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Journal Page.
January 31st
On the desk today = A Forty-Something strip for Gary @ the Fox.
These Forty Something strips are now the only jobs where I'm using this cross-hatching style. Not that long ago, all of my b&w stuff was done like this. Then I got the iMac, and quite rapidly, everything went digital...
January 25th
Technical troubles all sorted, thanks once again to the very splendid mr Simon Emery... cheers mate!
Meantime, this is a fantastic website, and one that i visit daily for inspiration and entertainment. I found this there the other day, which is really interesting from a technical point of view. Illustrating is a pretty solitary occupation, so it's always good to see how someone else works. And this guy has a remarkably clutter-free desk! I sometimes visit schools and I like to get them to guess, just by looking at the state of my paintbox [very scruffy] whether I'm a very tidy person or not. Here's a pic of my desk at the moment... 
...and here's what's under my desk, though to be fair, joe had just toppled that previously neat pile of old footy programmes in his attempts to get out of the shot...
Of course, once I get my purpose-built studio office extension, things'll be a lot more organised round here. Oh yes...
NB - important disclaimer to any clients who my be reading this - your jobs and any paperwork pertaining to them are all neatly filed away and not buried anywhere amongst this mess. Honest.
January 24th
Technical troubles ahoy! Normal service will be resumed asap [don't hold yer breath...]
Meantime, on the desk today... this for r&s.
January 23rd
I got the mouse. After two nights of merely feeding it with bait from the poorly-set traps I finally figured out how to bait them properly and this morning discovered that they'd worked. As Julie told us the other day, your average house-mouse does like a bit of chocolate. But now, if I'm honest, I'm feeling not nearly as triumphant as I'd expected. It's just a mouse, but I still feel bad about killing it. The weekend was good. On Saturday I went down to the re:source conference in Sheffield with other revive folk to do a bit of worship, and it went very well. Every now and again it hits me just how amazing the worship music that comes out of revive really is. Brilliant. Nice to meet Jonny and Bob and Mary too. The speaker for the little segment that we were responsible for was Cathy Ross from CMS, and she was talking about a spirituality of the road. She touched on lots of stuff that resonated for me - stuff about love moving at three miles an hour [walking pace] and about the need to live counter-culturally. Now if you know me well enough you'll recognise that I'll shy away from ever claiming that God spoke to me directly. But on Saturday nite I was reminded again of the one recent thing that I do believe God clearly communicated to me. And that was that I'm not called to 'do' stuff, but primarily to 'be' stuff. Be a husband, be a dad, be what Cathy called a 'sign of the end'. When you're as stubbornly task-oriented as me [and, to be honest, quite shy too] that's quite a tough call. So here's what I need to learn and re-learn. To slow down, to learn to walk instead of [metaphorically!] running. To enjoy the view. To engage with fellow travellers. To give the kids and Sue more time, and not just the scrag-end of the day, but the good bits too. To swim against the tide of opinion and [self?] expectation that wants me to consume more stuff and 'achieve' stuff...
Then on Sunday I took Joe off for his first session of striker 9 which he loved. It was well run and just the right level for him. And he was quite good! Passing, finding space... you'd almost believe that he'd listened to everything that I've been trying to tell him during our backyard kickabouts... talking of which, when we got back I once again triumphed in a family shootout. Eddie came second I think - not bad for a would-be goalie...
On the desk today... Richard and Suzi's cards [at long last!]
January 20th
Plenty to post about today. Excitingly, i took delivery of 500kg of worms for the composter. [The postie seemed a bit less than delighted with the ever-so-slightly moist cardboard package that they were bagged up in...] Last nite I notched up 6 [six!] goals whilst playing 6-a-side with Cap & co. Normal service will no doubt be resumed next Thursday nite, but ubtil then I am basking in the glory of my double-hat-trick... We have vermin on the premises. Our lie-in this morning was disturbed by Joe charging up the stairs shouting that he'd seen a mouse. The last time he did that, i trotted out into the garden to discover a bloody huge rat, dead and unpleasant on the lawn. Today it was just the one little mouse. I could've squished it, but decided that maybe that wasn't such a good idea with Joe looking on [and me in me bare feet...]
So traps are set, and a battle of wits - man vs rodent - has begun. What's most annoying is that about a month back Sue 'saw' a mouse disappearing into the under-stairs cupboard. Traps were bought and laid, and absolutely nothing happened, and i've ever since then I've very much enjoyed asking if she's spotted any more invisible mice. So now there's another small avenue of pleasure closed off to me.
Finally that resolution to do an observational drawing every day bit the dust after just one day - no sketching yesterday [and none so far today either...] This afternoon I have to plan some worship stuff for a conference tomorrow. So I'd better go get on with it...
January19th
Not much to post about today, except maybe that I found this whilst surfing the net earlier. [Yup, that 'Simon' - that's me. In my defence, the answers are a bit truncated, and my rather hazy recollection is that I'd drunk rather a lot of red wine by the time the web-chat was in progress...] Good memories though...
January18th
Last night I drew Sue while she watched CSI. I've decided to draw some portraits partly because of something I'm thinking about for this year's Revive Greenbelt services, and partly because of a project that Oxfam will be running, and which I'm off to talk to Jill and her colleague Ben about later today. And, okay, also because I watched that programme with Rolf Harris painting the Queen and thought "I could do that [if I wanted]"...The thing is that I used to be really good at observational drawing. It was my 'thing', I drew. It sounds immodest to say so, but I really was bloody good at it. And yet it's a skill that I've let lapse, quite shockingly over the years, and now I'm sorely and frustratingly out of practice. So the finished thing wasn't much cop. [And certainly not good enough to post up on here...] Eddie and Joe found it lying on the desk this morning and they knew who it was a drawing of [which is always a relief when you've done a portrait], but I'm a bit depressed by it to be honest. It's not a great likeness for a start [the eyes are all wrong] and it's not a very good drawing either, so it fails on both counts. I'm blaming the lighting in the living room, and also my eyesight [been a long time since I got it checked], but in reality I know that I'm just not up to speed.
So my belated new years resolution is to do one observational drawing every day, and to visit the optician.
January18th [part two]
Here's observational drawing no.1. a self portrait. [Much better than last nite's unpostable effort....!]
Right then, off to see Jill and Ben...
January17th
Middle age crisis alert. This year I become 'a man of a certain age'. And I'm starting to feel it. Last summer I got bitten by an insect and it got infected, and several courses of antibiotics later, the infection popped back up again just before christmas. The doc says this may happen for a while. Then the other day, bits of one of my teeth start dropping out. Plus I have to go see the doc on Thursday to discuss my rising cholesterol levels [up from 4.0 to 5.4...] I am unfit and falling to bits.
Actually, I'm having one of those days when my work just isn't 'happening', so maybe that's why I'm feeling a bit at odds with the world. I have to draw ten animals and incorporate some text - normally something that I'd relish. But I'm on my third attempt and it still won't work out somehow. First time it was 'cos I didn't read the brief properly and didn't leave room for a croc and a lion. 
Second time the composition was just not working [still no room for the croc...] So now I'm onto version three... And of course, writing this is just work-avoidance really...
back to the desk...
January17th [part two...]
Nailed it.
And all is well with the world once more...
January13th
Big excitement yesterday when architect/builder Dan came around with a little model of his design for my new office. Just in case you've so far been fortunate enough to avoid my whingeing on at you about the misery of my working life, when we moved into our 3-bed semi back in the Spring I was given the smallest bedroom for my office. You could probably call it the box room, though that'd be bigging it up a bit... It's a bit cramped to say the least. Still, I courageously accepted my lot, with the promise that one day I could have a purpose-built studio of my very own out the back of the house. And here it is...
It'll look just like that, except not made of carboard. And with a funky grass roof...
January12th
I'm very aware that I've not posted much of late. It's not that nothing's been going on, just that I've not really felt much like writing about it I guess... Anyway, here's some of what I've been up to. I've had a very pleasant email exchange with Adrian Riley - basically a chat about '40' which will appear at some point on the emergingchurch.info website at some point.
Talking of which, CPAS have advertised the cd-rom of '40' in their 'church leadership' pack. Some of the images are included on the cd that comes with the pack, and yesterday I got my first sale as a result. Well, I say, 'sale', more of a telephone enquiry, but the cheque, I am assured, is in the post...
I've been listening a lot to the 'Stars' album, which I finally got around to purchasing. It's great. And I've been basking in the glory of Sunday night's 'Match of the Day' [which Joe has been watching before and after school every day this week] Typical Leicester. Just when you give up on them, just when you've finally told yourself that they've let you down one time too many, they turn round and remind you exactly why you loved them in the first place. Now if they could just play like that every week...
Sunday nite was a revive Open Space event [hence the video-ing of the footy]... it seemed to go pretty well. The Burley Lodge centre was a new venue for OS, but it worked pretty well. Monday nite was a planning meal for February's event [theme - the Prodigal Son] and it was great - plenty of ideas and enthusiasm - should be a good one.
On the desk today = some website pix for achurch over the border in Lancs...
January 9th
Feeling rather cheerful today.
And get well soon Abi [or we're sending you another one of our mix cd's...]
January 4th
On the desk today = a Frank strip for 'the Fox'...
January 2nd
Happy New Year. We've been away for a while so here's a brief resume of some of our Christmas/New Year high points [in no particular order] snowball fighting over at Pete and Jayne's, Corinne on Jools' Hootenanny, finally getting a Simpson's Monopoly set after three years of increasingly unsubtle hinting, a Dr Who jigsaw, the kids' genuine delight with the presents that they got, Hunstanton in the snow, the Dr Who 'Christmas Invasion' [David Tennant rocks as the Doctor!]...There was no official Revive Christmas Day service, and we were invited round to James, Giselle, Maddy and Noah's for a short celebration. It was really lovely; candles were lit and we shared our hopes, prayers and thoughts for each other and the year ahead. A very special time. James' family are great, and we were made very welcome. Sue and her mum spent some time ogling the 20lb turkey that they'd got slowly basting in the oven, before we drove back home for our festive chicken lunch. Christmas/New Year low points = Leicester City. oh dear.
On the desk today = ELT artwork for Beehive...
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