

Flying Boat Ink

Working away at completing projects today. Listening to a Haruki Murakami audiobook (After Dark)The outline for Flying Boat seems to changing daily...

Cat And Mouse And Something Else

A Moleskine thing from a collaboration with author Jeff Vandermeer.

The Door To Christmas

My Father In Law's creations are starting to spring up around the house like Christmas coming to life.

Playing

Some pages from a Moleskine notebook for a secret collaborative project. This stuff is mostly sketches and noodling so there's no pressure to get it right. Thus I'm playing a lot with composition, medium etc. I love to play.

Scary Things

Science Fiction writer Peter Watts is beaten and imprisoned at Canada/U.S. border. Read about it in the National Post and Watts' own blog.

It Lives!!

Here's a nice Christmas surprise, my website is up and live! What do you think?

King Of The Hobos

Thanks so much to J.P. Roberts for telling me about five time king of the hobos Maurice "Steam Train Maury" Graham. A fascinating character who later in life decided to start riding the rails like he did when hew was young, leaving a note ion the kitchen table that said " See ya". He was often seen at hobo "jungles" ( large, temporary hobo towns) where he was crowned king of the hobos five times in their annual festivals. Every year he dressed up as Santa, he visited schools and veterans hospitals and prided himself on never stealing.

Great article on Steam Train here and the in the New York Times.

And thanks to everyone helping me research hobos for Flying Boat Comics.

Riding The Rails

Currently researching the Depression and hobos of and round that period for Flying Boat. Work like this can be hard as hundreds of pages may not yield anything that finds it's way into the story. However, it is a fascinating subject, a whole secondary world that really existed and impacted our world today. A lot of kids were riding the trains in the States for various reasons then. Some people were well educated and carried around books like Walden. If anyone has any stories about family members who were hobos or anything like that I'd love to know.

wild animals with true natures and beautiful talents

Saw the Fantastic Mr. Fox this afternoon and really loved it. Such a strange movie, I can't believe Hollywood let them do it. And now I want this lovely art book!

Amy Blackwell's Inky

I asked fellow Twitterer and artist Amy Blackwell from Nottingham, England to draw a picture of Inky from Flying Boat and am blown away by the result..( and more then a little humbled...) Beautiful.

Hands

My wife, Julie, took this photo yesterday.

Tiger Rough

Working to get lot's done this weekend. I lost a full day of work yesterday because Henry got sent home from day care do to barfing so I lost a whole day of work. I need to catch up, especially on the kids book I'm working on, which the sketch above is from.

Pa Kettle

Working on a sketch of Maddy Kettle's cursed father.

Bompf!!

Just a little update. I am working double time on my projects right now, working on a kid's book and working on The Adventures of the Flying Boat graphic novel, right now called The Great Goldfish, which is still out the outlining phase. I've been working with an editor on Goldfish and I can't believe how much the story improves and changes every day. I feel like I could never create something this good on my own. I am trying to make a self contained story and curb my tendency to think serially, to write a story with a beginning middle and end. I'm constantly surprised as I peel away the layers and get closer to the heart of this story.

Fair Grounds

The top is Fair Grounds, a coffee shop in Etobicoke where I've been doing my writing and on the bottom is me and Henry playing.