This cover deserves an airing on the the net. I drew it around five years ago for Omnivistascope, which I believe is still ongoing. The back cover was rendered in 3D Studio Max and features a starring role for the Star Wars Jedi Training Remote! I’m told all this experimentation and stylistic dissonance makes me hard to employ, and I really should develop a recognisable style. Maybe one day. I’ve even toyed with the idea of starting a second blog just to showcase one particular type of art – maybe the cartoony stuff…

I really am a bad tempered bastard. I can’t help it. I hate all the artifice and posturing nowadays, and yet I can’t seem to ignore it. Everybody defining themselves by what consumer products they like and how succinctly they can sum up an inconsequential news story. So go to hell Twitter. Get off my back Facebook. If that’s the kind of exposure you need to make a living, then I’m glad I’m obscure.

Joining Twitter has opened my eyes to an undreamt of world of bollocks. Folks tell you what they’re eating and where they bought it. Everyone feels the need to be part of Hollywood’s publicity machine and be first to share a link to some crap multimilliondollar blockbuster. And any old captioned picture is linked to without a description other than ‘This will make your day!’. And I’ve now clicked on enough of these to know that it won’t. Why do you all create such dumb, unimaginative online avatars? Is honesty too painful? Too complex? Not commercial enough?

What it boils down to is – exposure at any price. Look at me! Look at me! Aren’t I interesting! And I’m not. Interesting that is. Today I drew something and repaired a greenhouse. Thanks to an unwanted retweet on Twitter I know that today, Zooey Deschanel had her nails done. Gah! I hate you all!

Five people read my blog yesterday. You five – I don’t hate yous.

On another subject, and this could be construed as another rant by a failing artist, I can’t help but notice the slightly incestuous nature of The Phoenix comic. Given that a large percentage of the artists live in Oxford or London or thereabouts it’s beginning to resemble a parish magazine. Of course, in that respect it’s just an echo of the larger world of publishing from whence it tumbled via the DFC. Can it really be? Can the UK’s best cartoonists all live in pissing distance of the Thames?* I hope they’re actively working on widening their gene pool.

*The answer is no, by the way.

AND…because this my ART blog and ranting is a little bit tiring to read or write, here’s a pretty picture. It’s a very rough cover mock for a non-existent book. I present it here because it features a CGI Bone-O! I built him while messing about with Cinema 4D, an expensive piece of software I’m only just beginning to get my head around. I’ve used the ‘toon’ renderer and then tinkered a bit in Photoshop…

First up – I’ve joined Twitter and it’s just as awful as I imagined. So much signal to noise. Still, it’ll die soon – just as MySpace became a ghost town just after I set up a profile. I seem to be the kiss of death to social networking. Digital life imitating real life, eh? Follow me @Mike_DCUK …or don’t. In a minute I’ll go back into my cave and spend an enjoyable hour or two shouting at a wall…

…But firstly, an exclusive of sorts. Somehow there’s been a terrible mix up at Dandy towers and I’ve been allowed to draw a few Monkey Bizness strips for the 2013 annual. It’s always nice when the big beasts are busy and us bottom feeders get thrown a few crumbs .

I found it a little daunting following in John Geering’s footsteps, but enjoyable all the same. Here’s a sneaky peek…

Street Shield, the homeless superhero, is in Pavement this month. Unashamedly retro!

Occasionally, I cast an admiring and somewhat jealous eye over the work of my fellow cartoonists and what always amazes me, apart from the talent and imagination on display, is the impressive work-rate of such luminaries as Nigel Parkinson, Jamie Smart and Lorenzo Etherington. How do they produce so much great work so quickly??? I’ve just spent a fortnight scratching four pages together. I could never make a living out of this!

Of course, I have a day job and I redraw too much due to a lack of confidence, and I’m easily distracted by gardening. Time to chit my earlies, I think.

Anyway, time for some art. Below, my loyal reader, I present the first ever Bone-O, drawn around three years ago! I thought it was lost, but I found it on an old external drive. It was written as a one-off and kind of works, so I thought it could do with a public airing. I even drew a new title card for it! As usual, I have to state that Bone-O is copyright DC Thomson.

2012 is here, and my blog is a year old! I’ve just renewed my hosting package, so this site will be around for a little while longer.

Anyway…Happy New Year and all that. Here’s a song that says it much better than I can. I don’t usually link to YouTube videos or that kind of thing, but this song by Beverley Martyn really deserves to be heard more (it’s written by Randy Newman and features John Paul Jones and Jimmy Page…do you need any more reasons to listen???) Although, be warned, this video does feature a few ladies’ bottoms at the 2 minute thirty mark.

Beverley – Happy New Year!

Here’s a card I drew for Mustard magazine about 5 years ago. They didn’t ask me again, but I thought it was okay.

I had a dig through my archived work and found forty plus Christmas card designs. I’ve probably made more money from drawing these things as a private commission than from comic strips! I should organise a small print run next year and try to sell some.

The design below was also one of my first attempts at colouring in Photoshop, and although it’s passable,obviously I should have been braver with the tones and colours. You live and learn.

Mmmm…I’ve had nothing to post on here for a while. I’ve taken a few weeks out to finish a new draft of my first novel…Impossible Zoo. It’s about a talking snail and the effect a real, live talking sentient animal has on everything we thought we knew about the world. After Christmas, I’ll get ’round to finessing the thing and begin the soul destroying search for a publisher. Why do we do this? Because we can’t help ourselves!

Just finished drawing the Christmas episode of Street Shield (from Pavement magazine), and I’m feeling all Christmassy. Despite being a grouch all the rest of the year, I like Christmas. I can see why our forefathers thought it a good idea to break up the relentless misery of deep winter with a good old knees up!

It also provides a great excuse to draw silly hats on superheroes…

Well, the UK’s newest comic - Strip Magazine - has launched and I’ve managed to find a copy. No easy feat, as distribution appears to be patchy and I’m told that many places are selling out quick. Which is, of course, a good thing.

So I actually feel like a massive arsehole for even posting anything negative about Strip, and take it as read that I want it to succeed, but I wasn’t blown away by the first issue. There was a worrying lack of strong characters, Hookjaw is clunky and hasn’t aged well and none of the stories grabbed me. Three of them had the same break-into-enemy-stronghold-something-goes-wrong plot.

I have no idea how it’ll fly with the XBox/Transformers/Wrestling generation but I’ve feeling it needs to be a touch more subversive, and feature more iconic design work.

Maybe the next issue will be an improvement, and I’ll definitely be buying a copy. If they get the content right, then £2.99 will seem like an absolute bargain.