hourly comics day – myf draws apparently

Hourly Comic Day 2018

February 1, 2018January 31, 2018Posted in Cartoons, Pictures of people, SketchesTagged #hourlycomicsday, hourly comic day, hourly comics day2 Comments

Every first of February is Hourly Comic Day, where mad people comic artists attempt to draw a comic, or a frame of a comic, for each hour that they are awake.

It fell on a Thursday this year, which is not ideal for me: during the week, I am sitting at my desk working for most of the day, which does not make for very compelling cartooning. So I cheated (honestly, I think cheating in various ways is all part of the Hourly Comic Day experience; or, let’s say, some creativity and laxity around the rules, such as they are, is encouraged) and did mine at the weekend.

I’ll be treating you to some full-colour beautifully pictures then, will I? You might think so, but I tell you, whether you’re doing Hourly Comic Day on a weekday or a weekend, it’s still tough to even do more than a quick scribble, especially given that you actually have to live your life between images. Some people do put out amazing stuff. I am not one of those people.

So I’m afraid you get some pencil sketches and they’re not even very well reproduced here. But oh well, hopefully they’re legible and still enjoyable.

7:00 Got up before everyone else – even the cats. Put a wash on. Coffee and posh toast (apricot and walnut)

8:00 I’m scripting the next big comic I want to make, about my teenage years. It’s such a bizarre experience putting myself back in that time.

9:00 As usual, it’s such a rollercoaster of emotions. One minute: “I’m a genius! This is going to set the whole world on fire!” Next minute: “…or maybe it’s just a pile of self-obsessed tosh”.

10:00 Sidetracked researching authentic music for background detail. Ooh perfect, this was released that very month. Oh-oh-oh the Hounds of Love – God, this is really hard to sing along to! A parcel comes from my bro – a late birthday present for Tabs… pins and patches – nice!

11:00 Tabs is watching slime videos. It’s beyond me – these people poke and prod and review the literally useless medium of slime.. and millions watch! ‘Now this one has a slight smell of walnuts and it’s a bit dry’ *poke poke* *squelch* Let’s go out Tabs, you’ve been indoors all week (she’s had a bad cold).

12:00 Tabs, Joe and I get the bus into town. Tabs is telling me about YouTube stars Dan and Phil. So, every night, millions of little girls are going to sleep dreaming of Dan and Phil? Yes but they’re not dreaming about going out with them – they’re dreaming of them going out with each other! ‘Shipping’ them.
Dan’s ‘soft’. In the head?

1:00 Nice second hand jacket – but Tabs preferred this jumper. She spends her Xmas money on it.

2:00 We go to E-Kagen for lunch but it’s SO FULL and we are about to turn away when we hear, ‘Hello!’. It’s our old friends Victoria and Dermot and their daughter Kath & they make room for us – so lucky! And we haven’t seen them for ages so we can catch up on all their news – a theatre tour to Mumbai, buying a holiday house near Toulouse, one daughter in NZ. “They gave us a standing ovation for a joke… it wasn’t even a particularly good joke!” “There’s a big attic – we’re going to knock it all open and put a load of single beds up there so everyone’s kids can sleep together when they come to stay”.

3:00 It was lovely to see them, but do you ever feel like our lives are a bit… boring in comparison with other people’s?
Nothing wrong with boring.
Reminded me of Posy Simmonds’ ‘Gemma Bovary’
Reminded me of Peter Mayle’s ‘A Year in Provence’.
It’s raining.

4:00 We bought a scratch post for the cats. Talking of boring lives…The bus stop was full of people sheltering from the rain so we nipped into Card Factory. Hey look! They have same-sex cards now. That’s good if even the bargain basement shops embrace it as standard. (hums) Oh oh oh oh the hounds of love… Tabs has borrowed my hat.

5:00 Playing Animal Crossing Pocket Camp. I’m probably more addicted than is ideal (level 59). Aw Kid Cat. Sorry Joe, I’m afraid to tell you I’m developing strong feelings for Kid Cat… argh, why are there never any pale chub when you need them?

Oh oh oh the hands of love… what is that song?

It’s HOUNDS! Not hands…

6:00 A light supper (egg mayo rolls). That’s funny, you know how we were talking about Peter Mayle? Well he died a couple of days ago.
That’s not FUNNY.
What’s that?
Peter Mayle died a couple of days ago.
Oh, that’s funny!
No, it’s not funny, god! Someone died!

From 7:30 -10:30 pm I was just drawing. Oof… wrist ache!

At 10:30 pm I very sensibly went to bed and straight into a very deep sleep…well, apart from another hour of Animal Crossing… beep boop bip, snorfle.

I also did Hourly Comic Day in 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017!

My #HourlyComicDay 2017 in full

February 4, 2017Posted in Cartoons, pencil crayon, Pictures of people, Sketch diaryTagged #hourlycomicsday, comics, diary comics, family, hourly comic day, hourly comics day, Lush, sketch diaries, sketch diary2 Comments

Myfanwy Tristram Hourly Comic Day 2017 www.myfanwytristram.com

I’ve been absolutely up to my neck in the Draw The Line project (comic artists drawing positive political actions that anyone can take), but when Hourly Comic Day rolled around, I couldn’t bear the thought of not taking part.

I’ve participated for the past three years, and the concept chimes very well with my tendency towards diary-based comics. This year though, I’d be in Leeds with work, for an all-day meeting that would neither allow for the luxury of regular drawings and uploads, nor provide very interesting or varied content. So I cheated slightly, and completed my hourlies on the Saturday beforehand.

As with every year, it was slightly stressful and time-consuming, and I ended up feeling a bit unhappy about sharing rough work. But also as with every year, I believe that the narrative supersedes the quality of the drawing in the end.

Anyway, awkward preamble over, here’s my Hourly Comic Day. Click any of the images to see them at a larger size.

If I have time, I hope to do my usual round-up post of other people’s too, but it might not be as quick off the mark as it usually is.

My complete Hourly Comic Day 2016

February 2, 2016April 8, 2016Posted in Cartoons, pen, Pictures of people, Sketch diaryTagged #hourlycomicsday, hourly comic day, hourly comics day7 Comments

Hourly Comic Day 2016 by Myfanwy Tristram p4

So – was it more difficult completing Hourly Comic Day on a working day?

You bet it was. There’s not very much of visual interest to draw, and it means you have to do a full day’s work and then put in several hours drawing into the night.

I saw a few canny people shifted theirs to Sunday, and I’m beginning to see what a good idea that is. If you were really clever, you could even draw your frames on the Sunday and then schedule them to go out once an hour on Twitter the next day… or is that just too duplicitous?

I was really looking forward to Hourly Comic Day but actually… I’d forgotten that it can be quite stressful, what with aching shoulders as you hunch over your pages, the insecurity of seeing everyone else’s work pouring out (and of course it’s *all excellent*), and the hardest thing for me, which is trying to keep up a decent standard of drawing in real time. It’s a real test of just how well you can extemporise, and that, for me, is a real challenge.

But enough moaning. Ignore my insecurities. I hope you enjoyed these cartoons. :)

Eeek, it’s nearly Hourly Comic Day again

January 28, 2016April 8, 2016Posted in Cartoons, LinksTagged hourly comic day, hourly comics day4 Comments

February 1st is Hourly Comic Day – a day when foolish people make a cartoon for every hour in which they are awake.

It presents you with two options:

If you are smart, you can sit back, relax, and enjoy as cartoonists around the world post up a rich deluge of comics on Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram and Flickr.

If you are a maniac, you can take part yourself.

I already know what I’ll be doing. Although, I am a little perturbed by the fact that, this year, Hourly Comic Day falls on a Monday.

For the main part of the day, I’ll be at my desk, working – which won’t make for very entertaining comics, and may also provide subject matter that I just can’t use if I want to keep my job.

We’ll see though. In the meantime, if you’d like to see my previous efforts, here’s last year’s, and here’s the one from 2014.

I also gathered together the best examples from other people, in 2014 and 2015.

The hashtag across all social media is (mainly) #hourlycomicday, although you may also find people using #hourlycomicsday.

Let me know if you’re going to take part… and good luck!

Some of the best Hourly Comic Days, and my thoughts

February 3, 2015February 18, 2015Posted in Cartoons, LinksTagged cartoons, comics, hourly comic day, hourly comics day1 Comment

Bwahhaha, I’ll lure you in with the thought of reading some excellent COMICS, but then I’ll make you wade through my THOUGHTS before you get there.

What do you mean you can just scroll down? Oh well, whatever you want.

What did we learn?

So, yesterday I posted my stab at Hourly Comic Day, the fun (fun! It’s fun! Not just hard work) exercise where you’re supposed to draw a comic (or a frame) every hour that you are awake.

Them’s the rules, and I broke them, by drawing the final three pages a day later because, as always, it was a balance between actually doing stuff to draw, and drawing the stuff.

And since comics about drawing comics are the worst, it’s important to at least do a bit of stuff. Unless you’re willing to take that pronouncement and prove it completely wrong, of course.

Next year, Hourly Comic Day will fall on a Monday, which will make it a very different beast for me. It’s a work day, so there is no way that I can take time out to draw every single hour. Plus, a lot of what I do at work can’t be shared, due to our privacy policies, and quite right too.

It might be a blessing in disguise though: I can imagine a M.O. where I set my alarm to ping and jot down one idea every hour, then draw just one frame (just one, you hear that, me?) for each. Could work.

This year, I definitely over-stretched myself. And even the amount of work that I put in didn’t make me immune to the insecure feeling of putting out imperfect, unfinished work. Just like last year, though, I was touched by the way that people respond far more to the content than the quality of the artwork, so long as they can tell what you’re trying to depict.

Towards the end, my line became looser and I depended less on having done a pencil sketch. A day of enforced drawing is like a whole month of drawing lessons – and you see the results much more quickly, too. That’s why, despite the effort, the tiredness, the frames that I wish I could redraw, I’m glad I did it.

My complete Hourly Comic Day 2015

February 3, 2015Posted in Cartoons, pen, Sketch diaryTagged diaries, drawing, hourly comic day, hourly comics day12 Comments

Whew! I did it.

Well, officially I didn’t do it, because I was over-ambitious with how much I wanted to depict (so what’s new?).

I only managed to finish off the last three pages today, so I am posting my complete Hourly Comic Day comic 24 hours late. Here it is.

It’s now past my bedtime, so I will save any sparkling insights for later, and let the pictures speak for themselves. (I just spotted a spelling mistake. Never mind! Bed!)

As always, click if you’d like to see them bigger.

Heads up! Sunday is Hourly Comics Day

January 30, 2015Posted in CartoonsTagged hourly comic day, hourly comics day4 Comments

This is just a brief reminder – to myself, as much as anything. On Sunday, artists with more optimism than sense will be attempting to draw a comic every hour, describing their day.

Last year, I only found out about it when I idly scrolled through Twitter at breakfast time. This year, I found I’d put an annual alert in my calendar, which popped up yesterday so that I could be well prepared. How organised is that?!

Actually, maybe it’s better to be caught on the back foot. Now I have no excuse.

Fortunately, last year I also gathered together the very best examples I could find from 2014 (ok, I have answered my own question. I am very organised, yes), and linked to them from a single post, which you can read here.

And here is my entry from last year.

I hope you’ll be tempted to join in too. As far as I understand it, there are no rules beyond the basic guideline of a frame or a page for each hour that you’re awake.

I’m off to study those examples I linked to above, and see if there are any top tips for excellence I can glean from them… but don’t hold your breath. Hourly Comics Day is the ultimate in unpolished, on-the-fly work. :)

The cream of Hourly Comic Day

February 6, 2014February 6, 2014Posted in CartoonsTagged cartoonists, comics, hourly comic day, hourly comics day, women cartoonists, women's comics

In my last post, I shared the results of my Hourly Comic Day. I’ve been a mere husk of a person ever since, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence. So, massive kudos to everyone who did it, and a regretful ‘nuh-uh’ to the nice friends who have suggested I should do something similar every day.

I wanted to post a few of the brilliant Hourly Comics by other people. You might remember that in a low point during my own day, I drew myself wibbling over how professional other people’s entries looked. Well, here are the superb comics that made me feel that way.

Feel free to leave me a comment if I’ve missed anyone.

Joe Decie

Joe’s local to my hometown of Brighton and Hove. His pictures are unusually ‘fine art’ for a cartoonist, and they often contain a delicate seasoning of surrealism. Here’s his entry in full. I notice that, as a concession to the nature of the day, he’s gone for pencilled panels rather than his usual watercolour, but just look at how adept they are.

Gemma Correll

Gemma is a new artist to me, but, joy, she has a massive archive of daily comics just ready for perusal. I love this crowded but utterly clear and cohesive style. Also, I can relate about the dip pens.

Boum

All right now, what do I know about Samantha Leriche-Gionet (aka Boum)? Absolutely nothing: I discovered her stuff via Tumblr and the mighty #hourlycomicday hashtag. And I immediately liked her stuff because it deals, truthfully, with those weird months when you have a young baby in the house. Here’s the whole bunch from Boum’s day.

Ah! There’s an About page. Montreal. Cheese. Marvellous.

Dan Berry

My last two picks seem rather redundant – I get the feeling that they are most people’s gateway to Hourly Comic Day (in the UK at least?).

Certainly they were key players in stirring up interest, tweeting and blogging and linking and still having time to complete their own entries.

Here’s Dan’s work. Perhaps I won’t feel so bad about how polished it looks, given that he’s both a published illustrator and lecturer on comics. Oh and he also produces Make It Then Tell Everybody which is a great podcast where he just chats to all kinds of cartoonists, a different one every week. I listened to all of them without stopping while I was doing my last collage, and I didn’t even feel like I’d over-indulged.

Sarah McIntyre

Sarah draws a LOT anyway, and managed to complete this *while working to a tight book deadline*. You can see her full day here. I love following her blog because she’s always dashing around meeting people, drawing stuff, running workshops and dressing up in wild costumes. Looks like a fun life to me.

Lucy Knisley

As far as I can tell, Lucy didn’t participate this year, but her stuff from previous years is exquisite enough that it definitely deserves your attention.

One more thought

If I ever had the feeling that comics was a dying art (clue: sometimes I did), Hourly Comic Day completely disabused me of that notion. I have no idea how many participants there were, but (possibly due to my harried and borderline hallucinogenic state by the end of the day) it felt like immeasurable hordes.

Hopefully unrequired footnote

Of course, all the work above is the property of its original creators. Please respect their copyright.

All my #hourlycomicday posts in one place

February 2, 2014May 25, 2014Posted in Cartoons, pen, Pictures of people, Sketch diary, SketchesTagged cats, clothes, clothes drawing, comics, fashion, female cartoonists, genderisation, hourly comic day, hourly comics day, maths, parenthood, pink stinks, running, sex, sketches, women cartoonists, women's comics2 Comments

February 1st is Hourly Comics Day, when (mad) people commit to drawing a cartoon every hour that they are awake. I saw this happen on Twitter last year, somewhat wistfully, because by the time I knew it was happening, my day was half over.

This year I was no better prepared, but I did at least see a tweet about it just a few minutes after waking up. Typically, my train of thought went:

– Nah, I can’t possibly commit to that. How do people DO things, AND find the time to draw them?
– Well, I might just draw ONE cartoon…
– Argh, this is ON – there’s no way I’m stopping now.

And that’s how I always get sucked into these things. Click on each of the images below to see them bigger.

Hourly comics day is huge

If you’d like to see what other people have produced, you could be in for a long read:

Hashtagged tweets are here
And now Facebook has hashtags too
Instagram got in on the action, of course
The mystery that is Tumblr
Oop, don’t forget Flickr
There’s even stuff on Pinterest
There’s an official forum, but I couldn’t register on it – seems like plenty of others managed to, though.

What I learned from Hourly Comic Day

It’s exhausting!
You don’t have to record every single thing that happens. I did, and that’s probably why I found it so tiring, but some of the best ones I saw just focus on one small event from each hour. Those cartoons tend to be funnier, too.
You have to let go of any desire to present perfect drawings. Actually, it’s quite liberating to discover that when people read a project like this, they tend to appreciate the content more than the fine art.
Use a smaller sketchbook, so that when you come to scan them at the end of a long long day, you don’t have to scan every page twice.
Don’t expect to set the world alight. I barely received *any* comments on Twitter – I guess there are so many people posting (and frantically drawing between times) that it’s hard to stand out. Conversely, things went down much better on Facebook – but then, the people who follow me there tend to be personal friends with a pre-existing interest in me and my life. :)

What I didn’t learn from Hourly Comic Day

How other people handle sex scenes. C’mon, people, really?

Will I do Hourly Comic Day next year?

Right now, I’d say ‘no way’. But when February 1st comes around again, you might just see me getting pulled in.

Tag: hourly comics day

Hourly Comic Day 2018

My #HourlyComicDay 2017 in full

My complete Hourly Comic Day 2016

Eeek, it’s nearly Hourly Comic Day again

Some of the best Hourly Comic Days, and my thoughts

What did we learn?

Read more comics

My complete Hourly Comic Day 2015

Heads up! Sunday is Hourly Comics Day

The cream of Hourly Comic Day

Joe Decie

Gemma Correll

Boum

Dan Berry

Sarah McIntyre

Lucy Knisley

One more thought

Hopefully unrequired footnote

Of course, all the work above is the property of its original creators. Please respect their copyright.

All my #hourlycomicday posts in one place

Hourly comics day is huge

What I learned from Hourly Comic Day

What I didn’t learn from Hourly Comic Day

Will I do Hourly Comic Day next year?

Tell all your mates

Like this:

Tell all your mates

Like this:

Tell all your mates

Like this:

Tell all your mates

Like this:

What did we learn?

Read more comics

Tell all your mates

Like this:

Tell all your mates

Like this:

Tell all your mates

Like this:

Joe Decie

Gemma Correll

Boum

Dan Berry

Sarah McIntyre

Lucy Knisley

One more thought

Hopefully unrequired footnote

Of course, all the work above is the property of its original creators. Please respect their copyright.

Tell all your mates

Like this:

Hourly comics day is huge

What I learned from Hourly Comic Day

What I didn’t learn from Hourly Comic Day

Will I do Hourly Comic Day next year?

Tell all your mates

Like this: