Turns out my entire ability to draw rests on a single pen

I’ve mislaid my Surface pen. Argh!

Isn’t it just a symbol of the current age that I am entirely in thrall to one small pen, and that without it I am unable to draw?

Yes, sure I can pick up real paper and a real pen, but that isn’t a great deal of help when I’m half way through two digital projects.

I’ve spent a large part of the weekend with my hand down the back of sofas, under the bed and in dressing gown pockets, wondering if I absently stuck it in my dungarees pouch, or tossed it into the recycling, or kicked it into the gap between the floorboards… no sign of it yet, though I have uncovered six times my own bodyweight in dust and mouldy biscuit crumbs.

I’m fortunate in two respects: I can afford to buy a new one without noticing it too much; and I’m not actually working to any sort of deadline at the moment.

In fact, I was rather in the doldrums about my artwork. Yes, I had the excuse that I needed to be doing a lot of promotional activity around the launch of Draw the Line, but truth to tell I was also feeling very down in the dumps about my ongoing work. So it’s just possible this was a subliminal act of self-sabotage. Either way, it made me ask whether I valued my art practice enough to shell out £89 on it.

It turns out that, deep in my soul, I do.

Every cloud has a silver lining, and, unable to actually progress either of my comics, I turned to updating my website, which I’ve been meaning to do for ages. For a long time, the blog has been front and centre, when really what it required was some static pages explaining my work. And now it has that.

It was fiddly, but not as bad as I’d feared, and… I am really quite pleased with the result, which makes a stronger statement about who I am and what I am trying to do with my artwork. Please do check it out if you have a moment.

And actually, you know what cheers you up when you are feeling despondent about your artwork? Looking through it all, remembering what you’ve achieved and restating your purpose, which, happily, is what you have to do when you revamp your website.