I haven’t updated this blog for a while – huge apologies for that. It’s been a hectic Autumn and I’ve been concentrating on making sure the strip is always updated on GoComics rather than posting on this blog. But now I have a holiday in the States coming up, spending Christmas with Linda’s family, so that’ll give me the chance to catch up. 

I’m writing this on my new iPad pro. Yes, I’ve finally given in to temptation and bought a tablet. Why did I wait until now? Because up to now tablets have just been about consuming material rather than creating it. The Pro comes with a huge screen, a cover that concerts into a real keyboard, and best of all, a stylus which means I can start drawing straight onto the screen as if I was drawing on paper. That is going to save me so much time – not only that the 4G Sim card means I’ll be able to draw or post whenever I get a snatched moment no matter where I am.

I’ll be catching up at a succession of different airports on the way to Albuquerque, so expect to see a lot of posts suddenly appearing on Saturday 12th December.

Guy Fawkes night… That seems such a long time ago. Note the properly drawn fireworks explosions in this year’s Bonfire Night strips. Up to now I’ve tried to recreate fireworks using Photoshop filters but was never happy with the effect they made. Now I’ve gone back to basics, using a combination of ink and a ballpoint Tipp-ex applicator to create these explosions full of Kirby crackle. I think they’re much more in style with the rest of the drawing.