Here we are at the end of another year.
Another year of doodling with a biro, creating drawings that bring great acclaim but little cash.
I’m very grateful for the fantastic feedback I get for the stuff I do, but I do wonder if it’s at all marketable. After all, with a couple of minor exceptions no-one at all seems to want to pay me to draw for them.

2007 will see the release, by hook or by crook, of my first proper illustrated book. NobbyNobody’s ANThology was mainly an exercise in taking an idea to fruition and to investigate if my illustrations work in book form.
2007’s book will be for children with a simple story illustrated on each page with a full page drawing.
It will follow the adventures of a frog as he explores the world learning about other animals and their eating habits.
The book is designed to be read to a child by an adult and will include some ’stage directions’ indicating to the reader how to act while reading certain sections.

Initially, I will be attempting to offer the finished work for publication via established childrens’ book publishers but ultimately if that comes to naught I will self publish via one of the many services available on the internet.
I doubt I will use Lulu again, because they are expensive, slow and rather limiting on what they can produce. They’re excellent for experiments like ANThology but not cost-effective for the real thing. Plus with them being based in the USA, they do not offer some services to us non-US authors.

Work has already begun on the illustrations for this new project which I will not be publishing as large images on this site or over on Biro-art so that the drawings are new to people when they (hopefully) buy the book.
I will occasionally display thumbs of the pages as they are created, just to show the book’s progress and to keep interest up.
With that in mind, here are a small selection of drawings so far completed…

Two of my biro illustrations have made it into a new book from Rob Manuel of b3ta.com and published by Friday Books called the Bumper B3ta Book of Sick Jokes.
This book contains the most offensive material possible and is certainly NOT for the easily offended.
The two biro drawings that made it in to Rob’s book as joke illustrations have not been shown on the main site at biro-art before because of their… less than family friendly subject matter.These drawings illustrate the rude joke:
What do elephants use as tampons?
Sheep!
and the considerably more unpleasant and offensive:
Why do newborn babies have holes in the top of their skulls?
So that you can carry them in fours, like beer-cans.
Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

I’ve never received my ‘hardcopy’ of Khooligan Magazine which is a shame but at least I have the PDF version so all is not lost.
There have been a number of new drawings added to Biroart since I last posted, some of which have been in response to NobbyNobody’s Biromash Time and some of my own ideas.
I’ve created a new range of greetings cards which can be found on the biro-art Greeting Cards Store page. There are a few old drawings made into cards and several drawing created specifically for the purpose. These are the five Christmas cards, Unlucky Snowman, Get Stuffed, Manta Claus, Baaa Humbug and Penguin Santa.
Get Stuffed is also available as a Thanksgiving card.

So Khooligan magazine have published my article and a damn fine job they’ve done too.
Obviously I can’t read what they’ve written but it all looks rather spiffy.
There’s a hard copy on its way to me but in the meantime they sent me a PDF of my article. I love it.

In other news, the book has been available for just under a month now but has so far failed to set the world (and my bank balance!) alight. I didn’t really expect it to but it would have been nice to have sold a few more copies. Meh.
It is of course still available at the very reasonable price of £7.99 and I’m quite proud of it. Go on, treat yourself.

On the subject of treating yourself, All of the tee-shirts that are currently available in the the biro-art shop are now also available in rich red colour called ‘Cardinal’ as well as the usual white, black and light-grey.

Finally, after months of drawing, scanning and waiting, my first book of biro drawings is available for sale.Entitled NobbyNobody’s ANThology it features all of the the ANT drawings that can be seen in the
gallery over at biro-art plus a couple never seen before.
It’s priced at just under £8 (plus delivery) and can be ordered now direct from the publisher right here.