Hello everyone!
Hope you’re all well! I have some exiting news, I’ve made a new comic!
Here look at it! It’s about the wonders of falling asleep.
As it is a fairly short comic so it’s not being released in book form but rather a snazzy lithograph poster! It’s fairly big (A2) poster of fantastic quality and comes signed and numbered for £8. The edition is 250 and once they’re gone they’re gone forever :0.
Posters can be ordered from my shop right here!
Thanks for reading!
Neil
Hello! Hope you’re all doing well!
Firstly I am super sorry I haven’t updated the blog in a while I have been mega busy with some projects and there’s one I’d like to show off today.
This is the cover for my new book.
This has been in the making for roughly the last 2 months, although it’s been in planning for a lot longer. It’s a fictional comic in which I’ve done my best to marry together some of my favourite subjects: space and astronomy, science and soppyness. It’s told from the perspective of a female amateur astronomer detailing some of her finds and wonders and I’m really proud of it. Here’s one of the 28 pages.
You can pre-order it right now from my shop!
It’s going to be available as of next Friday (21st) although if you’re local to Glasgow you should come along to the launch night! Where my good friend Gill Hatcher is also launching her new book ‘Bunny Behind the Moon’. It’ll be a super night and we’ll be doing some drawing and colouring in and other fun activities.
So that’s my big news! I’ll keep you all updated with other book news, in the meantime take care.
And keep looking up!
Neil
Just a short wee update today.
Last week I got a phonecall asking if I wanted to do a comic strip for Kerrang! Magazine and I was like ‘Hell yea!’
For those outside of the ukelele (that’s what the U.K is short for) Kerrang! Is a widely distributed weekly rock/metal magazine.
Anyways my strip is about metal singer Oli Sykes and his pet dinosaur. Here’s a wee sneaky peek!
The magazine is in most U.K newsagents until Wednesday.
Take care!
Neil
I wouldn’t really call myself political. I mean, I have my views and opinions obviously but I don’t tend to voice them over the internet or put them into my pictures. But to contradict myself entirely I’m going to vent a wee opinion right now: I don’t like political cartooning. You know the one’s you find in newspapers with caricatures of politicians and celebrities? I have no love for them whatsoever. Although there is something I hate even more and that’s guns. I hate all the guns. Every single one, especially people behind guns that think it’s okay to shoot other people.
So I made a comic presenting a possible alternative.
Now, I should point out here that I don’t approve of violence towards animals. However, if I could choose between animals being shot or given a fair fight I’d much rather they were able to defend themselves.
Until next time!
Neil
Tea eh? Tea is just great.
I love tea so much I made a comic about it.
That right there is a prime illustrated example of the beneficial effects of having a nice cup of tea. Personally I like coming home, sticking the kettle on, getting that tea bag in there (with a sweetener as I am an old lady) putting the hot water in and squishing the hell out of that tea bag like there’s no tomorrow before putting in a wee bit of milk. Y’know sometimes a nice cup of tea just sorts you out. That’s what inspired the comic actually. Maybe it’s the effects of being somewhat a caffeine addict but after my first sip I tend to feel a lot more focused, relaxed and ready to do whatever work I’ve got on that day.
Jings I could bang on about tea all day, actually nah, I’ll just draw another picture. I actually used real tea to illustrate this.
Actually the other day I got an offer to exchange one of my pictures for a box full of tea from Chash Tea and as you can imagine I wasn’t going to pass that up JUST LOOK AT IT ALL.
I’ve sampled most of these and I have to say this is grade A tea which has been superbly made with care and attention.
Right I’m off to put the kettle on.
Next week: Biscuits.
Neil
Hey Everyone hope you’re all well!
I’ve got some excited news! I’ve made a new book! AW YEA.
It’s called ‘Seven Days in Berlin’. It’s a journal style travelogue comic that follows on (or can be read on its own) from ‘Nine Lines of Metro’ my travelogue of Barcelona.
Let’s see what it looks like.
It details all the stuff I got up to while at the same time telling a nice story about exploring, friends and Berlin. There also might be a little romance but shhhh.
Just for you I’m going to show you a few pages, here ya go.
If you’d like to see what happens in the other 37 pages stop by my Etsy shop and get yourself a copy! It’s only £4($6) or you can buy the travelogue set for just £6($9). All copies come signed by me with a little message!
I worked super hard on these and it’s little things like buying a comic or some cards that keep me going as an artist and enable me to keep doing what I do so please have a look.
Thank you!
Neil.
Jobs. Jobs eh? They’re funny things. I’ve found that a good number of people I know don’t like their jobs and a good number don’t have one and struggle to get one. It’s especially sad to see post-graduate students just out of university with nowhere to go.
Well I don’t have any answers I’m afraid, but I can tell you my story (which may or may not help) through the medium of comics!
Now, let me elaborate on this a bit. Basically as you can see I was unemployed for a good while after coming out of college and generally was a bit sick of working in shops etc. I knew I wanted to do something creative, either art or music or anything in between. As people get when they’re unemployed I got a bit figity and felt like I should be doing something. On a whim I called my local community centre and asked if I could come in and help out, not long later I came in and gutted the art room and got started.
After a while I got to teaching kids and old folks arts and crafts and bits and bobs and when the funding came I got some paid work from it, doing I enjoyed doing, fab!
Now in the arts, funding comes and goes so after a year or so that was me back to square one, but with that experience I was now a lot better off to get a job more suited to me.
For the past year or so I’ve been working for a charity, basically I work part-time (doing my own art the rest of the time) with people with dementia and alzheimer’s finding ways to communicate through arts, crafts and music. Although it has its challenges, overall it’s very rewarding and I’m super happy there.
I guess my point here is that I’d never have got that job if it wasn’t for volunteering so if you’re in the position I was in 2 years ago it’s definitely worth a try even for a few hours a week. Even if you don’t feel you need the experience it does make a difference to other people’s lives which is why I still pop into my community centre to this day.
And that’s my wee story.
Take care!
Neil
Hello everyone!
I hope you’ve all been keeping well and that your weather is sunny.
I have come before you today to share exciting news. I have finished a new book! *trumpets*
And it looks like this.
In short it’s an illustrated travelogue from a trip I took to Barcelona last month. It’s done in the style of a journal comic and details all the people I met, places I saw and stuff I got up to. I realize this sounds like a comic version of someone showing you their boring holiday photos but without spoiling anything there’s a good bit more to it and I’ve put a lot of myself into it.
Most of it was drawn on holiday hence why the panels are fairly minimum. I guess I just wanted to get it all down when I was there, in fear of getting home and forgetting little bits. I’m actually really happy with how it turned out, at the time it started out as a little drawing exercise just to see if I could make a comic about stuff that happened that day but when I got into the flow of it I found I had so much more stuff to say and it ended up spilling into a 22 page book.
Anyways there’s only going to be 100 copies of it and I’m selling them for £3 (just over $4) . They’ve all been signed and numbered and come with a wee original drawing too!
If you fancy one for yourself head over to my etsy shop!
Thanks for reading, I’ll be back soon!
Take care
nx
Hello everyone!
Hope you’re all well! As some of you may know I draw a weekly web comic called Jonbot vs Martha, which is written by comics blogger Colin Bell.
Anyhoo this week I thought ‘Hey, why don’t I try and write a strip?’ So I did and here it is!
As you can tell I have quite a simple writing style. In fact my finished script was just 6 words and then 3 lines of ‘hahahahahaha’.
Hope you enjoyed it! There’s more at Jonbotvsmartha.com
P.S there’s only 1 first edition ghost book left :0 it’s here.
Take care!
nx
Hello!
Hope you are well and having a great new year!
As many of you know I get a little bit excited and giddy when I start blabbing about space, I usually get the space bug periodicity around the winter months when the skies are darker and there’s less daylight hours. Anyways I thought I’d make a few pictures about some of the wee bits I’ve learned so far about space and astronomy.
I hope you find them insightful!
Extra fact! The north star’s real name is ‘Polaris’.
Extra fact! In 5 million years our own sun will become a nebula, I am gutted I won’t be around to see it.
Extra fact! From a distance binary stars just look like normal stars, it’s not until you peer through a telescope you can see that it’s actually 2 stars really close together.
Fascinating!
Well I hope you enjoyed my post, as always any feedback is more than welcome!
Take care!
nx
Neil Slorance 