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Five Little Lessons, 4/3/2026
"What you earn on the track, you lose on the track" 100 Meters, original manga by Uoto
"When we steadfastly believe that our inherent identity is one of value we stop perceving ourselves as something to fix. Instead we honor the way we function best. We then feel safe to go at our own pace, and we're able to be present for all the good We'd miss by running." I Haven't Been Entirly Honest with You, Miranda Hart
"We can't cultivate more then there is in this moment." I Haven't been Entirely Honest with You, Miranda Hart
Enjoy, by Janet Jackson
"A single picture can't show the passage of time, so all you can depict is a dramatic moment that has to stand for the whole." The Complete Calvin And Hobbes volume 1, Bill Watterson
Five Little Lessons, 24/2/2026
"I will let my life unfold day by day, taking small steps towards my values in self-compassion, with a bedrock of trust." I Haven't Been Entirely Honest With You, by Miranda Hart.
Take it one small step at a time. What's one small thing I can do today?
"Often the only difference between a problem being painful or being powerful is a sense that we chose it, and that we are responsible for it." The Subtle Art of Not Giving A F*ck, Mark Manson.
"In short, the morning pages point the way to reality: this is how you're feeling; what do you make of that? And what we make of that is often art." The Artist's Way, Julia Cameron
"Change is gradual and indirect rather than rapid and direct" The One Thing Nobody Tells You About Mental Health Recovery, Dr Scott Eilers.
Illustration technical process and experimentation.
My process for my illustrations, I enjoy drawing from life, its relaxing and I learn a lot of technical skills. I was feeling like celebrating some old tech and so decided to draw a cassette tape. I love the way they look (this one is Dolly Parton's Favourites cassette!).
Starting with pencilling I draw out the forms, in my head I'm usually measuring the angle to a 90-degree angle, for me I've memorised a ninty degree angle and so it allows me to see the angle of the forms with a bit more clarity in their perspective. I have a bit of a distortion to the way I see things, and so this technique helps a lot!
In this particular sketch I decided to experiment with drawing on A4 paper, usually I sketch from life on a A6 sketchbook. I wanted to experiment with increasing my value and line quality and drawing larger to shrink the image down is suggested in both the comics and illustration feild for pen and ink art. In some of my studies of masters I've noticed they use shapes to block out their shading, I'm specifically referenceing to Charles Dana Gibson, in his Gibson Girl Illustrations. Inspired by this I blocked the shape of the shadow out. For all of the obgects I used my lovely pinched spoon nib, you can see it on the image below to the left
For this illustration experimenting with the way I could create tonal value on the cassette was my main priority. I struggle with the stippling technique (using little dots to create value and a sense of detail), and even in this illustration it didn't come out in the way I would have liked and so pivited to experimenting with Aurther Guptil's line gradient techniques, found in his book Rendering In Pen And Ink. I think this helped bring a bit more life and visual interest into the line.
Finally this is the scanned final image. I feel the sense of depth in the shadows and the cassette is very visually striking which is what I was aiming for. I think I could have experiemented a little more with the values of the other objects, I was running short on time. I feel I still have some more to learn about value techniques and I'm happy with the finished result!
For me, making mini comics is especially fun! The main way I find inspiration for my mini comics is by looking through the events of my day or week and trying to find something funny that I thought about or experienced. Due to my slightly chaotic nature and brain, I find it common to remember incidents where I felt silly or did something that I think others would find entertaining.
During the summer of last year, I decided to give myself a little challenge of drawing one A6 comic a day, and after a while, the ideas would come naturally to me through repeated practice. The A6 comics were initially just for me, not meant to be shared with anyone, so I felt a lot more comfortable with having low expectations. The size constraint meant that my better comics were just three panels long, and so making for an excellent challenge in clarity and picking out the most necessary beats of a joke or a story. Try it out!
As for illustrations my process includes a lot of looking at inspirations, for example Arthur Guptils amazing illustrations and guidence in his book Rendering in Pen and Ink Rendering in pen and ink : Guptill, Arthur L. (Arthur Leighton), 1891-1956 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive . Available here for free with Internet Archive. More recent Inspirations for pen and ink illustrations have been, Charles Dana Gibson and his series of the famous Gibson Girls illustrations, Jeff Smith, creator of the incredible Bone series (Boneville.com | The Official Site For Bone by Cartoon Books | Welcome to Boneville!), Roy Krenkle's masterful work in The Fantastical Art Of Roy G. Krenkel (The Fantastic Art Of Roy G. Krenkel (Hardcover) by Craig Yoe published by Dark Horse Books @ ForbiddenPlanet.com - UK and Worldwide Cult Entertainment Megastore). There are always so many more!
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