I was just about to start blogging when there was a ring at the doorbell. A Sunday parcel delivery? Unusual…
And oh, look!
Street Noise Books have shipped me the preview copies of the Draw The Line book. First thoughts? It looks great… really great! (Click the image above to see a video.)
The cover has that smooth yet matte coating, and the internal pages are on a good weight paperstock. I couldn’t be happier with the look and feel.
It’s priced really affordably as well, so I have no hesitation in saying that you should go and buy copies for all your friends and family. I’d be so delighted if we sold so many that we end up making a mahoosive donation to Choose Love (and bookshop.org has free shipping until tomorrow).
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In other news, I have realised that I won’t be able to get my protest zine out in time for selling it at Christmas. This realisation hit when I started laying out some page designs in a desultory fashion and felt like I was rushing it and making bad decisions.
Why is it that I love to draw so much, but hate literally every other part of the comics making process? You’d assume that so-called ‘visual’ people should be good at stuff like design, layout and print prep but they just make me miserable. If I ever lucked out and became a rich illustrator, I’d definitely pay an assistant to do all that for me.
Anyway, I suppose it’s a weight off my mind to have given myself more time. I’m fortunate that I don’t have to try to maximise my comic-making profits to survive – one benefit of illustration being a side hustle for me. Well, not even a hustle really, just a side thing I do. To excess.
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If Draw The Line hasn’t fulfilled all your gifting needs, the artist Emma Carlisle has put together a list of things to buy for the artists in your life. I wouldn’t turn my nose up at a single one of the things she mentions, and in fact many of them would inspire me to get back to non-digital drawing. Mmm, holding a bit of charcoal and dragging it against a rough-grained bit of paper. Paradise.
One thing she doesn’t include on the list is her own artwork, which is gorgeous and would definitely have a place under my tree.
The actual concrete effect of my reading Emma’s post on Friday was that, having some time to kill before meeting a friend in town yesterday, I popped into our local art shop and bought a bunch of stuff for my daughter’s stocking. This was a moderately passive aggressive move with the aim that she’ll stop nicking my art materials.
Additional tip: Affinity software is 30% off for Black Friday. Dan Berry recommended this to me as a Photoshop substitute when I was despairing over my lack of Surfacebook/Photoshop compatibility, and it’s been a grand substitute. Apart from anything else it’s the one piece of affordable software I’ve found which allows you to save images as CMYK as well as RGB/other profiles. Best of all, it’s a one-off fee, unlike Adobe and their cursed creative cloud subscription model. And it has a thriving ecosystem of people making brushes and filters that you can purchase as add-ons. It’s good.
Myfanwy Tristram 