Katie Green Bean

The Golden Moth Illumination Deck

2012-03-05T20:08:00.003Z

It's not often that I post about other artists' work here (ok, it's not often that I post at all these days), but I'm making an exception for my talented and dear friend Aijung Kim.

I've been a fan of Aijung's work since I discovered it via this interview on Pikaland: she is an artist and printmaker, creator of beautiful limited edition prints and zines. I'm lucky enough to have several of her pieces decorating my studio, many of her charming and whimsical zines, and to have collaborated with her on a conversation comic in the Green Bean, Volume 1 Issue 8.

Aijung's current project combines everything I love about her work, and in fact the very words she uses to describe the work herself: images, storytelling, games, and an element of mystery. The Golden Moth Illumination deck will be a set of 68 cards, not unlike tarot cards, that can be used to bring insight and awareness to a situation. Aijung offers card readings, to which she brings not the vagueness and mysticism of a tarot reading, but her skill and wisdom as an artist: a creator and interpreter of images.

I am so excited to have a deck of these cards for myself, so I was thrilled when I hear Aijung was launching a Kickstarter project to raise the funds to have them made. The cards will be printed in blue and gold on 100% recycled paper, in an edition of 250 signed and numbered.

You can read more about the cards, and if you like make a pledge to fund the project (in return for a whole array of lovely goodies) on her Kickstarter project page.

Settling

2012-02-24T08:16:00.003Z

2012 has been a bit of a crazy year for me so far. I had been looking forward to it for so long: it would be the year when I would finally sit down and draw my graphic novel, after literally years of preparation. Perhaps I idealised it too much, or perhaps I wasn't as prepared as I thought I was. Perhaps it was just circumstances beyond my control.

I have spent the majority of the year so far being unwell, which, although now getting better has been slowing me down since before Christmas. So I started the year behind with work, and it only got worse. The Green Bean was (and still is) running very late, and was in no way ready to start my 400+ page drawing task. Then, on January 12th my Grandad passed away, and everything ground to a halt.

My Grandad was an extraordinary fellow, and a brief mention here will do no justice to his 95 years. Instead, I will be dedicating a whole issue of the Green Bean (March-April 2012) to my memories of him, and have plans for him to star in my next graphic novel as well. For now, suffice it to say that I miss him, and adjusting to the loss has been quite hard.

But I'm writing this post because at last the dust is settling. I might have had grand ideas about how 2012 would be, but clearly circumstances and my body have had other plans, and being forced to stop completely, take stock and make some serious decisions seems not to have been a bad thing.

Next week, I will be leaving my part-time job.

That's right: for the rest of this year and well into the next, I will be a full-time graphic novelist. This is something of a surreal moment, because I always imagined my decision to become a full-time artist would happen in a blaze of glory and success, whereas in fact I feel like it's been half forced upon me by circumstance and ill health, and I'm actually quite sad about leaving my job.

Still, I know it is the right decision, and my work on Lighter Than My Shadow will be the better for it. Even since I made the difficult choice, I have felt better and more able to work. Finally, just a little later than I'd planned, I feel like I'm settling into my graphic novel writing routine rather nicely.

My day begins with a walk. It's just beginning to feel like spring here, and sunny mornings especially are filled with birds singing as I climb the hill where I can see the whole city.

When I return to my studio, I warm up my drawing hand with a few Green Bean pages before moving on to my graphic novel.

I'm hoping 2012 will be a bit of a smoother ride from here on in, and that the January-February Green Bean will be ready for my dear and patient readers very soon, and that it will be worth waiting for.

The Arvon Foundation

2012-02-20T09:06:00.004Z

I've blogged before about the Arvon Foundation writing courses I've been lucky enough to attend. I cannot stress enough how much they helped me on my way with my graphic novel, and last November I was lucky enough to return to the course as a guest tutor.

Also last year, Arvon asked if I would be willing to be interviewed about my experiences for a short promotional film. I reluctantly said yes....I'm not terribly comfortable with being on camera even for photos, so the prospect of being filmed didn't exactly fill me with excitement.

It was April last year when the film-maker and cameraman visited my studio. They were both lovely, and made me feel right at ease. It was so long ago I had almost forgotten about it when I was told the film was ready, but think the result is great and I'm so glad I got to be a part of it. Apparently there will be a longer version soon, but for now here is the short one:

A short film about Arvon from Arvon Foundation on Vimeo.

Self Portrait

2012-02-02T18:52:00.002Z

For ages, I've been meaning to draw a new self portrait. I started wearing glasses again (I had been a contact lens wearer since I was 13) last autumn, and I has a new haircut too. I'd been putting the task off for months until today when I just felt in the mood.

The Green Bean

2012-01-22T20:13:00.004Z

As subscribers and regular readers will have noticed, the new issue of the Green Bean is running a little bit late. I'm grateful that all my readers are so lovely, understanding and patient with me when this happens: illness and family matters have got in the way, meaning that Volume 3 of the Green Bean will be a month or so late off the mark.

But perhaps I'm skipping ahead of myself a bit....I didn't even pause last year to celebrate The Green Bean becoming two volumes old!

I never really considered when I started out making zines - which was not quite two years ago - that they would turn into such a success. I knew I would enjoy the process because I love everything about drawing, designing and making books. I didn't think that I would find enough support from people who wanted to buy my work to extend the Green Bean to two full volumes, and beyond...

At the beginning of 2012, the Green Bean has more subscribers than at any point since it began in May 2010. At my latest count, it has sold well over 1200 individual copies to readers all over the world. I feel like a proud parent.

So instead of lamenting the fact that Volume 3 is going to start late, I'm celebrating how far the Green Bean has come. I'm so grateful to everyone who has supported it - from someone who bought a single copy due to my 'hard sell' at a comics fair, to faithful subscribers who've been with me from the start. And everyone in between. Thank you: the Green Bean would not have made it this far without you.

As a small gesture of thanks, and something to tide you over until the belated next issue comes out, I've decided to run a special offer: 3 for the price of 2 on all back issues from now until the end of January!

....and Volume 3 will begin soon. I have every intention of making it the best yet.

While I've been away...

2012-01-18T20:28:00.004Z

Hello dear blog readers! Sorry things continue to be quiet around here. I am partially absorbed with settling in to the drawing regime of my graphic novel (sneak peeks will come soon, I promise), but also still not feeling my best. I think I should be well again soon, things are headed in the right direction, but while I'm not firing on all cylinders I'm having to prioritise tasks. As someone with a trying-to-be-Superwoman habit, this does not come easy!

In the last couple of months that my blog has been quiet, I've been fortunate enough to be mentioned, featured and interviewed in lots of exciting places....I hope these links go some way to filling the gaps I've left here on my blog.

First up, you can listen to a podcast of the talk I gave at the Graphic Medicine conference in Leeds last November, as part of Comics Forum. I also urge you to check out all the other podcasts on the site from other speakers at the event - I've enjoyed being able to catch up with the excellent talks I missed due to timetable clashes (though I haven't yet found the courage to listen to my own!).

I was lucky enough to be interviewed and featured in issue 27 of Digital Artist Magazine as part of an article on zine making and zine culture (click on the image below to enlarge and read).

Also in December, Bethany from the blog Bristol Craft paid a visit to my studio. We drank tea, chatted and she took photos and wrote this lovely blog about what she found here.

Then in January, I was honoured to find my name included on this list of Women in Comics in the UK and Ireland by Maura McHugh. The list of links sprang from a number of people asking the question "Where are the women working in comics in the UK and Ireland?". Without a doubt, they are here and how very nice to be listed with them!

And finally, I have said relatively little (so far) of my involvement with two great British comics anthologies towards the end of last year: Nelson and Solipsistic Pop 4. I have much to say on the subject of my experience working on them and about anthologies in general, but that's a blog post for another time. For now, have a read of this lovely review of Solipsistic Pop 4 (with lots of pictures) by Richard Bruton on the Forbidden Planet International Blog.

Of course if you would like printed copies of either piece of work I did for Solipsistic Pop 4 then you should definitely buy the comic which is limited to just 1000 copies. However, I am also selling high quality, archival art prints of my colour piece, Maelstrom II, in my etsy shop.

Goals for 2012

2012-01-06T21:23:00.002Z

Things have been a little quiet around here (again) lately....

I hope all you lovely readers had a great festive season and a nice start to the new year. Have you set your goals for 2012?

Looking over my complicated list of (largely unachieved) goals from last year, I've decided that for 2012 I need to keep it simple. I've been absent from my blog for a while because I've been a bit unwell, but I always find such times are good to slow down, take stock, refocus on what's important.

With that in mind, here is what I hope to achieve in 2012:

Whether that is a simple or formidable task remains to be seen. I'll keep you posted.

A Sad Happy-Ending Story About My Rubber Stamps

2011-12-16T13:38:00.007Z

About 18 months ago, I designed a 'thank you' rubber stamp so I could make some little cards to include with orders I send out to show my appreciation for mail order customers. I was inspired to do so by Amy of Pikaland.

I've been sending out thank you carrots with my orders now for a long time, and was still very happy with the design. However, earlier this week when I pulled the stamp out to use, I discovered that it had had a disagreement with my scalpel in the drawer and was missing a letter :(

I was a bit sad at my discovery, and so searched on my computer for the original image to order a replacement. It turns out that I didn't save the image, so I would have to design a new thank you stamp. And I'm so glad I did!

So, sad as I am to bid goodbye to the carrot (I have few cards left, so there will be a few more of them heading out into the world), I am delighted that future customers in my etsy shop will be thanked by this friendly fellow.

(My new fox gloves came from AlyTheRed on etsy)

Feeling Festive!

2011-12-12T06:50:00.004Z

Wow, I don't know what has happened to December so far, but I feel like I've hardly had chance to sit down. I've mostly been busy keeping on schedule with my graphic novel, making the final preparations to start the drawing (!!!) in the new year. Meanwhile, the time has crept away...

Today is the last day for Christmas orders in my etsy shop....I'm afraid if you live outside the UK it's too late for me to guarantee things will arrive on time, but if you live here then any orders placed in the next 24 hours will certainly be dispatched on or before the last posting date.

While I've been too busy to blog, I've had a very fruitful month in my etsy shop and am fast approaching the landmark of my 500th sale. To celebrate that, and because I'm feeling festive, I'm offering 25% off everything in my shop for one day only! Use the code FeelingFestive, which will be valid until 7am GMT tomorrow morning. Happy last-minute shopping!

Last Birds!

2011-11-28T19:02:00.004Z

Over the weekend I listed the last few bird necklaces in my etsy shop. I may make more in the future, but as part of scaling down my other projects to focus on my graphic novel in 2012, I won't be making any jewellery for a while. So for the forseeable future, these are the final few:

Also, this is a good moment to remind you that if you live outside the European Union, today is the very last day you can place an order in my etsy shop for it to arrive in time for Christmas. If you live in Europe you have another whole week, and in the UK you have two. Happy shopping and thanks so much for choosing to support my work!

Thought Bubble Thoughts

2011-11-22T07:07:00.007Z

For those of you who don't know, I spent the better part of the week before last in Leeds, a fine city in the north of England, for Thought Bubble, the UK's largest sequential art festival. It was such an incredible experience, jam-packed with events, talks and crossing paths with some highly talented and highly lovely people.

I'm sorry that this post will be woefully unillustrated - I was so busy havign a good time that I forgot to take any photos!

I arrived in Leeds late Wednesday night to be there in time for Thursday's Comics Forum conference day on Graphic Medicine: Visualizing the Stigma of Illness. I would have chosen to attend this conference as a guest even if I hadn't been a speaker myself: the lineup was brilliant and the day resulted in the purchase of several books to add to my library.

The day began with a talk by Sarah Leavitt, a Canadian graphic novelist whose book Tangles has just been published in the UK by Jonathan Cape. She deals with her Mother's illness with Alzheimer's disease, how her and her family cope with that, and how it affects her as a person. Because the theme of the conference was stigma, Sarah focused on instances in the book that deal with the indignities and personal boundaries that have to be crossed in caring for a sick person.

Following Sarah was a talk by Lucia Miranda-Morla about a french graphic novel,

La Parenthèse by Elodie Durand (which I have ordered from amazon.fr and await eagerly). I had never heard of the work before, and was so inspired by the imagery and the artist's use of abstraction to portray her illness, her feelings and her experiences. I'm so excited to read the book in full - I hope my mediocre french is up to the task! - and to take some lessons from it into the creation of my own graphic novel.

The following panel was my own presentation, alongside my presentation partner from Laydeez Do Comics earlier in the year, Andrew Godfrey. Andrew has a fantastic presence and sense of humour that captures his audience from the outset. What inspires me most is his attitude to his (terminal) illness, and in Leeds Andrew spoke of how that attitude differs from the 'norm', or the social standard of speaking about and dealing with terminal illness. Following Andrew's humour was no easy feat with my bleak images from my own book, but despite my nerves the audience were very receptive, supportive and jolly nice.

The afternoon's session began with a tough decision to miss out talks by Nicola Streeten (creator of Billy, Me and You, a graphic novel about grief and recovery after the death of her son - yet another I purchased over the weekend) and Brick (creator of Depresso). I chose instead to attend the session where Karrie Fransman was speaking on The Body as a Canvas: exploring social attitudes to women's bodies and eating habits in her forthcoming graphic novel The House That Groaned. Karrie's talk was fascinating, particularly getting to know some characters from her book who embody extremes of eating behaviour: both extremes that I have visited personally. After Karrie, Fiorenze Iuliano spoke about Charles Burns graphic novel Black Hole, yet another I have added to my reading list.

In the second afternoon session, I listened to even more excellent presentations: Mita Mihato on a David Small's Stitches, a favourite graphic novel of mine, Sarah McNicol and Simon Weaver on the representation of peanut allergies in comics from several perspectives, and finally by my good friend Paula Knight on her graphic-memoir-in-progress, The Facts of Life, about miscarriage and childlessness.

The day ended with a keynote talk by Darryl Cunningham, creator of Psychiatric Tales and a veritable hero of the British comics scene in the last couple of years. I was a real privilege to hear Darryl speak about the creation of the work, but even more so to see how he deftly coped with awkward, accusing and critical questions from the floor afterwards (this is one of my greatest fears for when my own book comes out).

But perhaps even more important than the conference day itself was the change to mingle, chat and eat dinner with this collection of amazing people. Creating a graphic novel of any kind, but perhaps especially one as personal as the one I'm working on, is a lonely endeavour, so I found it so encouraging and inspiring to be surrounded for once by folks who were doing or have done the same. It was all a little bit surreal, but in a good way!

So much inspiration can be exhausting, so I took things a little more gently on the Friday. I started my morning by paying a visit to Thought Bubble's artist and writer in residence, Kristyna Baczynski and Matthew Sheret in Leeds Library (which is, incidentally, absolutely beautiful). I attended a couple of sessions at the conference which filled me with ideas: Ernesto Priego spoke about the importance of citation guidelines for comic art; Daniel Merlin Goodbrey presented ideas and examples of new forms of comics made possible by advances in digital technology (I urge you to check explore them on his website), and Dan Berry spoke about dismantling his iphone, amongst other things.

In between sessions I made a brief explorations of Leeds City Centre's fabulous Victorian shopping arcades with Paula Knight before returning to the conference to hear the lovely Posy Simmonds speak about her working process (she was also wearing the most fabulous red shoes).

In the evening, after dinner with some friends, we briefly attended the official comic convention reception before deciding that drinks at the Mariott Hotel were far beyond our budget, and that we needed to some decent sleep to be ready and prepared for the weekend ahead.

That turned out to be a good decision.

I have never been to a large or particularly mainstream comic convention before (and on reflection I don't think Thought Bubble is especially mainstream....or perhaps it supports small press as much as mainstream creators rather than one over another). But it was LARGE. Nothing quite prepared me for the manic-ness of Saturday, the people in crazy costumes, the roller-derby girls skating around shepherding queuers and advertising talks and panel sessions. I took part in a panel entitled Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Self-Publishing with several other UK small press creators (it was extremely flattering to be ranked alongside them as an 'expert'!), then spent the rest of the day behind my table talking to lovely people many of whom purchased my zines!

Perhaps the nicest thing about Thought Bubble for me was the chance to connect for the first time in person with people I've only spoken to via email or twitter, or to spend reasonable lengths of time chatting to people I've only met briefly at events before. Even so, there were still those I wish I'd spoken to more over the four days I spent in Leeds, comics I wish I'd bought despite the suitcase-load I dragged with me back to Bristol.

The Sunday was quieter, which suited my state of general exhaustion. I had fun doing my stint at the signing table for Nelson, still amazed that I was asked to be part of such an incredible project. I spent a little more time wandering the convention and making purchases which included but were not limited to: Longboy by Philippa Rice, an origami kit by Kristyna Baczynski, all manner of goodies from the lovely James Clayton, a tea zine by Lydia Wysocki, a cuddly white bunny dressed up as sushi, a Comix Reader, the first issue of Dot Comics, keyrings, prints and Monster Gubbins by my table-neighbour Jess Bradley and a gorgeous tote bag by Katriona Chapman.

I was going to photograph my loot, but have decided that I feel so inspired by all that I saw/heard/bought at Thought Bubble that the next Green Bean will be a comics/small press special! That way I get to review and praise my purchases instead of just telling you what they were....

It's sad therefore to end this post with the announcement that Thought Bubble was the last convention/fair/event I will attend before the publication of Lighter Than My Shadow. As inspiring and exciting as I find them, preparation for comics fairs takes a lot of time and energy, and with a little over a year to go, I now have to focus all my time and energy on my graphic novel. But fear not! The Green Bean will still be published bi-monthly and available in my etsy shop next year.

All that remains to be said is a huge thank you to everyone who was part of my Thought Bubble experience - there are too many to name and if I tried, I would only miss someone out. You know who you are. I had a wonderful time, and can't wait to do it all again.....in 2013.

New Products, Last Post

2011-11-15T07:47:00.006Z

On my latest visit to the Post Office, I picked up the details of our last posting dates for Christmas. If you'd like to order things from my shop to give as gifts, please bear in mind the following dates, which are the last you can place orders in my etsy shop to be certain they'll arrive in time for Christmas (orders placed after these dates may still do so, but I can't guarantee!):

Outside the EU: November 28th

European Union: December 5th

United Kingdom: December 12th

You'll also find that my shop is freshly updated with some new products for the festive season: I've added five new little original paintings, and a limited edition print of one of my pieces from the Solipsistic Pop 4 anthology. Keep an eye out next week for some bird necklaces, too!

Comica Comiket!

2011-11-14T22:05:00.003Z

This post is going to be short and sweet because I have literally NO TIME this week to hit the ground....I had a fabulous weekend in London at Comica Comiket, and am soon heading off to Leeds for my first Thought Bubble experience. I'll be speaking about my graphic novel on Thursday at the Comics Forum conference, selling Green Beans and other goodies all weekend and speaking on a panel entitled "Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Self-Publishing" on Saturday. Phew, I'm exhausted even thinking about it!

But before I rush off, there's time to say a quick thank you to everyone who came along and said hi and/or purchased my things on Saturday. I had a great day of meeting people, connecting with some twitter-buddies for the first time and generally enjoying lots of comics. I also picked up my copies of Nelson and Solipsistic Pop 4, the two anthologies I contributed to this year. More on those coming up in a future blog post....

In the meantime, here is a photo of me, my new haircut and my table of goodies snapped by the lovely Sarah McIntyre (and for those with sharp eyes, that's the one and only Posy Simmonds to my left!):

Discount Codes

2011-11-08T06:05:00.002Z

I am sorry to hear that some of you have been having problems using the discount code AUTUMNSPECIAL to get 10% off in my shop. I've created another code, AUTUMNTREATS, to try instead.

And because of the problems (and the fact that I still have a few more new products to unveil) I've decided to keep the discounts running until this Friday, November 11th.

My apologies, and happy shopping!

My Cup of Tea

2011-11-07T19:01:00.002Z

I am very, very proud to unveil my new zine, My Cup of Tea, which is now available to buy in my Etsy shop. I'll also be selling them this weekend in London at Comiket, and the weekend after in Leeds at Thought Bubble Sequential Art Festival.

It is no secret that I love tea. I mention it in almost every edition of my regular zine, the Green Bean (the creation of which is also fueled by lots of tea). But I think it's high time I made a zine for tea all on its own.

'My Cup of Tea' is my visual ode to this wonderful beverage, with notes and drawings on different tea varieties through black tea, green tea, yellow tea, red tea and white tea. It also contains tea suggestions and inspirations, for biscuits, afternoon tea, Devonshire cream tea and iced tea, including a few recipes, and some tea-themed doodles.

And if that isn't enough, this little zine also comes with a specially blended teabag for you to drink whilst you read! The tea is packed by hand in a hand-stamped envelope.

'My Cup of Tea' is A6 sized, 24 pages long and printed on 100% recycled paper. The zine and the teabag will come safely packed inside a biodegradable cellophane pouch. It is a limited edition on 500 copies.

Don't forget, you can still claim 10% off My Cup of Tea (and anything else in my Etsy shop), but only for one more day! Use the code AUTUMNSPECIAL.

On My Desk....

2011-11-05T15:27:00.005Z

On my desk today is the beginning of my new zine, My Cup of Tea, which will be ready in time for Comiket next weekend and Thought Bubble the weekend after (and in my etsy shop very soon, for those who can't make it to either of those events).

This zine also comes with a specially blended teabag. I'll keep the blend a surprise just for now, but have to say it's making my studio smell amazing! I have my dear, dear boyfriend to thank for packing all the teabags and popping them in their cute little envelopes, which he stamped all of by hand :)

I've also been playing with a fancy new corner punch....

Green Bean Sneak Peeks

2011-11-04T12:51:00.008Z

I was so excited to collect the new Green Bean from the printers yesterday!

This issue is special in more ways than one. First and foremost, it's all about the adventures I had with Mollie when she came to stay last month. Secondly, this is the final issue in volume 2.I can hardly believe that the Green Bean is now two volumes - fourteen issues - old. Those who follow me on twitter and facebook may already know that I had an amazing moment earlier this week when I realised that I have sold over 1200 individual copies of the Green Bean since it began just over eighteen months ago. That's amazing!

Without further ado, here are some sneak peeks of the new issue and some of my favourite memories of my time with Mollie :)

Bristol

Bath

Windsor

London (St. James's Park)

London

You can find the new Green Bean in my etsy shop, where you can also order a full set of volume 2 tied with a pretty green ribbon, which makes an ideal gift. Both of these and everything else in my shop are available with 10% if you use the code AUTUMNSPECIAL before next Tuesday, November 8th. Enjoy!

A Lot of Paint....

2011-10-28T15:44:00.003+01:00

I recently purchased five litres of paint for a very exciting new project.....

I'm really excited to be able to announce that I'll be illustrating a collection of five stories for all ages written by Tim Malnick, to be published by Vala Publishers, hopefully in Autumn 2013 (which is shaping up to be an exciting year!).

Tales of Transformation (working title) is a beautiful and diverse set of stories about a cuddly monster, a master painter, a wise and caring girl, an ambitious bat and the rainbow bridge of the sea. I feel very honoured and excited that I get to be the visual interpreter, and look forward to sharing some of the project as it unfolds :)

Follow Cards

2011-10-27T17:50:00.004+01:00

It's an idea I've had for a long time, to make 'follow' cards that share my blog and twitter details instead of just having formal business cards that give my professional contact details. But the idea really came together when I discovered these speech bubble die cuts by scrapbits on etsy.

I've started stamping them today, ready for their debut at Comiket and Thought Bubble in a few weeks' time. The best thing about stamping them myself is being able to do several different colourways.

Autumn Discounts

2011-10-25T19:28:00.005+01:00

I've been thinking it's a long time since I had any special offers in my shop, and since I celebrated my 400th sale last week (woop!), what better time than to thank all my lovely customers with a bit of early Christmas shopping discount.

So.....please use the code AUTUMNSPECIAL for 10% off everything in my etsy shop. I'll keep it open for a couple of weeks, until midnight on November 8th.

Now, given that a special offer might put you in the mood for some early Christmas shopping, I've added a couple of pre-orders to the shop so that you can take advantage of the discount, even though these items won't ship for another couple of weeks. I'm sure you can guess what they are!

I'm busy beavering away making the new Green Bean, and having so much fun reliving my time with Mollie whilst doing it. The new Green Bean will take you through our adventures around England day by day. I'll share a few more preview images in the coming fortnight while I finish drawing (if you can't wait for me to draw it all, Mollie has put the first of two sets of photos from her trip up on her blog today). This issue also features some book reviews as usual, and a couple of festive craft projects designed by Mollie and me.

In addition to the new Green Bean, you can also pre-order the full set of Volume 2, issues 1 through 6, which comes tied in a fancy green ribbon and makes the perfect gift for those as yet uninitiated into the way of the Green Bean ;)

Thank you, by the way, to everyone who has cast a vote on my if-I-have-time-to-make-it new zine. Although tea is the clear front runner, I will store up all the other ideas for another time. I am still unsure if this tea-zine will come together in time for Comiket and Thought Bubble.....I will let you know how I'm progressing (and draw the winners of free copies!) later on this week.

In the meantime, happy AUTUMNSPECIAL shopping!

Sold out of Sheep!

2011-10-21T15:09:00.003+01:00

It was a bittersweet moment when, on Wednesday this week, someone purchased the final copy of my Sheep Zine. It's an amazing feeling to know that my work is liked enough for 100 copies to sell out completely, but also a bit sad. I love those sheep, and their zine was always a bestseller at comics fairs and conventions.

There is a chance I'll think about reissuing it at some point, but I'm afraid it's out of print for now. Thanks to everyone who bought a copy!

This has left me in a bit of a quandry. I have a million-and-one things to do before Comica Comiket and Thought Bubble, not the least of which is creating a whole new issue of the Green Bean. However, if (if if if if if) I have time, I would love to create another mini zine.....a similar size and low-ish price point to the sheep. I have a few ideas, and I'd love to hear your opinions.

IF I have time to create a new zine in time for Comiket, Thought Bubble and Christmas shopping, which theme(s) would excite you the most?

1) Tea!

2) A few of my favourite things!

3) Birds!

4) What I Wore drawings!

5) A mixture of the above!

6) Other (suggestions very welcome)

Let's make this fun and turn it into a giveaway.....if I don't have time to make it for this season, I will certainly make the new mini zine in the near future. Everyone who casts a vote on the theme will be entered into a draw, and I'll pick two winners to receive a free copy!

I look forward to hearing your thoughts, and I'll keep you posted about whether I can make it in time :)

Still Alive!

2011-10-20T17:14:00.004+01:00

I think I'm going to stop apologising for not blogging. This is just the way things are going to be for the next year or so....but finally I have five minutes to share some news.

I had a wonderful break with Mollie, who is doing a far better job than me blogging about our adventures, so do head to Wild Olive if you want a taste of what we got up to. I'll be writing and drawing all about it for the new Green Bean which is due out in early November. There will be sneak peeks in due course!

If you're into sneak peeks, Tom Humberstone wrote an excellent blog post yesterday about maps, comics and the merits of comics in print.....which also contained some photos of the new anthology Solipsistic Pop as it is being assembled (including the rubber stamp and dustjacket I designed, shown below). There is still time to pre-order a copy and help fund the project, here.

Solipsistic Pop 4, and the other anthology to which I'be contributed this year, Nelson, will both be available at Thought Bubble - the UK's largest comic convention that encompasses both mainstream and independent creators. I am super-excited to be attending for the first time. The convention is preceded by a three-day academic conference, Comics Forum, where I will be speaking about my graphic-novel-in-progress as part of the Graphic Medicine: Visualizing the Stigma of Illness day on November 17th. I will also be sitting on the panel for Saturday 19th's Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Self-Publishing event, hosted by Matt Sheret of We Are Words and Pictures.

And today I made a controversial decision. Next year, I plan to take a year out from events, conventions, talks, fairs and suchlike to focus on finishing my graphic novel. But I decided that if I have to sit out for a whole year, I can probably stretch to one final one this year....

So I will also be at Comica Comiket, on Saturday 12th November at the Bishopsgate Institute in London. This event marks full circle for me - it was the first comics event I ever attended, booked at the last minute on a whim around this time last year, so it feels right to be doing it again before I go into partial hibernation.

The hibernation is, of course, all about finishing my graphic novel, whose deadline creeps closer every day. I won't disappear completely, though: I will still produce the Green Bean and attempt to blog semi-regularly. Certainly, I have some exciting things to share in the next couple of weeks: as well as sneak peeks of the new Green Bean, I have an exciting announcement to make about a new project, and perhaps some early-bird christmas shopping special offers....watch this space!

Tomorrow!

2011-10-04T07:41:00.002+01:00

I know things have been very quiet around here lately, so you'd hardly notice if I went another 10 days without blogging, but this time I have a very good reason for my disappearence....

Tomorrow morning, my dear friend Mollie arrives in the UK for the first time. I'll be collecting her from the airport, then spending 10 days showing her my picks of what Bristol and London have to offer (all of which will be documented in the next Green Bean). Here's a picture from Mollie's blog that I drew of us just over a year ago, both the first time we met and the last time we saw each other:
I'm very excited :) See you in a couple of weeks!

Solipsistic Pop 4 Sneak Peeks

2011-09-30T13:41:00.002+01:00

Wow, I knew I'd been too busy to blog, but I didn't realise almost two weeks were absorbed spending every available hour on these:

(I'm afraid I can't show you the whole pieces, you'll have to wait for the book)

These pieces will be part of the exciting anthology Solipsistic Pop 4, which I'm so proud to be a part of. There's still time to support the project in exchange for all kinds of lovely incentives: signed, exclusive postcards and badges to pre-ordered copies of Solipsistic Pop 4, free tickets to launch events, digital downloads, original artwork, limited edition prints, a credit in the book and even extremely rare printing plates.

Progress

2011-09-11T16:39:00.003+01:00

My piece for Solipsistic Pop 4 is coming along: slowly, hand-cripplingly, but surely!

(sorry for the terrible photo)

Green Bean, Volume 2 Issue 5

2011-09-03T21:30:00.007+01:00

....is running very late!

See below for the reasons for this tardiness, but as a thank you to my dear readers for their patience, I've decided to give away some postcards with this issue, the sketchbook special! All my subscribers, and anyone who pre-orders the new issue in the next 2 weeks will receive a free Draw Every Day postcard, inspired by the sketchbook-theme of this issue:

The truth is, I started drawing the new issue before I went on holiday and intended to finish while I was away. For the first few days of our trip, I tried to rush and get my drawings done, but eventually I realised that relaxing was more important, left my workbook in the house and enjoyed walking on the moors.

When we got home, again I rushed to try a deliver the new issue to the printers on time, but the more I rushed the less happy I was with the work. I realised I was in danger of publishing a Green Bean that I was not proud of, just to get it out on time. Fortunately, I came to my senses and remembered what patient and understanding readers I have; that nobody would mind the Green Bean being late. I know you'd all rather wait for something good that receive something mediocre on time.

The new issue is all about sketchbooks, and also contains some drawings from our holiday on Dartmoor, a collaboration with writer Chris Fosten, some of my plans for celebrating my birthday this month plus the usual recipe, book reviews, seasonal vegetables and more. All being well, the new issue will be out by the end of September, perhaps even a little bit before that.

Now, September is crazy for me. Not only am I running behind on the Green Bean, but I'm running behind on my contributions to Solipsistic Pop and juggling all this whilst trying to keep on schedule with my graphic novel. Part of the reason for this hectic workload is that I'm planning ahead for another two-week break at the beginning of October: my dear friend Mollie (who blogs at Wild Olive) is coming to stay with us, and I have the privilege of showing her the delights of England on her first trip out of the USA.

So I'm planning ahead, and getting organised. Part of this planning ahead means offering the September/October Green Bean on pre-order so that I can be really organised when they do come back from the printers. You can buy your copy now in my etsy shop and be sure I will post it the very first moment I am able to, along with your free Draw Every Day postcard. I'm sorry again for the delay, but I promise you this issue is a good one that will be worth the wait!

The Day I Met Shaun Tan

2011-09-02T20:18:00.003+01:00

Regular readers will know that Shaun Tan is my illustration hero. I've been an admirer of his work since I chanced upon a copy of The Red Tree in a book shop one day: it is no exaggeration when I say that book changed my life. Through the powerful illustrations in The Red Tree, I rediscovered my long-forgotten dream of being an illustrator. Following that ambition was a huge part of my recovery, and on Tuesday this week I got the chance to thank Shaun Tan in person.

I decided it was well worth a day out of my CRAZY September schedule for the chance of meeting my hero. I attended 'An Evening with Shaun Tan' at Watersone's Picadilly, which consisted of a slideshow of some of Shaun's work accompanied by a very interesting conversation with journalist, Paul Gravett.

Shaun's talk was engaging and funny, but most of all fascinating. There was so much to learn that I hadn't already gleaned from stalking his website for the last eight years! I was most interested to hear Shaun's perceptions of the themes that underpin all of his work, and learn some more about his working process. Shaun described much of his work as a struggle to resolve the relationship between words and pictures. He raised a laugh with the audience when he confessed that he's been guilty of reading entire graphic novels without looking the pictures at all! That's certainly an issue I'm aware of in creating my own work: making sure that the pictures are integral to the narrative and not just an addition to a story that could be told with words alone.

Despite describing it as an ongoing learning process, I think balancing words and pictures and using both to dictate the pacing of his stories is one of Shaun Tan's greatest strengths, and something I admire most in his work. He describes his approach as a paring down, finding the minimum expression needed to convey the desired message: and I think that's why his words and images are so powerful, because they allow so much space for the reader/viewer to bring their own interpretation.

It was so inspiring to feel like I got to know a bit more about Shaun as a person, beyond all his incridible work that I've admired for so long. I waited eagerly in the book-signing queue afterwards, and by the time I got to the front I was a blushing quivering mess. While Shaun was signing my beloved copy of The Red Tree, I just about managed to blab out my story about how significant the book was for me, and thank him. I was really touched by his generosity: though the book signing queue must have been about 100 people long, he took the time to chat to everyone and give each book a little sketch as well as a signature.

I was delighted to hear that my friend Ian Williams stumbled upon Mr Tan in London's Gosh Comics yesterday, enter into a chat about The Red Tree in which Shaun recalled meeting me on Tuesday! I do hope that it was my appreciation for his work that he remembers more than my red face, but really I'm so happy to know that he remembered talking to me at all.

If you haven't read a Shaun Tan book, I implore you to hunt one down right away. Any one will do, they're all brilliant. I'm so happy that he's winning all kinds of prestigious awards (The Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, and an Oscar!): I think he's one of the most talented illustrators working today, and he continues to be a major inspiration and influence on my work. Meeting him in person was just awesome!

Beautiful Dartmoor

2011-08-26T21:20:00.002+01:00

I think I left a part of me here, but I'm home.

Coming Soon....

2011-08-19T10:17:00.004+01:00

I always start a new issue of the Green Bean by choosing and drawing the books. I love observing and drawing typography, so it's a great way to get in the mood for the mountain of drawing ahead when I start compiling a new issue. But also choosing the books sets the theme and mood for the whole zine, and gets me inspired to draw the rest of the pages. Here's a sneak peek at the books I've been reading, and some other kinds of books that will be featuring in the next Green Bean....

I'll be drawing most of the September/October issue of the Green Bean whilst on holiday in Devon, where I'm heading right now. See you in 10 days' time!

(Not So) New Studio!

2011-08-16T18:18:00.007+01:00

Finally! The sun was shining and my studio was tidy enough to take some photos! Come on in, I'll put the kettle on and show you around (and reveal the extent of my etsy shopping addiction....).

When you head in the door, the first thing you see in my small-but-perfectly-formed studio is the drawing desk. Currently my piece for Solipsistic Pop is happening, but usually this is my graphic novel desk.

Links: thestoryofkat | Mary Kate McDevitt.

I love how the sun streams in through the window in the afternoon :)

To the right of the drawing desk I keep my calendars, lists, diaries, notes, everything that is suppoed to help me stay organised....

Links: decoylab | Mary Kate Mc Devitt

To the left of the organisation station is my computer, my carefully arranged little originals hiding the mass of unattended paperwork that I shove beneath the screen. And then to the right of that, my cutting mat and second workspace when the drawing table is occupied....here I paint, mend jewellery, draw the Green Bean...but mostly I pile up stuff, wait a couple of weeks, have a mass tidy and repeat....

Links: decoylab

Above my desk I have wonderful built-in shelves, up to the ceiling and even over the door - essential, really, in such a tiny room. The contents of the shelves varies depending on what I'm working on, particularly the books (my main library lives downstairs in the living room). But, generally this is where I store my stock of Green Beans, business cards, sketchbooks, magazines....interspersed with inspiring art to look at, and toys!

Links: Aijung Kim | Viviz

Behind the desk is my advert for ikea, and my treasure trove of materials and supplies (most of which are sourced from the lovely shop I work in, of course!)

And above the storage extravaganza, lovely inspiring artwork on the wall, and a big mirror next to my desk that I use for quick drawing reference!

Links: Anna Emilia | Katriona Chapman | Geninne

And to the left of the mirror, more lovely things on the wall, and my printers' type tray full of tiny treasures, random things that I pick up off beaches or the street and small toys and works of art. Oh, and my display board for all the little badges I own - I never wear them, but instead of storing them somewhere I like to have them where I can see them :)

Links: Mollie | Viviz | Katie Daisy | Dinara

And finally, some details :)

Links: Rodica | ohmyclumsyheart

Links: ememem | Mique Moriuchi

That's me, my Mum, my Aunty and my Grandma in my graduation photo :)

SP4!

2011-08-12T13:31:00.003+01:00

I'm so excited to show you this rubber stamp I've designed for the forthcoming UK comics anthology, Solipsistic Pop 4!

In fact, this very anthology is one of the main reasons my blog is so quiet lately. In addition to plodding onwards with my graphic novel schedule and starting work on a new Green Bean for September/October, I'm busy with my contributions for Solipsistic Pop. In addition to the stamp, which is now finished (hooray!), I'm working on a short comic for the anthology and a large map that will form a removeable dustjacket that unfolds into a poster to wrap around the book. What a prestigious job to have!

What a lot of RSI.....

If you'd like to support Solipsistic Pop by making a donation, please head to the IndieGoGo campaign page....investors can get a whole range of goodies in return for their support including pre-orders of the book, exclusive badges, postcards, free tickets to launch events, digital downloads, limited edition prints, a credit in the book, original artwork and even extremely rare printing plates. Please do support the project if you can :)

For everyone patiently awaiting the photo-tour of my new studio, it is coming! I'm just waiting for the English summer to oblige me with a sunny day. It's been a bit gloomy lately (the delay is nothing to do with mess and disorganisation in my studio, honest!).

Specs

2011-08-08T18:09:00.002+01:00

Not the blog post I was planning to write after a week's absence, but never mind...

I finally discovered that the cause of the killer headaches I've been having was because my poor eyes couldn't focus properly. A trip to the optician last week revealed that my eyesight had deteriorated in such a way that it can no longer be corrected by contact lenses.

I've been short-sighted since I was seven years old, but wearing contact lenses for the last fourteen years. Suddenly having to become a full-time spectacles-wearer again is a bit strange. Fourteen years ago I stopped wearing glasses because they were one of the reasons bullies picked on me at school. I don't expect anyone will bully me about it now, nor do I expect I look half as nerdy in my new glasses as I did in the ones I had when I was thirteen.......but still, I have mixed feelings when I look in the mirror. I guess it will take a while to adjust.

At least I can see my work more clearly, and I no longer have a permanent headache.

New Products Galore!

2011-08-02T21:54:00.005+01:00

I've taken my sweet time, but I'm happy to report that my etsy shop is now chock-full of new goodies! There are original paintings, necklaces and even some new rubber stamp designs.

I'm not entirely sure where this spurt of inspiration and creativity has come from, but I hope you enjoy browsing the new things, and I promise I am still keeping up with my book schedule....(and for those of you who prefer bigcartel, the new stuff will be up there very soon too).

Headache of Doom

2011-07-28T18:30:00.003+01:00

Apologies to everyone who's been asking and patiently waiting.....the new products that I was finishing off last week - stamps, necklaces and paintings - will all be in my online shops very soon. I was planning to photograph and list them this week, but alas I have been plagued with an eternal headache and only just able to keep up with my job and work on my book.

All being well, next week should bring new products at last and the long-promised photo tour of my new studio!

Fingers crossed for a swift end to the Headache of Doom.

Chaos in my Studio

2011-07-21T10:02:00.004+01:00

This week I've taken a bit of time out from my graphic novel schedule to get some new products ready for New Cross Turn Left, a comics and craft garden party this weekend (if you're in London, please do come along and say hello...it sounds as though it's going to be great! All the details are here).

As usual, I had more ideas than time but tried to do everything anyway, and the result is a vast array of half-finished jobs spread out across my studio. Work is still very much in progress, but I thought I'd show you some sneak peeks of my new products (and the return of some old favourites!) that I'll be selling this weekend, and online from next week onwards...

I Love My (Other) Job

2011-07-16T18:28:00.006+01:00

For those of you who don't know, on the days when I'm not in my studio illustrating, I have a part-time job. I'm lucky enough to work in Creativity, a wonderful independent craft shop which is not only a nice job, but a constant source of inspiration (if a major drain on my finances!)

I rarely come home from work without making any purchases, and on days when we receive new products I just can't help myself. Today's delivery contained some new trimmings, including these fab green pom-poms. What could be better to make myself than a new craft fair table cloth in time for New Cross Turn Left next weekend?

A Little Interview

2011-07-15T07:12:00.004+01:00

I had the great pleasure of being interviewed/interrogated by Janee, of the blog Yellow Bird Yellow Beard earlier this week. Hello to my new followers who've joined me since then, and thank you :)

The interview is still up and has a little giveaway at the end, which is still open until tomorrow if you want to be in with a chance to win a copy of the latest Green Bean. I also highly recommend enjoying the rest of Janee's blog while you're there, because it's lovely!

Routine

2011-07-12T18:01:00.003+01:00

The last couple of weeks have been quite eventful in my studio. Last week, we set an official publication date for my book (it's September 2013, just before my 30th birthday!), and along with that a much earlier deadline by which I need to finish it. A real one set in stone. Scary.

With that deadline finally in place, I set about the none-too-small task of organising my life, or at least organising the work I have left to do on my book. I broke it down into manageable parts, and then divided those between then number of months, then weeks, and then days that I have in the next year and a half to finish it.

You all know I'm a control freak, but I felt the need to say something about how helpful this breaking down has been. For the last few months what with moving house and various other things getting in the way, I was unable to work on my book at all. I literally didn't have the time or headspace for it. Not working on it makes me panic, and the longer I didn't work on it the more overwhelmed I felt by the amount of work I still had to do before the deadline. The more I panicked the less able I was to even consider doing any work on my book, and so the cycle continued....

But last Tuesday I put together a wall planner/calendar that takes me right up to my deadline. I got my head around what needs to be done by breaking it into manageable pieces, and showed myself, with some maths and my lovely new wall planner, that it's all under control and I can meet my deadline without a problem! Now, each day I spend on my book, I need only worry about the task in hand - whether that be editing a chunk of storyboards, pencilling a short section or inking a few pages - and not worry about every aspect of the entire 400 page epic all at once. Phew!

I've made wall planners and schedules before. I used to make them with no time for eating or sleeping and completely unrealistic work expectations. This one is a little more sensible, with targets that are achievable in the timescales I've given, a day off every weekend and even a couple of holidays built in. What luxury!

Why am I blogging about this? I guess as a reminder to myself that this stuff is important, and in the hope that it might be useful/interesting to someone else, too. I easily forget, and get wrapped up in panic and working late nights and early mornings and every available hour until I am too exhausted for any more.

These last couple of weeks I've been getting to bed at a sensible time, getting up early (but not too early) and taking a walk to the farm to visit the baby goats and piglets before coming back to start work. I take several breaks, but work until the scheduled work for the day is done, which has been anywhere between 2pm and 8pm. I feel calm, relaxed and comfortable with the pace, and the knowledge that this will get my book done on time.

This was my new year goal: to prioritise my graphic novel above everything else, and this schedule does just that. The downside of course is that everything else: blogging, correspondence, crafting, sketchbooking, other creative projects, socialising, reading, all have to come second and fit into what spare time I have left. But here's the interesting thing. Have you noticed how many blog posts I've written in the past couple of weeks compared to the past couple of months? How many other side projects I've had going on? It seems that finding and settling into a routine, and the calmness and brain-space it has given me, might have helped me find a productive and sustainable routine in other areas of my work too.....

Custom Stamps Are Go!

2011-07-11T17:29:00.004+01:00

I'm so happy to announce that I just listed my first custom stamp design in my etsy shop! This is a bit of new territory for me, though it's an idea I've been toying with for a very long time. Thanks to everyone who left feedback on my post last week, I decided to begin with the design that got the most votes, the bird. I only received my own one last week and I've already had hours of fun stamping packages and everything else I could lay my hands on. I'm really looking forward to creating these for others to enjoy too.....and there will be more designs soon!

Laydeez Do Podcasts

2011-07-07T12:56:00.003+01:00

If anyone's interested, mine and Andrew Godfrey's talks from Laydeez Do Comics last month have just been released as a podcast, which you can listen to here.

I'm too terrified to listen, I hate the sound of my voice recorded. But if you do listen, I'd be interested to hear what you think :)

Birmingham Zine Fest

2011-07-06T21:32:00.003+01:00

I will be selling my wares (Green Beans, Sheep Zines, Little Epics and badges) at Birmingham Zine Festival this Saturday. I'm excited; I've never been to Birmingham before. And check out this list of all the other awesome people who will be there!

Hope to see you there too?

A New Green Bean!

2011-07-05T18:41:00.004+01:00

First of all, thanks so much for all the feedback on my rubber stamp designs...It was a close call with the balloon bunny losing out by just one vote. I chose the bird, and can't wait for the package to arrive in the post (don't worry, I think I will order the others too, but change the text so they have some other purpose than addresses....). If all goes to plan, they should all be available to order with your own custom text in the next week or so!

But without further ado, today's big announcement is all about the new Green Bean. I've been working away on this new issue for the last few weeks, and today I approved the proofs at the printers so I'll be able to send them out tomorrow. This issue is all about the new house, with pages on decorating, (dis)organisation and exploring my new local area (including meeting the piglets at the city farm. I always enjoy creating the Green Bean, but this one seemed extra special somehow. I hope you'll enjoy it too!

The Start of Something Exciting!

2011-07-03T08:37:00.004+01:00

This announcement has been a long time coming, but I'm almost ready to start offering some custom rubber stamps in my online shops!

I'm really excited because there is a lot I love about rubber stamps. They were one of the first crafts I tried, probably when I was about 8 or 9 years old. I love the hands-on nature of printing, the huge range of inks and effects available now, and most of all designing my own. There's nothing more satisfying than seeing my own design mounted on a beautiful hardwood handle (but perhaps getting compliments about my envelopes from the staff in the Post Office is almost as good). I also love that stamps are an ideal way of combining illustration and typography, image and text....two of my favourite things!

I'm planning to offer a few basic designs to choose from that can be customised with your own words in my hand-written text. The best way for me to get started with this was to design the new stamp that I need for myself: because I've just moved house, I'm in need of a return address stamp to print on the back of all my outgoing packages and orders. I came up with a few designs, picked my favourite three, and now I'd like you help please dear readers....

Which do you like the best?

Which, if any, do you think people would like to buy (with their own text)?

The truth is that I will probably offer all three and more in my shop, and this is just the beginning. I have plans to offer bookplate/ex libris designs, perhaps some business cards and a few small creatures that wouldn't be customised, and therefore a bit more economical. In fact any more ideas for what kind of custom stamps might be interesting, please do add those in the comments too. However, for now I can only choose one to have made for myself and I just can't decide which is my favourite.

Thanks in advance, and I look forward to hearing your thoughts :)

2011: Halfway Through

2011-07-01T11:14:00.004+01:00

When posted my 2011 new year goals in *ahem* February, someone suggested that I review them at the end of the year to see how I did. But I've decided that a halfway review is better as I still have 6 months left to achieve what I haven't managed yet. And when I looked back at my goals for the first time since February and did this check up on how I'm doing, I was very grateful I still have time!

Here are my thoughts on how I'm doing so far....

1) Make a new portfolio. Er no. I haven't done that or even made a single step towards it. However, it doesn't feel like a priority right now as I already have more work on than I can handle. Perhaps making my new portfolio can be transferred to next year's list, as it goes hand in hand with making a new website (which is also on my 2012/13 list).

2) Keep up with The Green Bean and inbetweenzines. Yes! The Green Bean is still going strong, with the twelfth issue coming out some time next week. I also published my Sheep Sketchbook which has been very successful. There may only be one more 'inbetweenzine' this year but I won't say too much in case it doesn't come together. But if it does, I'll be releasing it in time for Thought Bubble in November.

3) Launch Little Epic. Yes! This little collaborative poetry and illustration zine curated my my sister, Jemma, and I has also been a success this year :)

4) Expand my etsy shop, including rubber stamps. I'm working away on this behind the scenes, and till hoping it will happen in the next few months. It will hopefully include a little range of rubber stamps I've designed, plus also some custom designs like address stamps and bookplates.

5) Start a new etsy shop: sewkatiegreen. This is very much something I still want to do, but I've come to realise it is an unreasonable expectation for this year, next year or even the year after. Keen as I am to do it, it needs a real investment of time that I can't give until my graphic novel is finished. I'm afraid the sewing patterns in the Green Bean will have to do for now.

6) Find more commercial work and commissions. Again, this is something that I haven't achieved or really tried to, mostly because I wouldn't have time to accommodate any more work than I'm doing. This goal doesn't really make sense any more.

7) Find more time for personal and one-off projects. I am still trying to find a way to squeeze personal work into my schedule whenever I can. By 'personal work', I mean things that are not directly intended to become products to sell. The most important aspect of this for me is keeping a sketchbook: a vital process which can easily become sidelined when I have too much work on. I haven't achieved this goal yet, but I hope to find a way of setting aside at least a little time on a regular basis for sketching. Watch this space.

8) Draw more comics. I'm undecided whether this goal is something I'm still working on or something that has been laid aside to attend to next year or the year after. I suppose I've been working on my pieces for Nelson and for Solipsistic Pop 4, which are both comics and therefore I've drawn more comics than I did last year. Perhaps this oal is on it's way to being achieved after all.

9) Work on a 2nd edition of Bake Me A Cake. This is happening so slowly that the progress is barely perceptible. I am gradually adding to my repertoire of recipes, and I have also been looking into print and publication options for a second edition. It is happening, but you certainly shoudln't be holding your breath for the book!

With a points system that scores 1 for a goal being achieved, half for one that's on its way and 0 for one that has been relegated to next year, I make that about 4 out of 9 so far. Oh dear!

As for my second set of goals, they were more things that I know I need to keep in mind in order to remain sane. I think I'm actually faring better with those than the first lot, which is unusual for me!

1) Prioritise my graphic novel above all else. Though part of me feels that the only way to truly fulfil this goal is to work on my book 24/7, I know that isn't the case. I think that in order to prioritise my graphic novel I also have to find a way to balance my inspiration and working energy, and that does mean spending time on other projects too so that I don't get bogged down. On occasion the balance has tipped in favour of the Green Bean or other projects, but overall I have spent more time in the past 6 months on my graphic novel than anything else (except perhaps moving house, which I don't think should count). I consider this goal on the way to being achieved, with perhaps a few improvements to be made to my schedule for the second half of the year.

2) Get enough sleep.
3) Take a whole day off every week.
4) Take more breaks.
5) Let go of what I do not need to be doing.

Yes! I've got much better at all of these things! You've probably noticed that I've been blogging much less. Though that makes me a bit sad, it is just one of the sacrifices I've made in order to spend more time either on my book, taking much needed tea breaks, or sleeping ;)

6) Limit my time on the internet. Nope, I'm afraid I'm completely failing on this one. Is this a problem? I'm not sure.....

7) Remember I am not superwoman. No, I think I'm also failing miserably on this one. I still write myself schedules based on 48 hour days, no food, no sleep and no days off, then wonder at the end of the week why I've only ticked off half of my to-do list. Anyone who knows how not to do this, pointers would be very welcome!

That's 5 out of 7. Not bad! And a grand total of 9 out of 16. At least it's more than 50%....

What about you? What were your goals for 2011, and how are you getting on with them?

More Blogs About Laydeez...

2011-06-30T08:35:00.003+01:00

OK, so you've gathered by now that last week's Laydeez Do Comics had a huge impact on me. Before I move on to blogging about something else, I just wanted to share these two excellent posts written by others who attended:

The first is Andrew Godfrey's, my fellow speaker on the evening. He wrote a lovely recap on hi own talk and a very kind review of everyone else's. (Andrew also wrote this very interesting post about Comics & Medicine recently; very much worth a read).

The second is written by Mike Medaglia, the official blog record of the night, and again a lovely recap of all the wonderful work that was presented.

Mike also drew this brilliant portrait of me, I guess from a photo he snapped while I was feeling very nervous before my talk. I love it!

And finally, from someone who didn't attend the evening but on a related subject, Simon wrote a very eloquent and interesting response to my post about Comics and Medicine over on his blog. Enjoy!

I'll be back soon with previews of the new Green Bean and also a 6 month review of my new year goals (not looking forward to that one....!)

Laydeez Do Comics Recap [3], Comics and Mental Health, and a graphic novel progress report...all rolled into one!

2011-06-27T21:19:00.003+01:00

Sorry, I couldn't think of a better title. This post is a mish-mash of several that I've been meaning to write for a long time, and eventually they all seemed to fit together into one. But it's quite long!

Let's start by sharing some more stuff from my talk at Laydeez Do Comics last week (was it only a week ago?!) for those who weren't there. I said in my last post that initially, the writing process and the drawing process were quite separate for me. I've written about the visual development before, but what happens after that? Once I'd decided on a style that felt right for the imagery, and had a rough plan for the structure of the book, it was time to start storyboarding. I began this process soon after signing the contract for the book with Jonathan Cape in early 2010, and am now on something like my 4th or 5th draft of the whole 400ish pages.

The roughness of my rough work will probably be surprising compared to my detailed meticulous drawings, but there really is no point in me investing more time on the drawings at this stage. Instead, I'll apologise for them, but they're never intended for any eye other than my own, and as such they need only communicate enough for me to interpret them when I read them back. Sometimes I'll even cut-and-paste (literally, with scissors and pritt-stick) from old drafts into the new, because even a 10-second drawing is not worth my time if I'm not going to change it. This also helps me, being able to try different arrangements of the panels on a page by literally shuffling them around then gluing them down when I'm happy.

Here's a little example from the first chapter of the book (each page representing a double page spread):

Maybe you've noticed, maybe you haven't, but almost all examples I've ever shared from my graphic novel relate to my experiences with anorexia. I've not ever shown any imagery relating to binge-eating disorder or abuse: this isn't a conscious decision, but a natural exclusion that I can easily explain. Firstly, my anorexia is further in the past. The distance from it is one of the main things that has enabled me to talk, laugh and write about it. The other aspects of my illness, whilst also in the past, are less distant. They are distant enough to no longer affect my daily life, but close enough to still be quite raw and painful to recall. I was very conscious when deciding to write my book of the need to leave a distance between the recovery and the writing, both for the sake of my own mental health and in the best interests of my book and its potential readers! I mentioned in my last post that some earlier attempts to start writing proved too triggering and had to be abandoned. Even though I waited until I felt completely ready, I had to leave some sections blank in my first few drafts because they were too painful to write.

One of the questions I'm most often asked about working on my graphic novel is whether I'm finding it cathartic, and I'm not really sure how to answer that. I think the answer is that I won't know for some time until after the book has been published whether true catharsis has occurred. At the moment, I am making deliberate choices to dredge up painful events and experiences from long in the past in order to relive them as I draw. If I wasn't writing the book, these memories would not bother me nor affect my life in any way: I consider myself fully recovered, and am able to function 'normally' for months without even remebering that I used to be anorexic, or I'm a survivor of abuse. It simply isn't an issue. Or it wouldn't be if I wasn't writing a book about it. The truth is that writing the book might not be the healthiest thing: it affects my mood and behaviour, and it affects my interactions with my partner, my friends and my colleagues. Is it helpful to me in processing those events and feelings? No, not really. It's quite a challenge to try and think about dramatic emphasis and narrative structure when the story is your own life. I don't doubt that I'm well enough now to cope with the challenge without it affecting my mental health. But the writing does affect me, and the effects are not always positive.

However.

Whenever I get bogged down in working on my book, or get to thinking that perhaps I shouldn't be doing it at all because I'm voluntarily causing myself pain, with remarkable synchronicity I will receive an email. Someone who is struggling with a similar journey to mine will have stumbled upon my website or blog and found support or encouragement in the little of my work that I've shared. Little do they know how much their decision to make contact supports and encourages me, reminds me that the original motivation for writing a book had nothing to do with me at all. I wanted to help people, I wanted to shout from the rooftops that recovery is possible, I wanted to write the book I wish had existed when I was 17. All it takes is a few words to know that I've succeeded in reaching out to someone, and I don't even need to ask whether or not my book is cathartic, whether I'm making the healthiest choice to be writing it, who cares? If it can support someone in a way I did not feel supported, help someone find hope that recovery is possible, then whatever I go through to write it will be worthwhile.

***

Following the panel discussion on Comics and Mental Health that I took part in at Bristol Comic Con in May, fellow panelist Simon Moreton wrote this incredible post as a response to some of the subjects raised. I fear I've left it too long since the panel and Simon's post to give the response it deserves, but I've linked it a) because it's a brilliant and articulate piece, and b) because there are points Simon makes that relate to my current waffling.

My book was not always going to be a graphic novel. When I first had the idea 10 years ago, during the worst of my illness, my childhood dream of being an illustrator was long forgotten. I wanted to write a prose book, and worked on it on and off throughout my recovery, but it never really clicked. I didn't consider using imagery. It seems obvious now, looking back. When I first tried to articulate my struggle with anorexia to my family, I was unable to explain in words so I painted a picture. I was able to show them , rather than tell. It seems incredible now that my natural tendency towards visual communication was invisible to me. That I didn't read my first graphic novel until 6 years later. That using imagery is such an obvious (and effective) way to explain and communicate an illness that is, in a sense, a visual and metaphorical language of its own.

The strength of comics as a medium of communicating things which are difficult to talk about is not going unnoticed. The success of the recent Comics and Medicine conference in Chicago (I wish I could have been there!) is testament to that. There is more coming up: Graphic Medicine - Visualising the Stigma of Illness as part of Comics Forum in Leeds in November. I have to agree with Simon about why comics work so well for this: they are the ideal medium for communicating a very personal experience, but to which the reader can add their own experience or interpretation. In Simon's words, "comics allows one story to have many, many different interpretations in a way that some other media sometimes can’t." I would add to that, that comics allows the expression of feelings and emotions that are incommunicable in words alone. For me this has profound importance for the relating of a story about eating disorders and abuse. An eating disorder, as I said above, is a nonverbal language of struggling: not necessarily a way of communicating with others but a way of dealing with overwhelming, and for whatever reason unspeakable, emotional pain. Abuse, too, is unspeakable, almost impossible to express the pain of. Time and practice has meant I've become much better at expressing myself and my experiences verbally, but I'm convinced that the combination of words and images will be more powerful. Its certainly a more powerful experience for me as an artist, for better or worse; it connects me more to the events and memories when I draw them rather than speak about them. It's my hope that it will also be more accessible for someone struggling to articulate their own similar experiences. That my work reaches out to others and lets them know they're not alone is all I can hope for and more.

Laydeez Do Comics Recap [2]

2011-06-25T06:52:00.002+01:00

While I was writing my talk for Laydeez Do Comics, and deciding what to say about my working process on my graphic novel, I realised there is also a lot of that process I haven't shared here. Anyone who was there on Monday, forgive me, but my next few posts will be based on my talk.

I had the idea to write a book when my anorexia was first diagnosed in 2001. I was 17, I had never even picked up a graphic novel, and I thought I could write The Book About Recovery. Little did I know how long and complex (and incredible) recovery would turn out to be. Over the following years my idea evolved, was abandoned and picked up again, changed as I changed and discovered who I was and who I wanted to be. When I finally started work on it formally in 2006 as a graphic novel, I felt like a different person and all the notes and ideas that I'd been scribbling in my journal for years were irrelevant. I needed to start afresh.

Often I'm asked why I decided to write a book, and though my motivation has waxed and waned over the 10 years since I had the idea, the inspiration has never changed. I wanted to write the book that I wish had been there for me to read. I've spoken before, I think, of how most books seem to gloss over recovery as though it happens quickly, smoothly and easily. The worst offenders have some kind of religious conversion at the end that makes everything miraculously better. No, perhaps the worst of all are those that say recovery is not possible, that an eating disorder never goes away and will always linger with you in the back of your mind. I wanted to prove them wrong, and then write a book as my proof. Nowadays I see my life as the proof, and my book as a way of communicating my truth (as opposed to The Truth) about recovery.

For a long time the writing process and the drawing process were quite separate for me, which is probably an unusual approach to creating a graphic novel. I've not really followed any method, just been learning as I find my way along (not unlike my recovery). When I began to work on the book in earnest in 2006, my first task was getting everything down: every thought, memory, event, moment. Anyone who has written a book of any kind will probably be familiar with this stage: it is the stage of sleepless nights, keeping a notebook to hand at all times to jot down even a snippet of an idea before it escapes. I guess it's easier when the story is your own life, and you need only remember, not imagine. For me the imagining comes later, when designing the imagery.

This process continued for months, and still does in a way: there are always little things that I have forgotten or could expand upon, and I try to jot them down whenever something triggers the memory. But once I began to feel like I had the bulk of the ideas down on paper where I couldn't lose them, I began to organise them: into chronological order, to divide them into sections/chapters, and to make links where I could shift the narrative forwards or backwards in time instead of remaining completely linear. The chart below is one of many: I have a whole folder of them, and with each redraft new events were added (or some removed), reshuffled and organised until the flow began to feel right.

(You may need to click to zoom in on this one, though be warned it is just a brain-dump!)

This process was inspired largely by the teaching of Bryan Talbot on the first Arvon Foundation graphic novel course I attended in 2006 (I blogged about it, and my second trip in 2008, here). Bryan was teaching us how to structure a story, and manage it, and showed us some of the developmental stages of his epic graphic novel, Luther Arkwright. He had immensely detailed wall charts, breaking the story down into smaller and smaller parts, organised by time, chapters, pages and panels. Before the course I had felt that my idea was too vast to grapple with, was unsure how to wrestle it into some kind of struture and story: Bryan's teaching gave me the confidence to approach it, and a very practical method of doing so.

I was still in recovery in 2006, still struggling perodically with bingeing and PTSD. I wasn't ready: voluntarily dipping into the past and dragging up the most painful events in my life wasn't something I could do without relapsing into some of those behaviours in order to cope. Reluctantly, I laid the project aside, and didn't feel ready to return to it for another couple of years. I knew I had to be in a strong enough place to be able to deal with my past with enough distance to write a good story about it. Obviously, complete objectivity is impossible, even from my editor who gives input on my story as an outsider. But as I said in my talk on Monday, I've had to embrace the surreal nature of having frank editorial discussions about the relative dramatic impact of my suicidal moments: structuring my life into a story that reads well rather than a mish-mash of memories.

The hardest part of this (and I begin to understand why I never found a book that properly addressed recovery) is that recovery doesn't lend itself to being a good story. It took a long time, it was repetitive and was largely quite boring. A return to relative 'normality', while being the climax of my story, is actually rather dull to write about compared to the daily twists and turns of living with an eating disorder.

And yet, I think it's a vital story to tell. I'm working on it.

Laydeez Do Comics Recap [1]

2011-06-22T07:01:00.004+01:00

Thanks to everyone who commented on my last post, or sent me some other words of support and encouragement. I did in fact manage to stand in front of 30ish people on Monday and talk about not only my artwork, but all the really personal stuff that I'm writing my graphic novel about, without going to pieces. I couldn't have asked for a more receptive, supportive audience: they listened attentively, they laughed in all the right places, and they asked me lots of interesting questions. If you were there, thank you too. I hope this experience will be a major step towards getting over my mortal fear of public speaking....

As promised, I'm going to share some of the content of my talk here over the next few days. There will also be a commentary of the entire evening on the Laydeez Do Comics blog in a few days' time, written by Mike Medaglia. I'm really intrigued to see/hear how my talk came across (I hope it went as well as I thought!), so I'll let you know when that's available. But instead of starting by posting materil from my own talk, I thought I'd introduce you properly to my fellow speakers who all contributed to the brilliant evening.

The evening began with everyone present being asked to introduce themselves, give a little of their background and answer the 'question of the month'. This time it was something that scared you recently. It was clear everyone in the room was as nervous about speaking up as I was, and this really broke the ice and helped me (and I'm sure the other speakers) feel less uncomfortable. Still, I was glad that it was Andrew Godfrey, not me, who was up first....

Andrew presented some of the work from his graphic novel about living with cystic fibrosis, and engaged me immediately with his sense of humour. It's one thing for me to face everything that happened to me in the past with laughter, but Andrew's illness is not in the past. He was quite candid about his own situation, medical issues and even life expectancy, even admitting that he uses laughter and playing the clown as a way to deal with things. But that's what I loved so much about his work: brutally honest, not shying away from the facts, raw and genuine.

I followed Andrew, and I think his attitude and sense of humour helped them to laugh at my story too - which is what I was hoping for.

After me, Professor Charles Hatfield spoke about his teaching at California State University, where he teaches courses on comics in the department of English. I was most inspired by his approach and passion for comics as a medium that spans several disciplines: in my opinion this is why comics are such an excellent storytelling tool, but also perhaps why they are so difficult to define and to accept in the more usual confines of how we describe art and literatue. Charles' talk only got me started on thinking about these things, and I have much more thinking to do: this interdisciplinarity (Charles' word, not mine!), or rather the lack of it, was one of the main reasons I was uncomfortable as a scientist....but that's for another blog, another time. Charles also introduced the book which sprang from his PhD thesis: Alternative Comics: An Emerging Literature. I can't wait to read it.

Finally, the evening ended with Joumana Medlej talking about her comic Malaak, Lebanon's first superhero. Joumana grew up in Beirut surrounded by civil war, and this provides the backdrop to her comics. I loved the details Joumana pointed out in the images, like the mosaics and artefacts in the public buildings encased in concrete to protect them from destruction in the war: not crucial to the story and I probably wouldn't have noticed if she hadn't pointed it out, but it lent an authenticity to a (mostly) fantastical story. Malaak is self-published (yay!) and is also available as an iPad app, if you're that way inclined...

Laydeez Do Comics

2011-06-19T21:33:00.003+01:00

Tomorrow evening I'm giving a talk at a brilliant monthly meeting in London called Laydeez Do Comics. Every month they invite comics artists or academics to speak, and this month they invited me! I'm speaking along with Andrew Godfrey, who will be talking about his autobiographical comics on living with cystic fibrosis, Charles Hatfield, author of the book Alternative Comics: An Emerging Literature, and Joumana Medlej, an illustrator and comics artist from Lebanon, all of whom I'm really excited to meet. If you're in London, why not come along? It's at 6.30pm at the Rag Factory, just off Brick Lane, and costs only £1.50.

I've been preparing my talk for the last week or so. Public speaking is not exactly a forte of mine: in fact I'd go as far as to say I have a phobia of it. I'll be talking in general about my work, but mostly about my graphic novel, sharing some of my storyboards and working process. I'm nervous, but having attended the event for the first time last month when my good friend Paula Knight and tutor/mentor Bryan Talbot were speaking, I know the atmosphere will be receptive and supportive. That makes me marginally less scared. Marginally.

I'll let you know how it goes, and maybe share some of the talk here, later in the week :)

Solipsistic Pop 4, and maps...

2011-06-09T15:00:00.006+01:00

I'm really excited to be able to tell you about another great anthology that I'm taking part in later this year!

If you haven't yet picked up a copy of Solipsistic Pop, I highly recommend that you do. There have been three issues so far, always full of very talented UK comics artists. In each issue the artists draw upon a particular theme to inspire a short piece of work, which are collected in the book along with a few extra goodies to boot.

Issue 4 will feature 30 artists, and I'm delighted to be among them. You can see the full list of contributors and read more about issue 4 here, but suffice it to say that the inspiration this time has me extra excited about being involved......MAPS!

I love maps. If you didn't know already, I used maps as the inspiration for one of my final degree projects, as well as writing a dissertation on the subject. The result was this piece of work, possibly one of the most bonkers drawings I've ever done (click the image for a better view, or see some close-ups on Etsy or Flickr).

There's something about the intricacy and organic nature of maps that really excites me, and always has done. I remember poring over the maps that came inside the Chronicles of Narnia or Lord of The Rings when I was younger....and I'm equally captivated by 'real' maps. Drawing them is eqully absorbing and fascinating, and Green Bean readers will know that a map is one of my favourite things to doodle.

My job for Solipsistic Pop 4 is to design a dustjacket/cover piece in a similar vein to this piece of work. I'm not going to say much more about it than that yet, but I'm excited to have a chance to move my work in this direction again, and to see what happens...

2011-06-07T17:33:00.004+01:00

Wow, sorry for the long break....I was intending to blog once more before the house move, but everything became a bit hectic and I closed my shops and disappeared from the internet (almost) without warning.

Things are still a bit hectic - I'm still unpacking boxes and trying to catch up with work so I think it will be a while before I get back to 'normal'. However, today I enjoyed my first day working in my new studio in the sunshine....

While I spend a few more days shelving books and assembling furniture, I still won't be blogging much yet. But I'll take you on a proper tour of my new studio as soon as possible, and there'll be previews of the forthcoming Green Bean issue and various other bits of news, events and new work coming soon too.

In the meantime, I'm happy to announce that my etsy and bigcartel shops are both back open! And because I signed off to move house without proper warning, I'm giving you a few more days to take advantage of my special offers: you can still claim 13% off with the code LUCKY13 until Friday this week. And the first 4 orders will get the last of the free prints too :)

It's nice to be back!

Lucky 13

2011-05-19T15:14:00.005+01:00

For those of you who don't know, I'm in the process of moving house (yes, again.....). My life is currently packed into many cardboard boxes ready to be transported and reorganised in my brand new space. I'm going to need to close my online shops while the move actually takes place and for a little while afterwards, from May 27th (a week tomorrow) until mid-June.

BUT, before I do that, I thought it was a good opportunity to have some special offers and discounts, something I haven't done in a while.

While I've been organising my stuff for the move, I came across these little prints that I released for my blog anniversary almost a year ago. They are a very limited edition (only 25 of each) archival quality prints of my original gouache illustrations. I thought they had all gone, but as it turns out there are 13 of them left - 4 red and 9 green - and 13 is lucky for some.....

13 is the number of my new house. So in honour of the occasion, I'm offering 13% off everything in both my etsy shop and my big cartel shop with the coupon code LUCKY13. In addition, the first 13 orders will get one of the balloon prints for free!* If you have a colour preference, please let me know and I'll try to oblige while stocks last :)

Happy shopping...this offer will end when I close my shop for the move at midday on Friday 27th May.

*This offer excludes orders for Bake Me a (Vegan) Cake, because it only applies to items that will be posted.

Green Bean is One!

2011-05-10T16:34:00.003+01:00

I've just been to my printers to check the proof of the new Green Bean, volume 2, issue 3. It will be out in time for the Bristol Comic and Small Press Expo this weekend, but you can also pre-order in my etsy or bigcartel shops (the first shipping date will be next Tuesday, May 17th).

Can you believe that this issue marks the Green Bean's first birthday? My little zine is one year old already! And, at the same time, I can't believe that it is only a year I have been doing this... It feels like I've been self-publishing forever (in a good way!).

Thanks to everyone who has supported me and The Green Bean, and helped it grow over the last year. I have no plans to stop any time soon, only hopes to find new outlets and new customers who might enjoy my zines. And I hope you enjoy the latest installment, too :)

News

2011-05-06T10:23:00.005+01:00

Bristol Comic and Small Press Expo

This week I've been preparing for the Bristol Comic and Small Press Expo next weekend, 14th and 15th May. I'm running a bit late on the new Green Bean, Volume 2 issue 3, but it will be ready in time for the expo, and in my online shops by the end of next week.

I'll be at the Bristol Expo both days selling Green Beans and badges and various other goodies, and I'll be on the Comics and Mental Health panel on Saturday 14th May at 4pm, with Ian Williams, Simon Moreton and Nick Soucek. We'll each be discussing our own work and experiences, as well as dipping in to others and exploring why comics is such a good medium for communicating about mental health, and mental illness.

NELSON

I've been itching to announce this for ages, but today is the first time I'm allowed to spill the beans. I'm delighted to announce that I'm part of Nelson, and experimental collaborative graphic novel to be published by Blank Slate in November 2011. Its part-anthology, part-exquisite corpse, with contributions from over 50 UK comics creators. I feel very honoured and excited to be part of it.

The book will be released at Thought Bubble in November.

And the winner is......

2011-05-03T21:29:00.002+01:00

James was chosen by random.org :)

Sorry for the delay in posting the winner, I've been a bit poorly and tied up with moving house complications.

I want to say thank you to everyone who entered and left such lovely comments, and tweeted and blogged about my work - I wish I could pick more than one winner. But there are still nine sheep waiting for happy new homes...perhaps you'd consider one?

Sheep Originals + Giveaway

2011-04-26T17:56:00.005+01:00

I just listed nine original sheep drawings in my etsy shop!

I don't sell my original work very often. The main reason for this is my habit of scribbling on tatty scraps of paper that just happen to be lying about my studio. Most of my original work is covered in splodges and fingerprints, has torn corners or creases and is utterly imperfect. I also choose my paper for its colour and texture and not for archival qualities, and as such many of my originals will age and change over time. But I'm beginning to think these perculiar neuroses of mine might not be seen as drawbacks. Perhaps other people appreciate the authenticity of an off white paper that will age, a dog-eared corner or a smudgy fingerprint? I hope so :)

I made all of these drawings during my retreat in January, and they're very close to my heart, as are the sheep that feature in them. Of course, I did keep a one for myself (if you have the zine, you can probably work out which one), but I have picked nine of my favourites that I'd love to find new homes, and I've kept the prices all under £30 in the hope that they're purse or wallet friendly.

And......in honour of my 10 year recoveriversary, I've chosen one drawing to give away to one lucky blog reader!

To be in with a chance to win, just leave me a nice comment below. For an extra chance to win, I'd love you to blog, tweet or facebook about my sheep drawings (but remember to leave an extra comment so I don't forget to put your name in the hat twice!). I'll draw the winner next Sunday, May 1st. Good luck!

Celebrating...

2011-04-26T13:02:00.007+01:00

Yesterday marked exactly 10 years since I was told by a doctor that I would be lucky to live another two weeks. For those of you who don't know, I was struggling with anorexia. Now, ten years later, I consider myself fully recovered and am writing and drawing a book about the whole experience. 10 years is a long time, and this weekend it felt right to mark my proving the doctor wrong with some celebration.

In thinking about my life 10 years since that day, I tried to decide what were the ten best things about recovery. After much dithering I couldn't settle on a definitive list of 10. So I put together a list of 10 things that are great about recovery, but these are not the only great things. I have many more to add, and perhaps you do too?

I also bought myself a present. Frustratingly, it hasn't arrived in the post yet, but the gift a chose was this gorgeous watch from Moxie and Oliver on etsy. I can't wait to wear it, and have an everyday reminder of how much I have to celebrate.

I spent the weekend with my lovely partner, Luke, who prepared the most incredible feast of food for us. I won't share all the recipes, but I do hope you'll join in my celebration by baking some of the cookies yourself....they really are the best cookies in the whole wide world!

Ingredients:

125g plain white flour
100g oats, whizzed in the blender
1tsp baking powder
1tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/2 tsp salt
100g caster sugar
100g light brown sugar
100g margarine
1tsp vanilla essence
50g soft silken tofu and 1tsp baking powder (or one egg)
165g chocolate, broken into pieces

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C, and cover 3 baking trays with greaseproof paper

Mix together the flour, oats, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and salt.

In another bowl, cream the margarine and sugars until light an fluffy. Thn beat in the egg or tofu mixture and vanilla.

Add the wet ingredients to the dry ones and mix slowly but thoroughly. Finally stir in the chocolate pieces.

Roll the dough into golf-ball sized pieces and place on the baking trays AT LEAST 5 cm apart. This might mean baking the cookies in several batches, which is fine.

Bake the cookies for 10 minutes. They will look slightly browned but still pretty much uncooked when they come out the oven. Leave them to cool and firm up, then enjoy one (or several) with a nice cup of tea.

I'm planning on doing a celebratory giveaway later on today, so keep an eye out later on. I've decided to list all of the original drawings from my Sheep Sketchbook for sale, and I'll be giving one of them away to a lucky winner.....watch this space!

Green Bean Badges - Step by Step

2011-04-14T13:24:00.008+01:00

Beans galore!

I've had so much fun this week making Green Bean badges. It's been an idea I've had in my head for a long time, but I finally decided to make time for it so I can sell them at London Zine Symposium this Sunday. I also want to give them as free gifts to all my Green Bean subscribers as a little thank you for their support (all new subscribers will get a free badge from now on, too!).

You can now find the badges in my Etsy and Bigcartel shops, or you can come along and buy one from me in person this Sunday at the Rag Factory in London.

And by popular demand....this is how I made them!

1) I created a prototype from Sculpey polymer clay.

2) I cooked the prototype according to the Sculpey instructions.

3) To make the mould I used Siligum, a two-part rubber
moulding putty. You mix the two parts in equal quantities
and it hardens to silicone rubber in about 5 minutes.

4) While the Siligum was soft, I pushed in over the prototype
green beans, on the smooth surface of a tile so it would
be easy to peel off when the rubber hardened.

5) Then I removed the prototype to reveal the finished mould!

6) To make a badge, I pushed a fresh piece of Sculpey into
the mould, being careful to get it into all the detailed parts.

7) I then gently inverted the mould to remove the beans.

8) Ta-da!

9) I repeated this over and over until I had enough beans
(actually, I ran out of Sculpey.....)

10) I then baked all the moulded beans to harden them...

11)....gave each one eyes using a permanent marker....

12)....and varnished them using a satin acrylic varnish.

13) Finally, I used epoxy resin to attach a brooch back.

The finished product comes in four different colours. I'm still undecided which one I like best, but I'll have to choose soon as I want to wear one!

Vikki and David

2011-04-11T19:28:00.003+01:00

I had the privilege of attending the wedding of my very dear friend Vikki's wedding last Saturday. It was a magical day, and I am really happy to share soe pictures with you of the figures I made for the wedding cake.

Making cake toppers was one of my very first business ventures, but sadly I don't make them to commission any more, except for very special requests. The problem is not the making, but that the finished result is so fragile that it has to be delivered by hand.

But I love making them, and it's nice to have a chance to share something a little bit different with you. I have more model making to share with you later this week too....

Draw What You Read

2011-04-07T19:44:00.006+01:00

I'm very happy to announce that Therapy Tales and I have created a new Flickr group, Draw What You Read. Founded after we discovered a mutual love for drawing the piles of books that accumulate in our lives, we wondered if we might not be alone....so please, explore, join, and share your drawings of the books that you're reading. We'd love to see them!

My latest contributions are these, five books that changed my life:

In short....

The Amber Spyglass opened my mind beyond the church in which I grew up.

Blankets convinced me that the graphic novel was the format I needed to tell my story.

The Red Tree inspired me to change paths and follow my childhood dream of becoming an illustrator.

Eating in the Light of the Moon was the most gentle and helpful book I read in my recovery from eating disorders.

A Language Older Than Words encompasses so much, drawing parallels between physical and sexual abuse of one person by another to humanity's abuse of the planet. It is beautifully written and inspiring. And utterly unique.

What are your favourite/most influential books? Please draw them for us!

Charity Shop Challenge

2011-03-25T13:47:00.003Z

Here I am wearing this month's find for the Charity Shop Challenge!

I wasn't sure at first. When I found the waistcoat, it had ugly blue (blue!) buttons on. With a little help from the button range in the wonderful shop where I work, it now looks much happier. All I need is a pocket watch to go with it...

All Change

2011-03-24T19:15:00.004Z

Yet again I'm apologising for not blogging, this time for over a week! But at least in this post I'll let you know a bit of what's been going on, and what's been keeping me so quiet. There is change afoot:

Change #1: This seems to have become a once-a-week blog. Not completely by accident. I always knew this was going to happen, and have apologised for it several times in the past when I thought the moment had come, and then continued to post regularly. But, I think, this is really it. As I devote more and more time to my graphic novel, I have less and less that I can blog about. I firmly belive that quality is more important than quantity, so rest assured that I will post as often as I have something great to share. But that might only be once a week, or even less.

But, speaking of the graphic novel, it is coming along very well, and on schedule. I'm in the process of editing and finalising my storyboards, with the hope of starting on the artwork in the next few months!

Change #2: Actually I feel like everything is changing; like I'm in a kind of transition. I'm getting close to starting the final drawings for the biggest project I have ever undertaken in my life, which is a transition in itself. I'm awaiting decisions over whether I'll receive more financial support while I do it, or whether I'll have to fit it in around part or full-time work. At the moment the situation is uncertain, but whatever happens it will probably leave me less time for blogging than I already have.

Change #3: I am moving house soon. Yes, again! It's a long story but a happy one, and I can't wait to set up my new workspace, and share it with you.

To celebrate my impending house move*, and by popular demand, I've decided to release the following illustration as a limited edition print. The drawing first appeared in black and white in The Green Bean, Volume 2 issue 1, but I've been quietly working on a colour version. I hope you like it! You can find it both in my etsy shop and my bigcartel shop.

(*none of these houses remotely resembles my new home)

But, despite me saying that my blog will be less frequent, there are still plenty of bloggy things to look forward to:

I'll have a new what-I-wore/charity shop challenge drawing to share tomorrow.

I want to share some of the treasure I've discovered whilst tidying and clearing out my house before the move, including some of my embarrassing early artwork!

And related to that, I've found some exciting/forgotten things that I'll be listing in my etsy and bigcartel shops, and maybe some to give away too...including some original artwork.

I am hoping to start offering some custom rubber stamps in my shops very soon...

Next month I'll be celebrating 10 years of my recovery so I'm planning something exciting. Don't ask me what yet, but I promise it'll be good!

New Shop

2011-03-15T12:40:00.003Z

I haven't had much time to blog lately. I had an excellent weekend in London at the Comic and Small Press Expo, selling lots of my zines and meeting lots of new people (and buying lots of comics too, I must confess...)

It came to my attention that a lot of people choose not to buy my work online because they are uncomfortable about using Etsy. As a seasoned Etsy user, both buyer and seller, this does strike me as strange, especially as they now allow selling in different currencies. However, if it's having to sign up for an account that puts people off, I thought it was high time I offered an alternative. As such, I've opened a Big Cartel store!

Think of it as a 'second branch' of my etsy shop. The goods will always be the same, and the prices the same....it's just a slightly different shopping experience. I'm still working on the structure so it's a bit rough as yet, but it's up and running and I hope you like looking around. And, etsy-phobes, I hope it works for you....

And I'd like your opinions. I've been thinking about redesigning my blog for a while. Nothing major, but I'm aware I haven't changed the header since I changed the url from GreenBeanStudio to KatieGreenBean. Do you like the header on the Big Cartel store? Do you think the blog should match, or should I design something new from scratch?

Three Zine Tuesday!

2011-03-08T17:02:00.007Z

I was never planning to launch all three of these zines on the same day....but I'm going away to London tomorrow, where I'll be selling all of them at the Small Press Expo this weekend. So I thought it was only fair to make them available online too for everyone who can't make it to London this weekend!

So without further ado, I present Baa Baa Black Sheep: a sketchbook of my woolly friends :)

Next up is the spring issue of The Green Bean, Volume 2 Issue 2, a bunny special!

And last but by no means least is Little Epic, a collaborative project, initiated by my sister Jemma and me. This zine brings together talented poets and illsutrators from all over the world, in a collection curated by Jemma and myself. This is a also a good opportunity to thank all these lovely people for taking part!

Poets:
Emma-Jane Howman
Joshua Williams
Jennifer Roberts
Emma Preuss
Elisa Zugno
Chris Fosten
Jemma Green
Lauren Addicott
Carol Shaw

Illustrators:
Gillian Manford
Beverly Ealdama
Ilaria Benedetti
Katie Green (you don't need a link to that one!)
Aijung Kim
Jasmine Foster
Stephie Ginger
Gemma Luker
Tami Cohen

The result is a diverse 44 page zine-shaped adventure of words and pictures, which you can now find in my etsy shop :)

Peanut Butter Lover's Day

2011-03-01T16:56:00.004Z

Did you know March 1st is Peanut Butter Lovers' Day?

As a vegan, I doubt I need to elaborate much on the wonders of peanut butter...it is one of my staple foods! I use it mostly in cooking (like last week's veggie burgers and peanut sauce - the sauce is incidentally very good on stir-fries too), but I also love it in sandwiches with banana (never jam!), but I'm even know to eat it right out the jar with a spoon...

I'm taking part in Holly Knitlightly's 365 Project, celebrating all the strange and wonderful holidays that are occurring every day of the year. Holly's got lots of collaborators, and there'll be a couple more days I'll be celebrating with her later in the year...I'll let you know when my contributions are up, but in the meantime you can enjoy them all on her blog.

Charity Shop Challenge

2011-02-28T22:48:00.005Z

And now for something completely different....

Lucy Davidson of Peas and Needles is organising a Charity Shop Challenge! The idea is that you share an image of your best charity shop find on the last Friday of the month: blog it, tweet it and upload it to the Flickr group. I'm running a bit behind, I should have posted this painting on Friday but I didn't want to interrupt EDA week.

I've taken up the challenge because I can be a bit of a clothing snob. I have my favourite shops (you'll soon guess those) and I don't often shop elsewhere. I like going where I know what will fit me and what will last a long time. I do not like to rummage. And yet, when I've made the effort, I have found some real gems in charity shops. Here's my best find this month:

Dessert Time: Questions and Brownies

2011-02-26T21:25:00.005Z

Thanks again to everyone for all your comments, thoughts and feedback this week. I've really enjoyed doing this series of posts: writing about things always helps to clarify them in my mind, but it's also been wonderful to know that they've been valuable to read, too. Finally thanks to those who follow my blog for visual pleasures....for your patience. Technical issues persist so this post will again be unillustrated. I'm hoping to get back to normal next week!

I'm taking it as a compliment that I haven't received many questions....perhaps you're telling me that what I've written has been horough and clear enough. However, I did promise some dessert and I'd like to thank Sarah for asking the following for me to muse over while I serve the chocolate brownies.

What do you believe are the key ingredients for a lasting recovery?

Oh, how I want to illustrate this as a recipe! As I said in Thursday's post, recovery is unique to everyone. I searched for a long time for a book or set of rules that might tell me how to do it, and evetually realised that perhaps the whole poitn was to find my own way through. However, if asked I think I can break it down into key ingredients, but again these are what worked for me and not necessarily 'right' answers:

My recovery-in-a-nutshell ingredient: having a concrete ambition or goal that gave me a reason to recover for. It had to be focused on me not anyone else; positive and forward looking instead of focused on things I didn't want to do any more. Wanting to stop hurting my family was not the right kind of ambition. Wanting to be an illustrator was.

And my second recovery-in-a-nutshell ingredient: Understanding the reasons behind my eating disorder, taking responsibility for my recovery and treating myself with compassion instead of aggression. That's a lot of things in one bullet-point, but if you read Thursday's post you'll (hopefully) know what I mean!

A really good support network is vital. For me it was in the form of close friends, an excellent therapist and, later in my recovery, a generous and patient partner. My family did their very best too, but in the end I had to reach out elsewhere for emotional support. It could be anyone, but you need someone on your side for the journey, someone who accepts you exactly as you are each step of the way....and who can remind you to do so when you forget.

This one might seem obvious, but eating well is so important! Regardless of whether I was in a cycle of over- or under-eating, one of the most helpful (and most difficult, of course) things I found was to break the cycle of punishment. Each meal had to be a fresh start, regardless of whether I felt I'd eaten too much earlier that day or week. Even if I'd had a huge binge less than an hour beforehand, I tried to make sure I sat down and ate a proper balanced meal and it certainly helped me feel more physically and mentally balanced.

As my eating disorders served as coping mechanisms for overwhelming emotional distress, I needed to learn new and healthier ways to cope with that. What does and doesn't work will vary from person to person, and part of recovery is trial-and-error to find what works for you. But here's a summary of what's in my toolbox:

An increased awareness of my emotions and thought processes gives me chance to deal with most things before they become overwhelming. Usually.
I find routine to be a great source of comfort, and particularly important as I work from home. I try to take walks, tea breaks, meals etc. at regular times of day.
I talk to people when I'm upset. People who understand and who I know won't tell me I'm being silly.
Allowing myself to indulge in distractions: reading, watching tv, procrastinating, googling, knitting, doodling, shopping...
When I do feel overwhelmed I can often feel stuck, so I try to something that forces me to move (force being the oprative word there!)...going for a walk, taking a shower, seeing a friend if I've been alone for a while. Simple things.
Breathing exercises are excellent tools for coping with panic attacks and flashbacks.
Most of all, drawing is the way I express/cope with things these days.

How has your idea of recovery changed since you first began to get better?

Well, as I mentioned on Tuesda y, at first I thought recovery was only about returning to a healthy weight....I didn't realise anything deeper was going on, let alone that I'd have to work at it if I wanted to get better. Once I realised that simply gaining weight was not the answer, I still expected recovery to return my life to how it had been before, back to the innocence of my childhood I suppose. As my journey went on, though, I realised I was wrong again. I realised I wasn't only recovering from an illness through this process but I was growing up and finding out who I was. Now it's hard to imagine who I might have become if I'd never suffered an eating disorder....it's a part of who I am and, weird as it sounds, I'm grateful for it.

Has the process of writing your book led you to think about eating disorders and recovery in new ways?

Surprisingly not is the answer to this question! I had imagined that the process of writing/drawing my story into a form that is suitable for others to read would change the way I felt about what happened, or even change how I remembered it. There is still plenty of time for this to happen, but so far the way I think about my recovery hasn't been changed by the writing process.

I take this as a good sign. Although I had the idea to write the book almost 10 years ago when my illness was first diagnosed, I knew I had to wait until I was fully recovered to be able to write it. Quite where the transition occurs between being in recovery and getting on with life is a subject I'll be discussing in the book and not here...but the fact that my opinions haven't changed much through the course of writing it assures me that for me, that transition happened some time ago. Writing the book is as emotionally challenging a process as I have ever experienced, rivalling recovery itself. But the two processes are separate, and that's why I still say with confidence and a big smile that I am fully recovered :)

The Cultural Eating Disorder

2011-02-25T21:05:00.007Z

I'm afraid this post won't be what I was hoping it would. I've been without any electricity all day in my house. This evening I am at a friend's, so I finally have computer and internet access, but I have no scanner here so this post will be (regretfully) unillustrated. I was also hoping this would be one of the most important posts of the week, but I've had a pretty stressful day and not as much time to compose it as I'd like. But perhaps that's a good thing....it's pretty long anyway!

I intend to explore some of these points further, and visually at some point. When circumstances are more favourable ;)

For now, let's start with this. Last week, at work (I work part-time in a craft shop), my colleague and I were chatting; for some reason discussing chocolate. During this conversation, I said that I think I eat some chocolate every single day. At that point, a customer interjected, outraged. "Every day?!" she said, as though I'd committed some heinous crime. "But look at the size of you!"

My size, now that it's a healthy one, is irrelevant. What shocked me is that she felt so strongly about my remark as to interrupt our conversation. It was hardly a private conversation; we were speaking well within hearing range of our customers. But would she have interrupted if I'd said, for example, I take a bath every day, wash my hair every day, or some other such mundane activity? Why was she so strongly affected by hearing about my habits of chocolate consumption?

It's hardly surprising. I remember once complaining to my therapist that I had absolutely no concept of how to eat normally. I'd been hiding and sneaking food since my early childhood. I'd been a comfort eater, an anorexic and then a binge-eater. My eating habits had absolutely nothing to do with physical hunger or fullness, and I could not remember them ever having done. How could I possibly learn? My therapist told me to look around me, watch how 'normal' people ate, and learn from them. And so I watched.

I come from a family where eating everything on your plate was good, and therefore not finishing your dinner was bad. Family occasions always centred around food, and the women of the family would demonstrate their love and hospitality through the service of large meals, and measure the return of that love by how much was or wasn't eaten. Eating up was good, wasting food was bad. And yet it was the chefs who always ate the least, said they were trying to be good, that they weren't hungry, that they'd been nibbling while preparing the meal.

Clearly I couldn't learn to eat normally from my family. I turned to my friends. Most of them were on diets of some kind; if not following some specific plan then at least expressing dissatisfaction with their eating habits. Trying to be' good'. Their eating habits seemed little to do with hunger and fullness, more about 'right' and 'wrong'. Not dissimilar to the habits that had started me on the downward spiral into anorexia. I knew I couldn't risk going back there. So, I couldn't learn what I needed from my friends either.

The more I looked for an example to follow, the more I saw disordered eating everywhere. It seemed I hadn't been completely alone in my anorexia when I'd judged my merits as a person by what I did or didn't allow to pass my lips. It's everywhere. It's in every food advert on TV, every women's (and I imagine many men's) magazine, even on food packaging. This food is good (and will make you a good person); this food is bad, indulgent, naughty (and will make you a bad person). You cannot escape it. Eating disordered or not, I don't think there are many people in this world, or certainly in our culture, who haven't at one time felt the influence of these messages.

It's certainly exaggerating a little to suggest that our whole culture has an eating disorder. But I do think this: I think everyone has at some time thought was of those thoughts that an anorexic or a binge-eater beats him or herself up with over eating something they feel they shouldn't have. I'm sure everyone has wished they could have more self-discipline, keep to their 5-fruit-and-veg-a-day or whatever their preferred dietary rule or recommendation is. What it is that makes one person able to think such a thought and get on with their life, and the other take it so far on board that they start on a path to self-destruction, I do not know. But I am fairly certain those thoughts are not unique to those of us with eating disorders.

How do you begin to unravel a thought pattern, a way of thinking about food that has nearly destroyed your life, and yet is so culturally normal? How do you make a stand and eat, say, some chocolate every single day with all these messages around you about being thin and healthy and good?

This is one of the reasons I think recovery is so lonely. Learning to eat again had to be all about me. I had to shut out everything I thought I knew about what was right and wrong, good and bad, and start over. And when I started, I couldn't even so much as trust myself to know when I as hungry, or when I was full. At the beginning of that journey, I expected to detach all emotional meaning from eating: for it to become a fulfilment of physical need and nothing more. At a fundamental level, that's all it is really. Learning to trust my body's signals of hunger and fullness was slow and laborious to say the least. All that mattered was that I was eating. Eating enough to be physically well. But is that enough?

No, it's not.

Eating means so much more than physical nourishment. Eating is a physical pleasure, an adventure into tastes and textures, new combinations and old favourites that bring back treasured memories. Eating is a social occasion, a time when we stop to relax, share time with friends or family. Eating is a connection to the world around us, a way of responding to the seasons and connecting to where our food comes from. Eating can be an expression of one's ethical or religious values. Eating is also an emotional nourishment; calming, soothing, nurturing. An expression of love, for those around us or for ourselves.

There are a lot of good reasons to argue that to recover from and eating disorder, you need to let go of the idea that there are 'good' and 'bad' foods. But here's where I get a bit controversial: I think that's preposterous. Don't get me wrong: obviously it's good when a dangerously underweight anorexic will eat something, anything, and it matters more that they put something into their body than what that something might be. But beyond that situation, of course there are such things as 'good' and 'bad' foods. To argue against that would be to say that it's equally nourishing to eat Big Mac and fries as it is to have a home-cooked Sunday roast, with organic vegetables. I'm sure I don't need to explain the many differences between those two meals!

There are good and bad foods. There are foods that are better for your body than others, foods that you need to eat more of or less of to stay healthy. Go beyond that, if you like: there are foods that are better for the environment, foods that fit with your ethical choices and foods that don't. All of these things can get caught up with eating-disordered thoughts, can become obsessions and excuses to judge and berate oneself. I can see why people think that you have to let go of the idea of good and bad to get better.

But all I think you need to let go of is the idea that your choices about food, whatever they may be, determine your value as a person.

I've often had to defend my choice to be a vegan: many have claimed it is an excuse to cling to my eating disorders. It probably was in the past, and I can hardly argue that it doesn't function as a measure of control over what I eat. What makes the difference, the reason I know with such confidence that it is no longer an eating disorder, is that it does not control my life. It is a personal, ethical choice, just as it is that I try to buy my food locally, to eat seasonally, and to eat organic when I can. I don't judge myself (or anyone else) by those choices. They are not choices I make to improve how I feel about myself, but because they are in my opinion, the best choices for my body and my impact on the environment. That does not make them right, just right for me....and I think recovery should involve learning to make such decisions for yourself.

People often find it strange that, as a recovered anorexic, I find such joy in eating. They can be disbelieving, and yet I think that recovery has granted me more freedom around food than most 'normal' people experience. Take, for example, the customer who felt so outraged about my daily chocolate intake. I doubt she had an eating disorder, or knew that I used to. I also doubt her exclamation was about thinking that I was fat-and-disgusting for my habits. I think that she was so taken aback because she could not imagine giving herself permission to eat chocolate every day; that she would judge herself fat and disgusting and out of control if she did.

And that's sad. I want never to take the freedom that recovery has given me for granted. Not just because I remember so clearly what's it's like to measure my self-worth out according to what I eat, but because I am constantly surrounded by people who still do. People for whom those thoughts and habits and beliefs will never become so extreme and make them so unwell that they have to confront them. People who do not have eating disorders but whose disordered thoughts around food will rob them of them pleasures of eating; of their right to enjoy eating chocolate every day.

***

Even though I consider myself fully recovered, I find it a highly entertaining irony that the first work I published was a recipe book. Make of that what you will! I'm not going to arue or defend myself either way. I'm just going to share a couple of recipes from it with you, today and tomorrow.....today we're eating Bakewell Tart!

(it is big enough to read if you click to enlarge it)

Tomorrow will be my last Eating Disorders Awareness Week blog post. I've not planned anything to write about so I'm relying on you to ask me questions, or anything you think I need to expand upon or clarify from the week's post. Don't be shy (but be anonymous, if you want to...if you'd rather not leave a comment, email me).

I hope that you've found this week's posts useful/interesting. I want to thank everyone who has commented/tweeted/facebooked/emailed and shared their feedback with me. It's not so easy writing such personal stuff, but it's certainly worth it knowing that it does reach out in the ways I hope it to. So thank you for supporting me to do it. Your comments and support will continue to remind me why I am writing my book :)

Normal blog service will be resumed next week....which means I'll probaby take a week off blogging altogether!

Recovery?

2011-02-24T17:10:00.005Z

I think 'recovery' is a bit of a misnomer. To me, the idea of re-covery implies returning to a previous state, and that in turn implies that the previous state was desirable and/or healthy. I can remember hiding and throwing away food when I was five years old. I don't remember hating my body - that came later - but I remember feeling unlikeable, inadequate. I remember an overwhelming (internal) pressure to be good, even at that young age. If recovery had returned me to the state I was in before I became anorexic, I would still be a lost, lonely, confused little girl.

This is the 'main course' of my posts this week, but I will do my best to keep it succinct. I mentioned earlier in the week the misconception I'd had that simply returning to a healthy weight would be all I needed to fix the problem. Then yesterday I explained why that didn't work: because my eating disorders were only symptoms of a much deeper problem. How the heck then did I overcome them? I wondered that 10 years ago when they told me I had two weeks to live. And I wonder it now, looking back, hardly believing that it even happened.

(provisional artwork for Lighter Than My Shadow)

Excuse me while I gloss over major events and lengths of time in my recovery. I fear making it sound straightforward. But I have spent the last two years writing the full story in the form that will eventually become my graphic novel and I don't feel I can tell it any other way. Nor do I want to. So this post will be a necessarily short and sweet version of the story. You'll have to wait for the book for the rest!

Recovery was not a straightforward process. In fact, I'll confess I never 'believed' in it. I'd read so many books and had so many doctors say that it would be optimistic to expect to ever be free of eating disordered thoughts. I never imagined that little nagging voice at the back of my head that told me I was fat/ugle/unlikeable/unacceptable/worthless would ever completely go away. But it did.

Perhaps it's easier to discuss what recovery is not, rather than what it is. It certainly was not what I expected. In stead of making me feel better, it made all the anguish I'd felt so far feel insignificant. I think what made it so excruciating was this: for so long, I'd depended on self-starvation as my anchor, my only means of feeling safe in the world. Eventually, the very thing that had kept me safe came close to killing me, and I had to fight the urge to do it. I had to fight my own thoughts. I hated that separation, that feeling of conflict and distrust of my own mind...and worse, that those around me didn't trust me either. But it helped me separate from the illness enough to gain weight and at least get to a point where my life was not in immediate danger. Not from starvation, anyway.

Where I had expected the weight gain to fix everything, it actually made me feel worse. Nothing about my mental state had changed, and I had been robbed of the one thing I could do to calm and comfort myself; to cope. I managed to maintain something close to a healthy weight because I didn't want to cause my parents any more stress. I was able to return to school and integrate back into 'normal' life. I felt anything but normal. This may make no sense unless you've had the same feeling, but I felt anorexia was all I had; that is was who I was. I desperately wanted to go back to it, but at the same time couldn't bear letting my parents down. It was still a constant war in my head: to eat, or not to eat. This is why I get so defensive about people judging how unwell someone is or isn't by their physical health. It was only after all appearances would have suggested that I was better that I became overwhelmed, depressed and suicidal for the first time. The second time came in the aftermath of the abuse. To me, that was the lowest point. It was the closest I came to ending everything.

I've heard a lot of people say something along similar lines to thiese thoughts of mine: I feel like I had to go to that place, that 'darkest hour', that absolute rock bottom. That I had to give up all hope and feel like I had nothing left to lose. After all, if I had nothing left to lose, how could it possibly get any worse? Losing everything suddenly gave me the freedom and courage I needed to make a fresh start. I made one decision in that moment that I think changed everything, and I know I could never have made that decision earlier: not at any other point in my life. I had always been too scared, considered myself not good enough, or considered it not to be a sensible choice that my family and friends would approve of. I would never have risked it, except when I thought I had nothing to lose. You know what I decided, right?

If I had to explain recovery in a nutshell (which I have been asked many times, but usually manage not to answer!) I would pick this as my single most important point. It was deciding there was something I wanted to do with my life. I was not doing it to stop being a burden on my parents or anyone who cared for me, or because I felt I ought to, or it was expected of me. In fact what I chose was downright unexpected. I had just graduated with a science degree from a top university. And just a few months later I enrolled in college to study art. I wanted to be an illustrator, and I wanted it enough to save myself.

I don't want to suggest that making that decision fixed everything. In fact, it fixed nothing. But it changed everything. This is why I say 'recovery' is a misnomer. If I had never had an eating disorder, had never been abused, had never got to that dark and scary place, I don't think I would ever have made that decision. I don't think I would have become this healthy, happy person who spends her days doing what she loves. In that way, I think my illness and of course my 'recovery', has made me who I am.

My therapist told me I should expect it to take as long to recover as it took me to get sick. When I did some quick sums on my fingers I was horrified by how many years of work lay ahead. But, I'd say in the end she was about right. And recovery did become less and less arduous, albeit gradually.

The other key point in my 'recovery-in-a-nutshell' is this: I had to heal that separation caused by treating the eating disorder as a disease, a monster. Now, this is going to get a bit controversial and will sound a bit counterintuitive, but hear me out. That separation had to happen. It was the only thing that enabled me to gain the weight I needed to avoid starving myself to death: to see anorexia as the enemy. But the more I learned in recovery, the more therapy I had, the more I understood the reasons behind my illness (some of which I tried to explain yesterday). The more I came to understand that it was not some monstrous infestation of my mind, but a system I had created in order to cope. That it was a part of me, and if I hated it then I hated myself. And that was exactly what I was trying to recover from. Befriending your eating disorder is not exactly a message to spread far and wide as it could so easily be misconstrued, but I hope I've explained well enough what I mean. It's not that I don't see eating disorders as illnesses...they are that, obviously. I'm saying that there came a point when viewing it as such, as something entirely separate from myself, ceased to be helpful. Instead, seeing it as part of myself and therefore something that I could explain, understand and take responsibility for was the next step in my healing. Responsibility, by the way. Not blame.

The real work of recovery for me was finding ways to use the understanding I had gained about my eating disorders to be compassionate: to comfort myself instead of berate myself over my behaviour. It was a fine balance. Too much compassion and forgiveness could easily have me lapsing into old habits, telling myself that I was doing it out of kindness, or 'just this once'. I had to be patient and gentle....qualities I knew I had, but had never applied to myself.

For so long I'd tackled recovery aggressively, My mantra in the very early days was "if I have enough will power to starve myself, then I have the will power to get better." And will power was indeed a great asset in the laborious struggle of gaining weight. But if will power had been all I needed, I never would have developed a bingeing problem. Will power could only take my recovery so far.

I had also expected recovery to change me. To force me to become someone new, someone stronger. Perhaps it's laughable now, but I expected recovery to make me perfect. In fact, the later stages of the journey involved very little change at all. I found that recovery was less the battle of strength and will to change I had always considered it to be, and more a gentle acceptance. In many ways, nothing has changed. I am still a perfectionist, I still obsess about things, I am as anxious and prone to manic highs and depressive lows as ever. Perhaps only two things have changed: I accept these things now, as part of who I am. I don't fight them any more, and often I laugh at them. But I also know how to cope with them without resorting to over- or under-eating. Perhaps, at a fundamental level, that is all recovery is.

So tonight, we're eating my favourite homemade veggie burgers (not as much hassle to make as you'd think), with spicy peanut sauce. You can eat these burgers in a bun, but I also like to serve them with brown rice and some steamed brocolli, with the peanut sauce drizzled over the whole lot. Bon appetit!

For those of you who didn't know, you've probably guessed by now that I'm a vegetarian. Vegan in fact. I'll be discussing this, and several more loosely eating disorder related matters in tomorrow's post, the final one of the week. On Saturday, I'll be happy to answer any (reasonable) questions you might have about anything relating to what I've talked about, so feel free to ask away in the comments!

What's It All About?

2011-02-23T21:22:00.004Z

If an eating disorder is not about wanting to be thin and attractive, then what is it about? I think there are as many answers to this question as there are people with eating disorders, and I can only write about my own experiences. And to me, any explanation seems a simplification. I can explain it to some extent as a coping mechanism, as striving for control. I can explain it as a method I used to cope with overwhelming emotions. I can explain it as a result of low self esteem. I can explain it as desperation not to grow up. For me it was all of those things, and more. A whole intricate web of causes that I can pinpoint in almost every section of my life: being bullied at school, my relationship with my family, pressure to succeed academically, cultural pressure to be something I felt that I wasn't. Even the personality I was born with. After 10 years of therapy, I feel I can finally put all the pieces of the puzzle together, and it's enough to fill a 400 page graphic novel. At risk of spoiling that (and boring you silly) I won't be attempting to explain everything here. But perhaps I can try to explain some things.

I consider my eating disorders to have been physical manifestation of how I felt about myself. Metaphors, if you like, for an inner turmoil. And ways of coping with that turmoil too. My anorexia developed over some years of being bullied at school, and feeling like I was unattractive, unlikeable and unacceptable the way I was. I don't mean only physically. I thought everything about my personality was wrong too. Controlling what I ate made me feel better; made me feel like I was at least doing something right. I could make strict rules and folow them, and people admired me for my self-discipline. It was never so much about changing how I looked, but about changing the way I felt about myself. As long as I kept to the rules, I felt I was acceptable. What I ate or did not eat lost any connection with hunger or fullness (it's arguable it never had, but I'll come back to that another day). Through denying my physical needs I was demonstrating an absence of need, an absence of emotion. I was not trying to starve, but to show that I was not hungry. That I did not need anyone, or anything, physically or emotionally.

Of course, all this understanding comes with hindsight. At the time, I had no idea what I was doing, or why. I was so cut off from how I felt, I could do nothing to explain my aversion to eating other than call it a monster that had taken over my mind. And anorexia does that, creeps up on you. All I knew was that the less I ate, the safer I felt. The less I hated myself. It seems to me that many people even without eating disorders might empathise with this feeling. I've heard perfectly 'healthy' men and women complain of guilt ofter eating, or that feeling 'fat' which anyone with an eating disorder will know so well. But it seems there comes a point, and I don't know when or how you would ever know you've crossed it because you cannot see it coming. But I do know that the one thing that brought me stability, comfort and control in my life seemd suddenly to be controlling me.

Perhaps if I hadn't lost such a dangerous amount of weight, nobody would have noticed. Certainly, some people with eating disorders can suffer in silence for years because their problems go unnoticed without physical symptoms. In many ways I count myself lucky that I became ill enough to get help....and that the help I got was helpful!

It was in the early days of therapy that I finally began to understand my eating disorder not as vanity and stupidity, and also not as a monster that had commandeered my brain, but a dramatic physical expression of the emotional pain I was in, and yet couldn't bear. I wanted to be perfect, be liked. I wanted to be independent from my family. I wanted to feel numb, and protected from the people who bullied me at school. I wanted to deny the development of my adult body. I wanted to feel in control. I wanted to feel good enough. And somehow, eating the 'right' food, having the 'right' body shape, came to represent all of those things. Being thin was my metaphor for everything that I thought would make me happy, and everything that I was not. Becoming thin, at least, seemed achieveable.

But becoming thin didn't make me the person I imagined it would. I guessed I wasn't working hard enough, wasn't thin enough. I kept trying, and it nearly killed me.

Binge-Eating Disorder was an expression of very different emotions, though they came from the same core of self-hatred I'd felt for most of my life. Instead of desperately trying to cling to some control, some shred of something that made me feel like I was an ok person, I had given up. I felt completely out of control, and my inability to stop eating confirmed that. It shocked and horrified me how I could go from such extreme starvation to the opposite I had once had nightmares about.

My transition from anoreixa to binge-eating disorder was a long and complicated one, certainly no more a choice than my anorexia had been in the first place. I was molested by an alternative therapist I was seeing during my recovery from anorexia. I lived for some years in denial, never admitting what had happened to anyone, swinging back and forth from starvation to compulsive eating. The bingeing was an expression of the self-hatred, chaos and disgust I felt. When I was anorexic, I had cared in some way about my body, strange as that might sound. I had cared what people thought, and I thought what I was doing was taking care of myself. When I was bingeing, I was beyond caring. I needed something to numb the shame I felt. Bingeing eased it momentarily, or at least disguised it as shame over eating (which I found far easier to bear than the shame of the abuse). Having the 'right' body shape, eating the 'right' food, it still represented the same things to me: being liked, acceptable, in control. When I was bingeing I only felt fat, disgusting and ashamed. And I felt I deserved it.

During Eating Disorders Awareness Week, I often find myself reading more articles and statistics than I would usually. I read this week that suicide accounts for up to half the deaths among people with eating disorders. I would not be surprised.

I don't want to end a blog post like that. Obviously you know my story has a happy ending. I'm here to write it after all. But more than that, you know I'm well - hysically and mentally - and happy. Generally, this stuff is not a part of my life any more. But I think it's good to remind myself how far I've come, how lucky I am. Not everybody's story ends like that...it's a bleak thought, but people d die from these illnesses. And even for some that don't, they may struggle with their eating disorders for the rest of their lives.

But it's more important to share this. Full recovery is possible. I never used to believe it, but now I know it's true. I know it's possible to go days, weeks, months without so much as remembering that I had an eating disorder*. I know this post was a bit bleak but I think we need as much frankness and honesty when we discuss mental health issues of all kind. In fact any issues of all kinds! And besides, tomorrow's post about recovery just wouldn't work without sharing soem of the darkness that came before it.

Thanks for all your lovely, thoughtful and honest responses to my post yesterday. It's so reassuring to know that using this blog to send out my thoughts and opinions about something so close to my heart is not only interesting to my readers, but also helpful. Thanks especially to those of you who shared some of your own stories in the comments...I've loved reading them (and will be responding as soon as I have a chance). And i'm looking forward to hearing more of your thoughts today.

Oh, and I almost forgot. We're supposed to be nibbling on cauliflower pakoras whilst we're on this discussion. Enjoy!

*OK, so now I am writing a book about it I'm back to thinking about it every day again.

Misconceptions and Carrot Soup

2011-02-22T19:41:00.005Z

Let me be the first to admit, I used to think anorexics were stupid. Vain, selfish, image-obsessed little girls who had nothing more important to consider than being thin and attractive. My views took a long time to change, even after my own illness was diagnosed. I judged myself to be vain and stupid, and was terrified other people would too.

I dreaded people thinking that what I was doing was by choice, and worse, that it was a choice I'd made because I wnated to look like skinny models in fashion magazines. I also dreaded they might be right. Maybe, I thought, I was doing it because I was vain and selfish. I expected myself to be able to snap out of it, and it came as a shock that I couldn't. Laying those kinds of judgments on myself only made me feel worse. Hearing similar opinions from doctors and medical professionals was the icing on the figurative cake.

When I think about raising awareness of eating disorders, I try not to get all riled up about some of the ignorance I've come across. I try to remember how ignorant I was, how ignorant I would still be if I'd had no first-hand experience of what living with and recovering from an eating disorder is really like. I try to remember that all some people will know about eating disorders is based on what they've seen or heard in the media. You could be forgiven for thinking that the only eating disorder is anorexia, and anorexia only happens to white teenage girls whose extreme diets get out of hand. That they lose a lot of weight, but then realise what idiots they were, eat more, put the weight back on and get better. That's what I thought!

People with eating disorders come in all shapes and sizes, from all cultures and racial backgrounds, can be any age, male or female. The eating disorders charity B-EAT have released a very interesting report, exploring the effect of the kind of images seen in the media to represent eating disorders. Not surprisingly, sufferers didn't feel the imagery truly represented the reality of living with an eating disorder, focusing too much on the physical extremes and not on the more important internal process of recovery. My favourite quote in the report was this: "You can't tell someone's mental anguish by the shape and size of their body."

Of course, I soon learned there was more than stupidity to my eating disorder when I couldn't just snap out of it. I was happy enough admitting I was stupid: how could I have thought losing so much weight was a good idea?! But calling myself stupid did nothing to change how much I hated my body, or hated myself. Telling myself to stop being a selfish brat and to "just eat" did not calm the terror and panic I felt when I put food in my mouth.

The inability to "just eat" is, I think, the most common misconception about anorexia. It's about as useless and as hurtful as telling a compulsive eater to "just lose weight". Eating disorders are illnesses, not lifestyle choices. They are desperate clutches at something that makes the sufferer feel ok, feel safe or feel in control. I was constantly fighting my own thoughts, my own beliefs that what I ate (or did not eat) determined my value as a person. I was trying desperately to override the chnges happening to my adolescent body. I was trying to bury the shame and disgust of sexual abuse. I was using the only method I knew to feel acceptable, likeable, good enough. To feel some level of control in my life. And that, of course, is the paradox of it all. Because someone in the grip of an eating disorder has no control at all.

The other major misconception I had was my expectation that returning to a healthy weight would make it all go away. Perhaps this was also rooted in my belief that I was being silly. I soon discovered, of course, that regaining weight was just the tip of the iceberg and I felt no better at a 'normal' size than I'd felt at death's door. In fact I felt worse, because on top of everything else I was also (in my opinion) fat. Only then did I discover that my anorexia had only been a symptom, an outward manifestation of a very inward problem, and that's where my real recovery began (more on that later in the week).

I found that many people around me shared my assumption that because I was back at a healthy weight, everything was OK. After struggling for months to regain that weight, I wanted nothing more than to lose it again. Not so that I would be thin and attractive, but so that people would remember I was sick. I needed them to know how I was feeling, and my body was my way of expressing it.

The fact that I did not 'look sick' came back to haunt me when I'd slipped into binge-eating disorder. My doctor simply would not believe I had a problem, on the basis that I wasn't overweight. Because I had anorexia on my medical history, he refused to take my seriously, saying he was just glad I was eating at all. Indeed, many of my friends and family found my 'new' eating disorder difficult to take seriously in light of my past, not truly believing I could swing so far to the opposite extreme. I yet I believe it's actually quite common to 'switch' eating disorders as I did.

It's easy to think that eating disorders are about food, about losing weight, or about an obsession with body image. And of course they are, on one level. I used to think that's all they were. I soon learned, however, that my eating disorders were only a physical manifestation of huge mental turmoil. I could not recover by correcting only the physical symptoms, by "just eating". To recover fully I would have to tackle the underlying cause of the problem. And that, my friends, is the starting point for tomorrow discussion!

I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on this post. Did you share any of the misconceptions I had about people with eating disorders? Have you come across people who judged you like that? How did it make you feel? How did you deal with it?

And, while we chat, won't you join me for some Carrot and Orange Soup?

I'm Starving

2011-02-21T19:34:00.008Z

I'd like to invite you over for dinner. It will have to be virtual dinner, it won't travel well via broadband. I've laid the table.....come on, hurry up, sit down, I'm starving.

Maybe holding a dinner party is an inappropriate idea to mark Eating Disorders Awareness Week. To someone with an eating disorder, a dinner party is probably one of the most frightening things in the world. But that's exactly why, this week, I'm going to blog as much about food and cooking as I'm going to blog about eating disorders. I want to challenge a few stereotypes, start some discussions, and hopefully raise awareness of what recovering from an eating disorder is like....during, and afterwards.

For the benefit of anyone reading this who doesn't know, I used to have an eating disorder. Technically, I have had two distinct eating disorders: Anorexia Nervosa and Binge-Eating Disorder, though the lines between the two were very blurred (strange as that may sound). I am currently writing a graphic novel about those experiences and about my recovery. In just a couple of months' time, it will be 10 years since anorexia nearly claimed my life, and I now consider myself fully recovered. My book won't be out for another couple of years and I have no intention of spoiling it for you.....but it's Eating Disorders Awareness Week and I am unable to prevent myself from speaking up!

Here's the first myth I'd like to challenge. I love food. Even in the depths of anorexia, I loved food. I thought about it constantly, night and day: it was everything to me. I've come across a lot of people who think anorexics simply don't eat. I ate. Eating when I was anorexic was a ritual, a celebration, a stolen ecstatic moment made more powerful by how long I had managed to resist it. I obsessed about food. Dinner parties terrified me for so many reasons....what would I have to eat? How much should I eat? Will everyone be watching what I eat?

I never imagined I would be completely free from my eating disorder. I never imagined that eating would become pleasureable. I stopped obsessing about food, but grew to love it. I not only love to cook and to eat, but to share that with other people. Since I'm unable to invite the entire internet around for dinner, I'd love you to join me for a virtual dinner party. I can't think of a better way to celebrate and share my recovery. I'll cook some of my favourite recipes, and share some of my thoughts and experiences from my illness and recovery.

Feel free to ask questions, lots of them, and I'll try my hardest to reply to comments (so check back - Blogger won't notify you, frustratingly). I'll also do a whole blog post answering questions at the end of the week. Please don't be shy: I believe it's only by being honest and open that we can make eating disorders more widely understood, and hopefully sharing my experiences might be interesting, or even helpful....

I'll be sharing my thoughts on recovery all week on Twitter too. If you have experience of an eating disorder (or even if you don't), feel free to join our discussion group on Facebook or tweet with the hashtag #learningtolaugh.

Green Bean, and an invitation...

2011-02-18T15:12:00.005Z

I'm delighted to announce that the first issue in volume 2 of the Green Bean is finally here! Subscription copies will be in the post as soon as possible, and if you're not a subscriber you can order a copy here in my etsy shop.

Now, next week the format of my blog is going to change a bit. First, you're going to get a post every day (shock horror!)...but the subject matter is going to change a bit. For those of you who don't know, next week is Eating Disorders Awareness Week (#EDAW if you're on Twitter). In honour of the occasion I'm going to use my blog to host a virtual dinner party....everyone's invited, there'll be lots of good recipes and discussion. I haven't quite finalised the plans yet, but watch this space and I hope you'll join me. There be (virtual) cake!

New Shoes

2011-02-14T16:37:00.002Z

Nobody believes me when I say I used to be a tomboy. I don't believe it myself when I go and buy pink shoes....

Sneaky Peeks

2011-02-11T16:54:00.006Z

How's this for a Friday treat at the end of a very quiet week. I'm delighted to be sharing previews of no less than three new zines that I hope to get out in the next month or so. THREE! Enjoy, and happy Friday :)

Firstly, and most excitingly, is the new zine of poetry, illustration and photography that I've been curating with my sister, Jemma Green. I won't reveal too much yet - more details to come when it is out - but here's sneak peek at the front cover:

Secondly, but probably the first to come out will be The Green Bean (Volume 2, Issue 1). This one is a bit late in coming, and I apologise to all my lovely subscribers who've been patiently waiting. I'm hoping I can get this out by the end of next week. But until then, here are a few images for the zine that I drew while I was on retreat:

Finally, I've been working on a zine that's all about my sheepy friends from my retreat. I'm really excited about this one as it'll be something completely different...so here's a few drawings from that too:

Look!

2011-02-04T23:02:00.007Z

I just finished my storyboards - all 530 pages of them! I am delivering them for editing on Monday, part of a long weekend trip to London to catch up with my family. I'l be back next week when....drum roll please.....something resembling normal service might just be resumed: previews of the new Green Bean!

I also wanted to mention that my very good friend James Stayte will be teaching two 10-week courses in Bath that start really soon, and there are still places available if you want to join in.

James is teaching Introduction to Illustration and Introduction to Comic Book Art, and I couldn't think of a better teacher. He is the fountain of all comics knowledge and technique, and he works full-time as a freelance illustrator so he really knows his stuff. If you want to learn the basics of ilustration or drawing comics, one of his courses would be a really great start.

You can see more of James's work here, and enrol for his brilliant courses here.

Better Late Than Never?

2011-02-01T19:25:00.003Z

I actually made my new year plans at the appropriate time, a whole month ago. Honestly. But I like to make them look nice if I'm to have them pinned above my desk all year, and I didn't have time to do that before I went away. I don't really have time to be doing now either, but heigh-ho....

The first lot of goals I made will seem typically Katie. They include some plans I've mentioned before and some new ones that might surprise you. They will seem, I hope, suitably ambitious and ridiculous and slightly-over-the-edge-of-impossible to go with the picture you have of me if you've been reading this blog for a while (if you're a newish reader, the scope of my goals will give you a good idea of what I'm like...).

But here's the thing that's different. There is no timescale on those goals, no expectations of meeting any deadlines, no unnecessary self-imposed pressure. That, for me, is unusual and uncomfortable. And that led me to making the second, more important set of new year goals:

I am not sure yet if these two sets of goals are contradictory. The answer is, knowing me, probably. But I'd like to find out if I can still get as much out of my life and my work without having permanent bags under my eyes. So that, in a nutshell, is my goal for 2011.

Oh, and finally, I want to find a way to.....

Sheep

2011-01-28T13:35:00.004Z

I am home!

Here are some pictures of me and my woolly friends to amuse you until I get back into full internet/work/life mode. I'm aiming for Monday, but it might take a little bit longer....

One Last Thing....

2011-01-06T13:15:00.002Z

Before I disappear for 3 weeks, I thought I'd just share this. Since I voted Seeing Things by Oliver Postgate as my book of the year for 2010, I've been discovering all his wonderful TV shows created with Peter Firmin. My particular favourite is the Clangers, and I knitted this one (Tiny Clanger) for Luke for Christmas, using this pattern.

And this really is my last post. See you in February!

2010 in Retrospect

2011-01-03T21:06:00.006Z

I'm always behind at this time of year. Christmas is always a massive exhausting rush, after which I tend to collapse in a heap and generally be quite resistant to getting back to 'normal'. I am not a lazy person (that's putting it mildly), but once I do allow myself to relax, it takes a long time to break the inertia and get back on track. So please forgive my belated look back at 2010.

I am taking the whole month of January off from my part-time job (lucky me!). On Friday, I am leaving for a 3 week internetless retreat to work on my graphic novel. Taking a retreat played such a significant role in my ability to focus and make progress on my book last year, that I hardly had to think about whether I should do it again....the only question was when. There is no time that is particularly convenient to take a month off from 'normal' life, especially when you run your own business and have a regular job. I chose January because its the time of fresh starts, getting focused and organised. Everything is in utter chaos after the festive season anyway, and this year I want the time away not only to focus on my book, but to have a 3 week long brainstorm about where my work is going, which projects I want to prioritise, and what 2011 will bring me. So if you think this post is late, ahem, you'll be waiting until February for my new year's resolutions!

But without further ado, here are a few picks from my blog from the last 12 months....

In January I drew my first book pile - In February I tidied my flat - In March I introduced my sheepy friends - In April I launched The Green Bean - In May I saw Joanna Newsom - In June I took part in my first PikaPackage - In July I shared the evolution of my business cards - In August I went to the USA - In September I moved into my new house, with a studio for the first time in my life - In October I shared how the visuals for my graphic novel came about - In November the final copy of Bake Me A (Vegan) Cake sold and I launched it as an ebook - In December I shared my tips from 2 years of self-publishing.

2010 was also the year that I joined Twitter, my blog celebrated its first birthday, and I made my 200th etsy sale!

Seeing Things by Oliver Postgate was my favourite book by miles. Have One On Me by Joanna Newsom is the record I haven't stopped listening to. Fantastic Mr. Fox was my favourite film (yes, I was late seeing it....)

Thanks again to everyone who supported my shop and blog over the last year...I know 2011 will bring great things because I have big plans. I just need a bit more time for them to brew before I'm ready to share them.

My etsy shop will close tomorrow morning until early February because I won't be able to check email or even get to a Post Office while I'm away. This will probably also be my last blog post before I go....so happy January!

Happy New Year!

2011-01-01T18:44:00.003Z

Happy new year everyone! Congratulations to my giveaway winners....I'll be in touch with you soon about sending your prizes. And thanks to everyone who took part and shared their 2010 favourites with me.

From the best bits about last year to hopes for the next one...as usual I'm behind on everything, so I'm still working on my new year resolutions/plans. I'll share them, along with my own favourite bits of 2010, very soon.

Green Family Christmas

2010-12-23T08:36:00.003Z

I wasn't going to blog any more before Christmas. But then I remembered this comic that I drew last year, and it seems I only ever posted 1 or 2 panels online. So here it is in its entirety. Now you know what I'll be doing for the next five days...

p.s. the giveaway is open until midday GMT on New Year's Eve!

2010-12-21T14:55:00.005Z

Its been a little quiet around here....busy busy.....so it must be about time for a festive giveaway!

There are three prizes up for grabs....you can enter for one, two or all of them. All you have to do to be in with a chance is leave a comment below telling me what was he best thing you did/said/heard/saw/dreamed in 2010 and I'll draw the winners on New Year's Eve. Don't forget to leave me a way of contacting you too.

Without further ado, here are the prizes:

1) The full set of my 8x6 'Girl' paintings, (my bestselling prints this year).

2) The full set of Green Beans so far, issues 1-8 (my best idea of this year).

3) A £20 gift voucher to spend as you wish in my etsy shop! (Possibly a bit late, I've just launched gift vouchers , but there's still time if you'd like one as a really last minute Christmas gift.)

Good luck, have a lovely festive season and I'll be back to draw the winners just before New Year. And for those of you who are nosey, the best thing about 2010 for me has been the growth of my little business. Thanks to everyone who has helped in any way with its nurturing. Merry Christmas :)

Influence Map

2010-12-10T14:01:00.004Z

I fell on the ice and hurt my wrist earlier this week. Very fortunately nothing was broken or even damaged. Its just a bit sore, and I'm taking a few days off from drawing as a precaution. To be honest, I probably needed a few days off and wouldn't have allowed myself if it wasn't for this.

What to do while I'm not drawing? This is a quandry indeed. I enjoyed this, and perhaps you might enjoy looking at it too. I've seen lots of them on the UK Comics Snapshot interviews that are happening over on the Comics Bureau this month (well worth a read!) and thought I'd have a go at making my own....

For some reason, blogger likes to make my images really small. click to enlarge and see it properly.

I'll be interested to hear your thoughts....are these influences obvious in my work? Are any of them surprising?

Self Publishing Tips

2010-12-08T19:55:00.004Z

Yesterday I gave a talk to 20 or so undergraduate students, doing the very same course I did at Swindon College. It was so lovely to go back, and also to have the opportunity to think over how much I've achieved, and how much my work has evolved in the last 18 months.

While I was preparing the talk, I also drew this little comic for Zine Appreciation Week over on the blog My Girl Thursday (which happened last week). There are some fantastic reviews and freebies from a lot of interesting creators to read through, but I thought I'd also share my self publishing tips here in case you missed them.

The tips are based on my 8 months' experience creating and distributing The Green Bean......its been a sharp learning curve but I think I can conclude that my zine's first year has been a successful one. Hopefully sharing how I made it happen might be helpful to any other aspiring zinesters out there to make a start.

ARGH!

2010-12-03T21:01:00.003Z

Is it just me, or does the world seem to spin that bit faster in December?

I had plans for sharing so much this week, but here it is Friday night, I'm going away tomorrow, and none of those plans have come together.

So I'll leave you with this photo by my sister. I'm going to London this weekend to be with my Grandparents as they celebrate their 70th wedding anniversay. Can you even contemplate that?! They are both fit, well, and so inspiring....

Also thanks to everyone who helped me on my way to 200 etsy sales and the record-breaking sack of parcels I dragged to the Post Office this morning. All the goodies should be with you soon! And congratulations to Rodi, who won the draw and gets to commission a painting from me :)

Hoping to return to normality next week. Whatever that means!

Last Chance Saloon

2010-11-30T21:43:00.004Z

Thanks to everyone who's been supporting my work by taking advantage of my seasonal offers in my etsy shop. In fact, thanks to everyone who's bought from my etsy shop over the past year. At the beginning of 2010 I'd made just 6 sales. Now, as I type this, I'm at 192. Wow! And thank you!

Those special offers (10% off everything, or buy 2, get 1 free - see here for full details) will end at 9am GMT on Thursday morning, December 2nd. So this is your last chance to grab a real bargain, for yourself or as a gift. Its also the final deadline for me to ship anything internationally to arrive in time for Christmas. I can't guarantee that any orders placed after Thursday 9am will make the post on time. If you want your parcel to be in my bulging santa sack that I'm taking to the Post Office at the end of the week, now's your last chance!

Also, I'm not really one to get hung up on numbers these days, but 200 sales is oh so close. Those who follow me on Facebook or Twitter already know that in addition to the special offers, all buyers between now and my 200th sale will be entered into a draw to win an original painting. I'll even let them commission that painting!

These specials are the best way I can think of to thank everyone for what has been a great year for me - and there's still a month to go! Soon I'll share my plans about what will make 2011 even better...

Mittens, and other things...

2010-11-26T14:46:00.003Z

I drew a little comic about The Most Amazing, but also The Most Ridiculous pair of mittens, which I bought earlier this week.

Here are a few other bits of news for a Friday afternoon:

I noticed that I have made 180 sales in my etsy shop! Thanks to everyone who has supported me and my work by buying something this year - I'm so grateful. In addition to the special offers which are still in effect until Wednesday 1st December, I've also decided to put the next 20 buyers (who get me to my 200th sale!) into a draw to win an original painting! Good luck and happy shopping!!

And last but certainly not least, it my good friend Mollie's birthday. She's having a day-long blog party over at Wild Olive with plenty of chances to win goodies, and maybe even a goodie from me later on....Happy Birthday Mollie!

Graphic Novel Friday

2010-11-26T09:05:00.003Z

The question I am asked most often is some variant of "How's the graphic novel coming along?" or "When's the graphic novel going to be finished?"

I'm grateful that you're all so keen, I really am. And its not that I find the questions annoying: more that they remind me how frustrated I am that I physically can't work any faster. There will be a graphic novel, but only as fast as my brain and hand can create it.

So I've added a Graphic Novel Progress bar (and idea borrowed from my writing friend, Green Ink) to the right there, just below my profile picture, so you can keep up to date with my progress without having to ask. My part of the deal is remembering to keep it up-to-date...