Essays on Creativity "I'm not talented enough to do art..." I hear this... All. The. Time. I'm not going to claim talent doesn't exist. Of course, people are born with certain gifts but does that mean you're excluded and they get to have all the fun? Absolutely not! What's true with most
Reading March 2024 books Kodi, Jared Cullum I first came across Jared Cullum randomly on YouTube a couple of years ago with his video on his process for making comics with watercolour was recommended by the algorithm. It just so happened to be coming up to Christmas at the time so I put Kodi
Essays on Creativity Re-gain the child-like fun Give a kid some paper and pencils and just watch them work. They draw anything and everything that comes to mind. They don't care if it's logical or not. A dinosaur driving a sports car in space? Damn right! They're not bogged down by
Reading February 2024 books It's been a slow month in terms of number of books finished this month but the quality has been high so it's been a good month for reading. Dune, Frank Herbert My friend bought me this book some time last year after hearing I'd
Art Just a little... Regular readers will know I've been chasing various creative pursuits. I've been making sketchbooks, comics and writing. But I'm always wanting to do more. One area I feel I've been lacking is in the area of what I'll call general
Music Less Than Jake & Bowling For Soup, Leeds 2024 It's been a while since we'd been to a gig so we were looking forward to a night out in Leeds. I'm a big fan of Less Than Jake and it's been 10 years (almost to the day) since we last saw
Quotes Quotes #4 It's been a few weeks since I shared one of these quotes so I thought I'd get one done to send you in to the weekend. You can have 12 months of results or 12 months of regrets This feels like it's more apt
Apps Audiobooks on Spotify A few months ago, Spotify rolled out audiobooks on their platform. I went to have a look at the selection and there were a few books I could get but most had an additional cost on top of my Premium account so I left those alone. A couple of weeks
Reading January 2024 books Rather than leaving a round up of all the books I've read until the end of the year, I'm going to try giving them a quick write-up on a monthly basis. They're not all going to be in-depth book reviews, just general parting thoughts.
Quotes Quotes #3 Last weekend I blasted through the series Edge of the Unknown with Jimmy Chin on Disney+, the first episode features climber Alex Honnold, most well-known for free soloing El Capitan back in 2017, documented in the 2018 film, Free Solo. During his episode on Disney+, it shows him doing free
Quotes Quotes #2 I came across a letter written by Kurt Vonnegut randomly over on Threads and it struck a chord with me. One part in particular: Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame,
Comics Daily(ish) comics As I mentioned on my recent quote post, I recently started drawing small, single page comic strips every day or as close to daily as I can (so far I've only missed two days) so I thought I'd just write down some thoughts on it, if
Quotes Quotes #1 For a few months now, I've been writing down all sorts of quotes and snippets of wisdom. I was thinking about what to do with them and decided it might be fun to pick my favourite quote of the week (and perhaps some honorable mentions), and maybe write
Reading My reading year, 2023 Completely nicking the idea from Austin Kleon, right down to the post title and format. Here are all the books I managed to read in 2023. I don't think I'm going to do a break down of each book. I'll still be writing this
2024 goals Given that I wasn't at all successful with last years goals, I was in two minds whether to even bother setting any this year. But then I figured it's worth having something to aim for. After all, my reading goal led to a beneficial habit, even
2023 review I'm going to cut to the chase, I had a terrible year when it came to hitting the goals I set out last January. Aside from blogging more, I basically didn't hit any of my goals. Comics On the comic front, I didn't hit
Photo Journal Bolton Abbey, December 2023 This weekend we took a trip north up to Bolton Abbey with my Mum and Stepdad. We had tickets to take a ride on the Polar Express (which was brilliant, by the way) so we decided to head up there a little bit earlier and take a walk down to
Process Side quests I feel like I've been gaining some traction with my projects recently. Last week, I finished colouring 4 comic pages which is a current personal best, a rate I plan to maintain for the next few weeks until the last 11 pages are coloured. Alongside that, I'
Technology Nick Cave on ChatGPT (read by Stephen Fry) Beautifully sums up why creative people, and humans in general, should approach reliance on AI with caution. As humans, we so often feel helpless in our own smallness. Yet we still find the resilience to do and make beautiful things and this is where the meaning of life resides. Nature
Books The Creative Act by Rick Rubin A few months ago, I found myself with a free Saturday afternoon. The kids were at my Mum's for the day, Lu was getting her hair done and on this particular afternoon, The Piece Hall was hosting an afternoon of music including a local band I'd
Journal An illustrated journal If you've been following along with my blog recently, you'll have noticed a slight increase in frequency of posts and some of those posts relating to my various endeavours to keep the creative momentum going and I've got another one for you! You'
Games Hoa I wouldn't define myself as a gamer by any stretch. I've had a Switch for a couple of years which I play periodically, generally I go through phases of playing a particular game for a while before taking a break from playing at all. When I
Process One sheet of paper... I've been struggling with motivation to get my comic finished. It's been a month since I last wrote about my comic progress, partly because there hasn't been all that much to report. I enlisted some help in getting some of the flat colours done
Photography Back to the camera I recently came across the Camp Snap Camera through Instagram, a "screen-free digital camera" with the aim of giving you the freedom of taking pictures like you would with a phone but without the distraction or temptation of looking at apps while you're out and about.
Personal Reading goal for 2023: revisited We're into October now so it's been 9 months since I set myself the reading goal for this year. I'm going to be honest from the outset, I doubt I'll hit the goal of 50 books. With 31 books left and only
