February

February feels like it's been stressful, but on the whole I think it's been good. In visual diary terms it's been quite satisfying, although I am questioning whether I'm actually getting any better at drawing things, or whether I'm just being quite 'comfortable' about the whole thing and not really challenging myself (which was the original point)...

Anyway. It's as much about documenting my life for my own satisfaction as it is about my growth as an illustrator, so at least I'm succeeding at one aim.

Every so often, our work photographer takes my photo. This is an ongoing ritual, as despite him being a very good photographer, I basically hate a lot of things about my face (or at least the way it presents itself in photos), so he's never managed to get a shot I'm actually really happy with going on the website or being used on my business cards. (Although if you want to see one from a few years ago that I did agree to use, plus an interview of me talking about me, go here…)

Weather, eh? I actually drew this before it all properly kicked off too.

SO MUCH not into this.

So I have IBS. On the spectrum of 'things that can go wrong with your digestive system', it's fairly minor, but some days it's still a MISERY. Also I wish it was more societally acceptable to talk about pooing, because my life would sometimes be a LOT easier if it was ok to just say "I'm going to go home now because I need a poo"

Bought myself some snow boots which is probably ridiculous overkill as I live in Brighton and it's almost certainly not going to snow any time soon but it's good to be prepared right? Plus cosy feet are the best feet.

Fortunately it's never this much mouldy tupperware in one go. But still.

On a similar note to what I was saying before, I worry that sometimes I procrastinate genuinely fun creative tasks in favour of more boring but more predictable tasks that I know I can already do and am good at. It's a problem. Must try harder.

The final stages of organising a holiday to the Peak District for me and 7 friends. I feel like I was mostly spectacularly efficient, but I wonder if I sometimes create unnecessary work for myself, simply because I love doing certain kinds of admin/advance planning.

Bake club will be the death of me.

Thought I'd done relatively well this year at not having my usual annual norovirus freak out, but it turns out a colleague being off sick with a stomach bug two days before my week long holiday was enough to push me over the edge into obsessive hand washing and avoiding all finger foods. (Fortunately I got over it much quicker and more thoroughly than I have done in previous years)

While I managed to thankfully NOT get a tummy bug before holidays, I did successfully manage to pick up a horrible cold which left me with an incredibly annoying hacking cough for the entire week away. BOOO!

Other than my cold though, the holiday was lovely. Plenty of walks and boardgames and lovely friend catch-ups. I'm glad I didn't play this particular board game (Archipelago) though, as I don't think I have enough space in my brain to contain even half the rule book. It went on till AFTER MIDNIGHT and I drew this slightly poor picture not long before then.

We stayed in this lovely cottage, which comes very highly recommended. The layout inside was just awesome. I took some spare time to try and test my perspective drawing skills, and did better than I often do, which was nice.

Well, this 'comic' (not actually funny, just stuff that happened) is fairly self-explanatory I guess. A brief moment of boredom before a walk. (Click to view bigger)

I walked from Whaley Bridge to New Mills on Wednesday, which was so lovely I did it again on Thursday. I had to wait a while for the train on the way back so I drew New Mills Newtown station, again, to try and test my perspective drawing skills (this one was harder as I had nothing to lean on!). I finished it off once I was on the train and the ticket conductor walked past and said it was 'right good'.

Back along the canal. I'm not sure if I'd actually enjoy a canal boating holiday (I'm slightly unsettled by not being on dry land) but I'd sort of like to try it. Canal boats looks great.

Another quick perspective drawing test before heading home. The lovely kitchen table where big long breakfasts and cosy dinners were shared all week.

Here's a picture of us all (except Sarah, who took it), in front of a MASSIVE AMAZING DAM.

Black Valentines

There's a sinking feeling when someone you've never met before comes over and says 'So uh... I hear you're a graphic designer... [proceeds to ask you to work for free on something super boring and time consuming with a deadline of tomorrow]'

But then occasionally that sinking feeling is completely wiped out when that person says 'Do you think you could design me a DIY-looking flyer for a queer anti-valentines party at a squat in Switzerland?'

Um, hell yes.

I'm really pleased they like my effort and it's winging its way to a printers in Switzerland as we speak.

This sounds like a bangin' party you guys. If you're going to be in Zürich late Feb, you should probably head over here. Their website is all in German, but it looks like a great place.

Anything to fight against the nasty capitalist monstrosity that is valentines day, amirite you guys? Ugh.

Hourly comic day 2014!

Hourly comic day!
That website actually appears now defunct... you can see other people's submissions this year here.
I am undecided whether to post on that forum yet, as I think this is a bit rubbish! But we'll see.


So every year I promise myself I'll do this next year, and then something stops me. But this year, I read about it at 9am which reminded me, and it was a Saturday, so no excuses.

If there's one thing that drawing a comic every hour emphasised for me, it's how utterly abysmal I am at drawing people. Fortunately for most of the day I was alone, so there's no one to offend but myself.

It was a bit of a quiet sort of day for the most part. If there's another thing that drawing a comic every hour emphasizes, it's how mundane my quiet little life is. But I probably wouldn't have it any other way.

I woke up much earlier than I wanted to. But that's ok. One of my favourite things is lying in bed looking at my shiny rectangle.

I decided that staying in bed all day would make for a pretty boring comic. So I got up. One of the high points of my day was seeing a cat doing some very over-ambitious adventuring in a spindly elderflower tree in our garden. One of the other high points in my day was taking down Alex's 'advanced drying solution', which basically consisted of arranging all of our drying racks together at strange and precarious angles, taking up much of the bathroom. It had been there all week like that, clothes long dry, but after work each day I had never been able to summon up the enthusiasm to actually deal with it. (Fun Alex trivia: every time he hangs the laundry out, he just upends the washing basket over the top of the rack, because he believes that ONE DAY, all the garments will fall perfectly into place.)

I am terrible at staying 'on task' in shopping related contexts.

By the way, I'm saying I'm the creepy weirdo here, not the kid. For some context for anyone who doesn't read this often, I'm am emetophobe, and last year I had CBT to try and help me get over it. I'm still terrified of being sick myself, but was fairly confident that I could deal with other people being sick near me now (which would have been unthinkable before). This was the first time I've actually seen someone being sick in real life, so I forced myself to stand and watch (not where the kid and his mum could see me, obviously, because that really would be creepy). And I felt NOTHING! I suspect I'd find it harder to deal with if this had happened in an enclosed space (eg. bus, train), but still, progress.

'Ate my lunch while getting cross about the tories' = basically what happens to me every day. I shouldn't read the news while eating my lunch.

Maximum efficiency!

This hour = a little bit depressing. Cleaning Alex's room was VERY SATISFYING though.

In which I snap myself out of my misery and back into productivity with TOAST!

About three years ago, EVERY HOUR would have pretty much looked like this.

What this hour doesn't express is the frantic rush at the end when I realised I was in no way ready to go and catch my train at 19.03.

Fortunately my train was delayed until 19.08 which allowed me enough time to get juice, train ticket, and comfortably sit on the train for about 4 minutes before it left. Excellent. The train was over to Sam's house, for exciting Chinese New Year Dinner, with 6 other people who I either didn't know, or didn't know very well. When I got there I suffered from a crippling bout of awkward shyness/social terror, and was pleased to be given the opportunity to put off social interaction for a few more minutes by going to the corner shop for supplies.

As Sam's kitchen was a whirlwind of hectic culinary chaos, I took it upon myself to wash some stuff up, both for my own comfort (hectic kitchens make me anxious) and hopefully as a nice gesture. However I decided to hold the tea towel under my arm, which I later realised had given me a massive one sided sweat-patch-looking damp spot. Very undignified. Anyway OH MY GOODNESS THESE SPRING ROLLS. I didn't know spring rolls could be so good. I'd have eaten more but felt obliged to save space for the main course to come...

I'm not really a cat person. Some cats are nice, but Chad is probably the cat who makes me the most anxious. At one point I was dispatched to the kitchen to stop him from drinking a big bowl of liquid (possibly punch?) and all I could do was flail a pair of chopsticks at him wildly while he looked at me imperiously with his feet on the edge of the bowl. Right now though we just kept making awkward eye contact. Anyway, HOT AND SOUR SOUP! I'm torn between thinking it damaged my insides a little bit, and wanting another bowl RIGHT NOW. It was great. Sam's noxious hot and sour cabbage fumes however, less so. Black pepper + chilli + lots of heat = coughing fits all round! Somehow Sam managed to stay in the kitchen the whole time, but did later complain that her ribs hurt from the coughing fit!

Mains were served, amazing! Including lemon chicken, some kind of tasty beef skewers (which I didn't eat, obv), hot and sour cabbage, tasty tofu, bamboo wrapped rice parcels, noodles, some amazingly tasty vegetables, a delicious aubergine dish, and other bits I probably can't even remember. It was all brilliant and I ate LOADS. And then broke one of Sam's bannisters with my now hefty weight.

I'm so terrible with names. This girl was lovely anyway, and she was wearing a great hat (that's not just a crazy hairdo)

This is exactly what my boobs look like. Enjoy. (Also I am wearing a shower hat. HOT.)

That was an interesting and very self-indulgant exercise, which I will hopefully try and repeat next year, and hopefully be better at.

January comes around again

So, the beginning of my second year of visual diarying. I'm quite proud. I've decided that it's a worthwhile enough exercise that, if I possibly can, I should keep it up. I actually feel slightly bereft if I don't do it now, not to mention guilty at my lack of commitment to projects (although I'd say a year is a pretty good run for any project!)

Anyway, it's been a rainy, fairly unremarkable month. Prepare yourself for much unremarkableness.

I was quite smug about this, in that horrible way that fairly amateur graphic designers get when they think they've done something clever. HELLO 2014!

Seriously. Girls (and guys) should talk about periods more. They're natural and crazy and if you go into them with the right mindset, even kind of fun? (Ok, maybe not)
But anyway ladies. Mooncups. Get on it, yeah? Your vagina and the environment will thank you.

Normally going back to work after long holidays is horribly arduous and confusing and it takes about a week to remember what exactly it is your job consists of, but for some reason this time, I was spectacularly efficient. Even more so than on a normal day. I should have time off more often.

So something horrible happened to my ankles. Or more specifically, my heels.
While I am a massive hypochondriac regarding anything to do with my digestive system and many other areas of my body, for some reason when I started suffering agonising pain in my heels I was kind of like 'meh, whatever, POWER THROUGH'.
It was only when I physically couldn't walk home from work that I booked myself a doctors appointment. Apparently I have/had tendonitis. The doctor was pretty unhelpful...

…and said I should wear trainers. I don't own trainers. So I spent a depressing evening traipsing around Churchill Square (while suffering crippling heel pains) trying to find a pair of trainers that didn't make me look like an absolute idiot. Failed. Bought these. Discovered that, if anything, they made the pain EVEN WORSE. Returned them, went to the lovely folks at Shuropody and got some actual good advice, and bought some insoles that have made me mostly all better. YAY ORTHOTICS! Boo slowly deteriorating body.

I have no idea how conversation got onto this. But seriously. WHAT
And don't even get me started on the Squirrel King.

So I went to give blood like I have done several times before, but this time it just wouldn't work. The iron finger prick test was inconclusive, so they tried to get some blood from my arm to test, but NOTHING WOULD COME OUT. I normally don't look when they put the needle in, but it was taking so long I had a glance, and the guy was sort of waggling it around in there. Then he took it out and (with my permission) tried again. Still nothing. WEIRD. (And now they've banned me from coming back till July because they can't tell if I'm anaemic or not! I'm blatantly not. I've been eating SO MUCH KALE)

I really hate being an adult sometimes. Buying things should be fun. Buying fridges isn't fun. It's just money thrown into a boring pit of boring.

Finally got round to digging/tidying the garden. Discovered that actually, our vegetable growing efforts haven't been a complete failure, and we'd managed to grow one really good onion. I pulled it up and bought it in and then Alex got really annoyed with me, because apparently it's not an onion, it's a GIANT GARLIC, and it's not 'done'. He wants me to go and plant it again but I haven't because I want to eat it. But I'm not eating it because Alex will be annoyed with me. So it's slowly shrivelling on the kitchen side. I'm such a pro.

I drew this during a meeting. In my defence, the meeting was basically 15 minutes of two people debating what to call a thing, and other than saying "I agree with that person" there wasn't much more contribution I could make. Meetings are fun! (I'm not actually being sarcastic, I do quite enjoy meetings with my work colleagues.)
I feel sad for this tree though. Apparently one of the director's wives bought a load of plants for the office when they moved in four years ago, and this is the only thing to survive. I think I'm the only person who ever waters it, and even I only remember about once every couple of months. It leans forlornly towards this tiny window.

Falafels are my kryptonite. (Kryptonite just made superman really bloated and farty, right?)

Did a terrible drawing on the train. Spent the day in Bournemouth visiting a new building that the company of international colleges I work for might acquire. It was AMAZING. Some of the most wonderfully gaudy fireplaces I've even seen. Including this bad boy.

Some days I don't know what to draw.

Did another train drawing, determined to better my previous effort. This time, train self portrait, in shiny black nighttime windows.

Another one of those 'self-loathing' days. Fortunately they don't come around too often, and as it turned out, (hopefully) no one was actually offended by my criticisms. I still felt like a dick though.

So Metronomy were great, but man. Is the whole 'talking at gigs' thing getting worse, or is it just me? I swear it didn't used to be like this. IF YOU WANT TO TALK, GO OUT TO THE BAR. IF THE BAR IS IN THE ROOM, GO OUTSIDE. Sorry Metronomy. I hope you weren't offended by all the chattering idiots. I was listening.

Any day I get to go on the top deck front seat of a bus is a better day than it would otherwise have been! Buses are a special treat these days, now I *ahem* cycle everywhere. *says the girl who hasn't been on her bike in over a month like a big bike nagging hypocrite*

So anyway. This year, as well as visual diarying, I spontaneously decided on January 1st that I would do this 'photo a day' malarkey that lots of people are doing. I haven't linked my Instagram to my Twitter or Facebook because I don't want to spam people with boring stuff, but if you're interested, as well as doing a drawing a day, I've managed a photo a day too. It's been fun.