Stickers are HALF PRICE this weekend in my ko-fi shop (UK postage only) with code 50OFF
Moving the pen, wanna make it a daily habit this year
2 Jan 2026
It’s been surprisingly difficult to carve out the time to draw each day this week. Something that years ago before the birth of my son seemed so easy to me, necessary even and often ritualistic. I always feel better when I draw, there’s a surprise of sorts and a meditative stillness that I find myself within. I’m not sure what I’ve missed more really, creating something from nothing or just the quiet escape that drawing provides for me.
The biggest challenge I’ve found has been settling on something to draw, mainly finding the inspiration or spark to start. I’m just trying to draw through it really, hoping that if I sit at the table long enough and fill enough pages something will catch. I’m probably just tired and lacking concentration, motivation and intention.
When you set some time aside to draw for yourself you feel a pressure to make it worthwhile. After 10 or 20 minutes of noodling at something or rubbing out pencils the inner critic gets louder and the urge to give up is strong.
I’ve been here before and I know I just need to lower my expectations and have fun.
With that in mind I think I’ll keep at this wee sketchbook, I just might not post anything more from it on SM, I’ve got into a bad habit of measuring the quality of my work in likes, comments, and follows.
If you’ve made similar plans to draw daily this year, let me know what’s keeping you motivated in the comments. Also, if there is anything you’d like to see me draw, I’d love to hear it!
I’ve added some stuff to my new ko-fi shop!
I’ve been thinking about making some stickers for a while now and really love how they turned out.
I also printed up a very small number of this recent sketch and the colours look fantastic.
Haven’t really drawn anything for the last few months but started doodling this merry green fella the other night… funny how the urge returns sometimes. Just a quick pencil sketch that I thankfully flipped in procreate before inking digitally (never forget to flip).
I also had great intentions of drawing a card for Matt “the machine” Garvey this month (inspired by this post on his bsky) but life conspired against me, just a quick rough to show for it… sorry Matt!
Had a pretty good response to the Dredd sketch on bluesky, a big surprise really, I haven’t seen much reaction to anything I post there honestly, lucky to get a reply or comment at all. Haven’t drawn any Dredd stuff in years, the helmet is always tricky but this looks alright… it might even be a new favourite of mine. The Eastwood of this is entirely accidental btw, couldn’t resist adding a wee speech bubble nod to auld dirty Harry.
Was in two minds about posting this Ultramega but I’ll let it slide as I’ve already put it on insta… that’s late night posting for ya. Someday I’ll do a decent drawing of this awesome character and melt some eyeballs.
The awesome Matt Garvey recently launched KICKSTARTING YOUR FIRST COMIC, a companion book to his previous KS campaign MAKING YOUR FIRST COMIC.
I had a lot of fun working on the cover, adding little details/easter eggs from Matt’s extensive back catalogue.
Check it out here on Kickstarter!
Campaign deadline: Fri, July 25
A bunch of scraps and colour practice from the month of May!
Honestly, any one of these could be a self portrait.
I did some real quick mockups of the latest sketchbooks in Affinity photo and now… well… I kinda wanna get them printed and hold ’em in my grubby lil mitts.
Whaddya think? Let me know in the comments if you’d like a physical copy? I may have already ordered some sample packs.
You can view the sketchbooks in the links below:
Got into drawing flies in a big way this month and filled a few pages in the grid notebook (I found this Etherington brothers tutorial really useful, the proportions are trickier than you’d think).
I produced two sketchbooks using Affinity Publisher and scribbled some rough ideas for covers, layouts, etc. I didn’t end up using the cover ideas but I might do something for the next one. Ideally, I’d like to spend time drawing a new detailed cover illustration as opposed to just using existing art.
Finished off the wee yellow sketchbook with some late night sketches using black and white posca markers. I really like how they came out, the fly head especially looks great on the page.
I started a new A5 sketchbook and decided to just fill the first few pages quickly to break it in. The paper wrinkled really badly with the posca paint markers, makes scanning these a real pain.
Not much in the way of digital work this month apart from a few doodle/scrap pages in procreate.
Finally, couldn’t resist picking up this tiny guy on the weekly grocery shop, such an awesome wee fig.
