Bookbinding Making stuff Recently, I've been really intrigued by bookbinding. I've taken to watching many videos on YouTube showing how you can approach various types of books, how to stitch and glue them together, how to make your own book cloth etc. This weekend, I wanted to try something
Travel and places Scotland, April 2023 This Easter weekend, we went up to Scotland to stay with my brother-in-law for a couple of days. We mostly did stuff around Galashiels where he lives but on Saturday we took a trip into Edinburgh for a walk around the castle. Here are a few pics I took.
Life in Numbers Life in numbers: March '23 Another month has flown by and we're already heading in to Spring. Summer will soon be here and before we know it, I'll be doing a round-up of the whole year... But before then, here's March: Podcasts: 59 episodes, 61 hours It's
Technology Slowly changing habits Aside from Instagram, there's been a steady decline in my active posting on social media. I'll sometimes have a burst of replying to people on the likes of Twitter but I'm mostly now a passive consumer of the content on there. Same with Facebook,
Technology Sleepwalking to ruin? Talk of AI has been rampant for a while on the internet and it seems to have trickled down to the point where it's becoming a regular discussion at work. I have what I feel is a healthy scepticism about AI, particularly AI-generated imagery. We've seen
Be the river, not the rock I came across this great video of illustrator Oliver Jeffers talking through 15 things to think about when it comes to a creative career. His point about being flexible, particularly with rejection resonated with me. I haven't historically done pitches so haven't really had to deal
Technology Nokia bringing back the old school This week I randomly came across the Nokia website and learned they've got a whole host of Feature phones on their website. I don't know if they're all refreshed classics like the 3310 or if some are just brand new models but I was
Life in Numbers Life in numbers: February '23 Following on from last month's round-up, this post covers some of the content I've been consuming during February. Podcasts: 39 episodes, 43 hours Last month I put in a league table and said I'd decide whether to include it again. Well, this month I&
Personal To skate or not to skate? I spent a lot of time as a kid skateboarding. My brothers and I basically lived and breathed it. Didn't matter if it was hot or cold outside, if the ground was dry, we were off skating somewhere. Eventually (and regretfully), I gave up skating in favour of
Personal Thanks, Instagram. No, really! I didn't used to watch Reels a lot. For a long time, I used Instagram old-school-style just scrolling through my feed. But eventually, it got me. I got sucked in to watching all sorts of random crap. Some of it was funny, some of it wasn't
Personal So much free time... This weekend, Lu took the kids to see her Mum for a few days. I stayed home because I'd already planned a night out with my friends and someone needed to look after the cat so it all worked out. After spending years working your life around kids,
Animation New appreciation for animation I’ve always loved animation. It’s been one of those things I’ve never really grown out of. I still watch animated films and TV shows without needing my kids around as an excuse. When I was a kid, I used to try my hand at making animation using
Life in Numbers Life in numbers: January '23 The On The Side community has been pretty active this month with lots of blog posts and links to pages on personal sites which cover off ongoing stats for things like health and fitness, films and podcasts. While I debate whether to set up my own dedicated stats page, I
Comics Beorn colour test Back in October '22, I was scrolling through Twitter when an artist I follow posted that he was looking for a colourist: Alright, Monday morning folks! I'm looking for a colorist for Beorn! If you, or anyone you know, might be interested, please DM me with details
Comics Why do I make comics? I've been fortunate to appear as a guest on some of my favourite comics podcasts and the question of why I make comics came up. At the time of recording, the question kind of took me by surprise and my answer was kind of rubbish. Thinking back it
Personal Bound to books A discussion in the OnTheSide Slack community was prompted by a post by Sam King about getting rid (or keeping hold) of physical media like CDs and DVDs. The discussion also turned to books with some members getting rid of books after reading them but I really struggle to do
Music Reclaiming my Likes playlist It was a number of years ago now and I can't quite recall the exact circumstances but there was a period of time when Spotify limited the number of artists/albums I could save to my Library. Maybe I was on a free account at the time? I
Comics Barnacles: "Sea Sick" I wrote and drew this comic in waves as I tried to battle a self-inflicted creative crisis in the second half of last year. While it wasn't the cause of the crisis, it helped pull me back out. Colouring comics is something I've always struggled with
Personal 2023 Goals Today I recorded an episode of Make Life Work with Si and Mike and the focus of the episode was a bit of reflection on 2022 and looking ahead to 2023. I've already set out my reading goal for 2023 (which, I forgot to mention on the podcast!
Personal Reading goal for 2023 I didn't do too badly in 2022 for reading, at least when it comes to comics. I had a steady flow of reading material throughout the year but I wasn't really paying any attention to logging what I'd read and when so aside from
Ugh... New Year I love the run up to Christmas. I like seeing the decorations up, lights everywhere brightening up the dark Winter evenings, the tunes, the films! All this fun stuff that sort of takes your mind off the fact that it's cold and miserable outside. I think this is
Crisis averted (for now) Over the last few months, I’ve been in a bit of a chasm of almost crippling self-criticism when it comes to making comics. I’m one panel away from finishing art for issue 2 of my comic which I managed to rewrite and draw in the space of a
What do I do with you? Sometimes I forget this blog is even here. I sometimes refer back to previous posts but these days I rarely have a thought that I think "I should write this as a blog post". I generally stick to posting thoughts on Twitter but maybe I should make more
Returning to bullet journal A few years ago I came across Bullet Journal [https://bulletjournal.com/], a framework for organising your days using just a note book. I've used it on-and-off for years. I took a break last year trying to opt for a more collaborative approach using the systems at work
Art O brother fan art process Last week, I got a hankering to watch O Brother, Where Art Thou? and after I'd watched it, I got a hankering to draw some of the characters. As I did most of the work digitally, it was fairly easy for me to export the various steps as
