Catty

I gave this to Bethan the other day when she came around for lunch. She seemed to like it!

The current state of things...

Here's what's going on in my sketch book at the moment: the current character concepts for my latest comic. This week I hope to get the story boarding done too.

Moira, Melissa and me.

Um... so, um yes. Well, I haven't actually been making many toys at the moment because I've been writing. So that's good. But I just wish there were more hours in the day. Today for instance: a bit of a dolls leg, a bit of a coin purse, an old romance resurfaces with Moira's red-headed lover (and now I have to sort out a lot of continuity stuff that I've been avoiding for ages!) and of course notes for the snow story. She has moved in now (yes four years after I started the damn story) and the happy family are about to eat their first meal together. Not sure what will happen but something will, I've just (as usual) got one line in my head which all else will have to evolve from: "She liked the ice-cream very much." Oh yes, and I've written the last page of the story now. I don't know if it will stay the same in later rewrites, but I think it gets across the loneliness of James and the hopelessness of his life now. So that's all good. One thing still bothers me though: the smell of chicken cooking in the second scene... Would Melissa cook chicken for James? Realistically, would she? Maybe she'd wait for James to come home and do the cooking? I am hoping that Greg or Sarah can look at the draft for me and help me with some of these details.

Message

From Pale Dress by the Audreys:

"and i try to help
but it's too late in the night to pretend
yeah it's too late, it's always too late
too late and you want her again

you want her, you want her all over again
you want her, you want her all over again
you want her, you'll start up all over again"

You know who you are.

Thank you.

There were certain books that I had when I was a child that were just so precious to me, for their stories and their sweetness. This one, I have finally managed to find on ebay after a long time of searching. When I was about five I used to borrow it all the time from the town library, intrigued by its smallness and by the fact that the main characters were an ant and a bee. It inspired many of the comics I made as a child and still inspires me now. My favourite page was the last one, shown above, as it amazed me that the author had known just what I was thinking when I worried about the skate going over the bump!
I was also very inspired by book I had that was one of those record, read along books.... It was called The little house, I think and was one of the first things that made me think about houses and cities and other inanimate objects having spirits of their own, another theme that comes up often in my art and writing today. These things and many, many others from childhood have had such a deep influence on me and my work that I often wish I could find the people who wrote them and just say a heartfelt "thankyou."

Purple Bear