Some of you are familiar with how I run my life from a series of cascading lists, which I started doing in 2022. I wrote about it on Tumblr last year when someone asked how I juggle having a job and making art without going crazy. This system has made the shift to unemployment/freelance a lot smoother - I didn’t realise how much groundwork I’d laid and how much I’d prepared for the next stage.

There’s still a few things to do - setting up business numbers and figuring out how I am going to do accounting and admin is the part I’m least looking forward to.

This month I did a poster for an upcoming short noir film called The Prospector, written and directed by Sammy Holden of obscurefilm in Manchester. They describe it as: In a heightened neo-noir world, a drifting trans masc escort (Gabriel Harris) meets a man who can tell his future (K.C. Finn).

The film uses tarot card imagery/inspiration and the main character is linked to The Fool, so of course I used the Rider-Waite card as the basis for one of the thumbnails. The film even has a dog, which is perfect.

I did the pencils digitally.

Then on to inks with a little greyscale tone.

The film palette leans to blue and pink and Sammy asked for a two-tone finish to match, although I did nudge the blue towards teal to stop it from being overpowering.

I added some touches of carmine to the pink for depth, and detailed with paint markers.

I don’t usually adjust the image beyond getting it as close to the original as possible, but I wanted the more dramatic contrast to stand up against the logo and layout (done in Illustrator).

It won’t be out until later this year. Sammy is sending it to festivals but if it becomes available to watch online, I’ll let you know.

I spent some time this past month writing out everything I want to get done by the end of the year. I want to use the next three months to figure out just what I can do when I’m not working full time, when I can make art my priority, because I genuinely have no idea what I’m capable of. I’m looking forward to finding out.

Beast of the Month

Sketchcards

Website Updates

All back-end stuff, zero fun.

Upcoming Shows

New York Comic Con - October 8th to 11th - not tabling, but I’ll be wandering around with a bag of zines and stickers. If you see me, say hi.

Pittsburgh Zine Fair - October 18th

Recommendations

Joe Strummer’s London Calling Radio Show - I appreciate that after some tracks, he says “there’s only one song in the entire world we can play next” and is correct every time.

Colour Theory - way back in art school, someone told me that I was terrible at colour and should stick to black and white. This has plagued me for years, and I feel like I struggle with colour and second-guess myself a lot. A year or two ago I signed up for an online course (I usually avoid doing art things online) because I really like the way this artist worked with and talked about colour, it seemed a lot closer to how I wanted to work than the other things I’d read/watched that focused on realism. It got pushed to the bottom of the priority pile, but I’ve finally started it.