May/June Round-Up

Whoops, been a while! Forgive me, the last couple of months have been chaos. Wonderful, creative, lovely chaos, but not the sort that lends me much time for blog posts and all that. Anyway! Here's a bumper double-issue to cover the last two months!

Small Press Day 2025!

I love Cardiff with all of my heart, but if there's one thing that could make it even better, it'd be a Small Press Day event. And what if that event was at, say, legendary local arts community space, ArtHole CIC?

Well, now there is one! And it is at Arthole! On Saturday 19th July from 12-5pm!

Myself and Pigeon (@pigeonxperson) have been busy little bees planning this. We've got a fantastic lineup of talks, signings, panels, and a market, featuring some of the best small-press talent in Wales & the South West (and beyond!), including: Joe Latham, R.E Burke, Josh Hicks, Erika Price, Archie McKenzie, Kai Dylan, Beastly Worlds, Ed Stockham, Thunderchair, Cat Lilith, Shri, Gunasekara, Mereida Fajardo, Piggyhammer, B Mure, plus students & grads from USW and Coleg Gwent Illustration!

Follow us on socials for updates & the schedule.

Poster for Cardiff's Small Press Day event on 19/07/2025. Design/lines by me, colours by Pigeon. Be there or be square!

MOTHER Launches at the Laydeez Do Comics Online Comics Fair

That comic I've been banging on about for months is finally out! MOTHER releases TODAY at the LDC Online Comics Fair. It'll be available there (digitally) from 1-31st July. A print run will debut at Thought Bubble 2025.

Buy a digital copy here.

92 pages, full-colour, MOTHER explores responsibility, autonomy, and self-worth in a flurry of psychedelic visuals, slapstick humour, and horrible, toxic characters. Smashing this out in 10 months has been an immense challenge, but I think it's some of my best work to date. I'll have another post later in the month breaking down the process, but for now, here's one of my favourite spreads:

One of my favourite spreads to draw from MOTHER, out now.

Over the last two months...

I went to Fine Lines Festival in May, which was great fun. My table neighbours were both doing their first fairs (and did a brilliant job), which made me feel ancient, but also like a proud grandpa. I found a TON of new-to-me artists I really like too; KAPI, Naomi Wilkinson, and Tova Persson were some of my favourites!

From left to right, our lovely table neighbour beejoolia, me, and my partner (who is infinitely better at zine fairs than I am).

I also managed to get to Printed Festival in Cardiff this weekend - The heat meant I didn't hang around for long, but it was a lovely event. I got a cool zine from Archie McKenzie (more about that later)!

Sketchbook

You may notice I haven't got any daily drawings in this post. I kind of fell off the wagon... Because all I've wanted to do is draw in my sketchbook, fully, relentlessly, all of the time. My original goal with the daily drawings was to bring some routine and play back into my practice. I feel like I've had a major breakthrough in terms of being able to just pick up a pen and draw again, so mission accomplished?! I'm not really dwelling on it, and can't wait to jump into the next thing I decide to challenge myself with.

Anyway, here are some spreads I liked from May & June:

Character sketches for a new comic project in the works. I still need to figure out some stuff, but she's getting close to what I want her to be. Back with an old favourite drawing tool, the Zebra Z-Grip Medium in black and a 12-year-old graphite stick. Some things never change.

More sketches. Foliage has always been tough for me to draw and I don't ever feel like I'm nailing it. More practice!

A lot of the time my sketchbooks are lots of the same drawing, just with light variations. It helps an idea cook in my brain. I drew this spread at my local gaming club while my friends learned how to play Trench Crusade. The bear character in the darker ink is based on my childhood teddy bear (who I still hang out with - It's our 28th birthday next month), Mr Peeps. He's drinking coffee here.

Sketchbook Comic:

A comic from my sketchbook.

Can't wait to unpack whatever this is foreshadowing! If my handwriting is too horrible: "A YouTuber I like who is the same age as me referred to herself as 'approaching middle aged'. I struggle to picture myself aging. When I imagine what I'll look like when I'm older, I just picture Clownvis from TikTok.

Things I saw/read/played/did...

Book | Big Swiss by Jan Beagin: I'm not really talking about this because I loved it... It was decent. I read it in two days while on holiday. One of the things that really stuck with me here was that I think this book would be better if it wasn't a book. Which is a weird thing to say. Hopefully it gets adapted into a movie, or a comic, or an ARG. There are a lot of great visuals that I think would better suit a more show-y, rather than tell-y medium.

Zine | Thinking about BUGS will improve your life!!! by Archie McKenzie: A fab little zine I picked up at Printed Festival! I love PSA/info-dump/'LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT A THING' type zines so much. A great little tactile object too, with a nice string binding and lush riso texture.

Zine | I'm Here I'm Here, and TWERP, by Asmina Hollingworth: I grabbed these at Fine Lines: Hollingworth is a recent graduate and will go onto great things, 100%. I'm Here I'm Here is a spiral-bound zine FULL of lovely texture and crunchy, chaotic drawings that lend themselves to the sketchbook-vibes brought on by the binding. TWERP is a large, A4 solo-magazine that showcases Hollington''s cartooning ability with quick, punchy humour. If you're a fan of Caroline Cash, you'll really like their work.

Comic | The Eternal Mountain by Joe Latham: Lovely, lovely work! Joe sold me on this when we met at Fine Lines and he told me about the folklore inspirations for this series, and I wasn't disappointed. He does a fantastic work at using colour, sound effects, and page layout to build vast, etherial enviorments. I can't wait for the next in the series.

Game | Persona 3 Reloaded: Almost at the end of this, it's good fun! I don't love the cast as much as I did in P5 Royal, but it's been good all the same. This entire series is so stylish. I kind of love to just look at the menus.

Looking back:

A fun project from a year or so ago: A small comic I made for volume 3 of the Dramaproof Pigeon Club! I'd just been to the Natural History Museum on a day trip and noticed a lot of pigeons looking in through the windows in the museum. That became a note on my phone, and then DPPC asked for comics about pigeons and dinosaurs. The perfect opportunity! That doesn't happen often. This was a fun little comic and a good way to practice in telling a story in two pages, which I always find valuable. I often lean towards longer formats where panels to linger over multiple pages, so this stretched my muscles in making sure every part of these two little pages were utilised. I also used a more subdued colour pallete than I normally do, inspired by the colours in the brickwork, and walls/carpets in one of the museum wings (the Darwin Wing, maybe?). I think it really helps set the tone, and was a nice change of pace. I'm really happy with how things look here. Stylistically, the linework a little tigher than I'd normally go for, but I think it works for this piece. And the pigeons are cute!!!

'Ancestors' for volume 3 of Dramaproof Pigeon Club

That's it for this round-up! Once Small Press Day is done, I'm working on two new comic projects (yay!), and starting on Thought Bubble prep (owie, the passage of time!,) so next month's post will be packed with stuff. As always, if there's anything you think would be interesting to see, let me know and I'll cover it!

Byeeeee! Abs