Last night I braved the ice and the slush and trained it up to London to see Yasujiro Ozu's Tokyo Story (1953) at the National Film Theatre on the Southbank. It was a gorgeous film.

The story tells of an elderly couple from a countryside town who make a rare journey into the capital to visit their children, all seemingly successful in the big city, but in fact a rung or two below the glamour that may have been hoped for. Another reality is that their children are too busy (or rather, use that as an excuse) to give their parents much attention, resulting in them, at one point, being packed off to a health spa for a few days. The only one who shows the couple any real amity is Noriko, the young widow of their son, killed in the war (beautifully played by Setsuko Hara).

The pace of the film is wonderfully slow and steady, giving you time to eat up the details of residential post-war Tokyo (almost all low-shot interiors), as well as to reflect on the scenes as you're watching them. Another technique that pulls you into the lives of the characters is the unusual view of people talking directly to you, as if you were the other person in the conversation. This is an Ozu trademark and can, at first, be a little jarring with the dialogue sounding somewhat staccato (because of the cuts), but you quickly become used to it and I find it engaging.

There was one big laugh in the film, where the elderly father arrives back at his daughter's home, drunk with an old friend, delightfully played as they tottered in through the doorway and plonked down on the beautician's chairs she uses for her business. Chaplin would have been proud of such a sequence. Another chuckle came from a simple scene where the parents take a bus tour and the bumpiness of the ride causes everyone to bob around in unison, though I'm not sure if that was deliberately comedic or not.

One of the things I love about Japanese cinema from this era is the restrained emotion under dramatic circumstances. I find it also in many classic black and white-era British films, and masterfully done in some of the later silent-era pictures, A Woman of Paris being an excellent example. There is so much over-acting these days and, to me, most television acting is rendered almost unwatchable as yet another character sighs heavily, stutters their words or rolls their eyes in order to hammer their emotions into the viewer. In films such as Tokyo Story, when real emotion does eventually spill over the barrier, it has veritable impact. The same goes for the camera, it just observes, it doesn't need to fly around all over the place, but when it does deviate, it has greater effect (a philosophy I adhere to in my own comic storytelling).

The NFT are currently showing a season of Ozu's films which runs until 27 February 2010.

I returned from London late last night and was in bed reading a few pages of Eric Lax's Conversations with Woody Allen when I came across the following extract. I'm reproducing it here because of the serendipity of its connection to yesterday's Artythoughts post...

Eric Lax: "... Do you see yourself as an artist?"

Woody Allen: "I have a very realistic view of myself. Some people think it's too much or even fake humility when I say I haven't made a great movie. When I dramatise my observations of life, they say it's cynicism. But in neither case is it either. I'm telling the truth. I don't see myself as an artist. I see myself as a working filmmaker who chose to go the route of working all the time rather than making my films into some special red carpet event every three years. I'm not cynical and I'm far from an artist. I'm a lucky working stiff."

It's not exactly what I was talking about yesterday, but it nicely follows the theme. And highlighting a problem with talking about this kind of thing, we're using the word 'artist' in a different way. Actually that might bring me back to Travesties, where Tristan Tzara says "Doing the things by which is meant Art is no longer considered the proper concern of the artist. In fact it is frowned upon. Nowadays an artist is someone who makes art mean the things he does. A man may be an artist by exhibiting his hindquarters."

That's enough of the quotes!

I'm going to present the case for me not being an Artist. I don't mean an artist who is involved in the arts and follows their creative endeavours to produce a work - I am that. In Tom Stoppard's Travesties (my favourite play), Henry Carr says "What is an artist? For every thousand people there's nine hundred doing the work, ninety doing well, nine doing good, and one lucky bastard who's the artist". Quite often I do feel like that lucky bastard.

No, I'm talking about Artists - those who pursue Art with painting and drawing and who love to do so. I'm coming to terms with the fact that I don't think I really love it. I'm not putting myself down - I can draw quite well, but I feel it's out of necessity rather than the all-consuming passion you're supposed to have.

For a while now I've felt slightly inadequate among the artist bloggers community, guilty even, that I'm not providing daily sketches, little odd one-off strips and funny drawings. These are the things, after all, that that can really build your readership - cute or funny work that gets linked to and loved (by me, for one). I've tried to, every now and then, and almost always failed. In a similar vein, I am not in the habit of keeping a sketchbook and putting my life and all I observe into it. I look at my fellow pensmiths with benign jealousy at their glorious jottings full of characters and observations. "Keep a sketch book with you at all times!" the text books say. But it's just not me. I wish it was, because if I was that committed I'd be a far better draughtsman - and I'd like to be that.

Pages from my sketchbook - I take ages to fill them up, and when I have to sketch my figures are impatiently rendered and minimally functional, but quite lively.

It seems terrible to admit it, but I love not drawing. Drawing is terribly hard work. I only draw when I absolutely have to, and I only have the patience to draw exactly what I need to do to complete my own work. This is key, I think. I've never been a very good collaborator and have seldom indulged in making comics with others. Indeed it was the realisation that I didn't enjoy the commercial aspect of drawing comics (from someone else's script) that led me to create The Rainbow Orchid - if I was going to be drawing a comic strip (all that hard work!) then I'd want it to be stuffed full of all the things I loved - it would be tailored just for me.

I think I used to love drawing as a kid, but then we all do. I guess I carried on because I didn't want to lose that escapism - and though I didn't necessarily have talent, I probably did have some ability in the discipline (or maybe I had some talent, but not the ability - I'm never sure which way round it is). My school reports, where art was concerned, were generally lukewarm. I liked drawing, but could never get to grips with painting or any of the more arty disciplines (sculpture, ceramics, etc.). I wasn't interested. In my final exams, taking art at O-Level, I got a distinctly average 'C', and when I eventually applied to a couple of art colleges, I got refused at both. As it happened I lucked into a place at the second one after someone else dropped out - just because I happened to be there on the day as I was signing up for a part-time graphics course. I didn't last long though - I dropped out myself after six months of patchy attendance, not enjoying the arty stuff as I thought I should.

I'm very aware of my limitations as an artist, not only in ability (or talent, or whatever) but also as far as passion goes. Passion! That's what you're supposed to have, isn't it? I've known this for a while, but hadn't wanted to admit it publicly - what would my artist colleagues say! But actually, coming to terms with this has helped me to understand the kind of artist that I am, rather than the kind I am not.

This is not a negative or angsty post - not at all. I know I'm not a great original artist, but I do, after all, have a talent. It's where my drawing skills and my story-telling skills and my comic-making skills meet, and it's unique to me. I'm master of none of these disciplines separately, but I'm quite good in all of them, and they come together to produce something I'm very proud of, and that I do have a passion for. Enough passion that I will sit and do the hard work of drawing. Enough, even, that I'll get lost in that drawing and forget that I don't enjoy it, and find myself actually enjoying it.

Lucky bastard!

Oh dear. I got somewhat stuck in the holiday zone and have found it rather difficult to get back to 'doing stuff'. But with 2010 just over the horizon, I'd better start warming up and confront the to-do list.

Before Christmas I began writing an analysis of how The Rainbow Orchid had fared since its launch in August. I started going all over the place with the piece, so I'm going to keep this more focussed, looking at the book's critical reaction, sales and its place in the UK market.

The Rainbow Orchid volume one was very well received. Out of 36 full-length reviews (that I've seen) just three were negative. Even if you multiply the negative reviews by 10 (which is a true reflection of how the author's brain perceives them), then the good reviews still outweigh the bad.

The two main aspects that people have been critical of are the 'prologue-like nature' of volume one, and artwork that is sometimes a little stiff. I don't actually disagree with either of these. To quickly answer the criticisms, I'd say that the story was always conceived as a single full-length work and the pacing is exactly how I want it (even if it is a little unfashionable to not have explosions and fight scenes, or at least a zombie, every couple of pages). It has been the book's fate to be published in three volumes, and maybe it doesn't show the story off as well as it could, but it is nice to have it out and available now rather than sometime in 2011. As for the artwork, I'm improving all the time - volume two will be better, and volume three will be better still. The art in volume one is actually six years old, and I sometimes struggle to promote a book that I know is such old work - but it's got my name on it, and I can only present the book as it is, flaws and all.

Conversely, the good reviews have been very nice about the artwork, and the flipside of the comments concerning volume one's introductory nature is that people have got to the end and have immediately wanted to know what happens next and when they can get volume two, which means there must be something in the story that grabbed them after all.

Coverage within the online UK comics press has been wonderful and very supportive. Wider mainstream coverage has been almost non-existent, except for a lovely review in the Financial Times, a nice mention in The Independent just before Christmas, and some super support from LoveReading.co.uk. There have been a few big articles on comics in the press in the past few months, but unfortunately The Rainbow Orchid didn't get a look-in, which is a little disappointing, but you can't have everything! I'm really grateful for the fantastic coverage I have received.

I know I'm the centre of my own universe, and so I naturally view the world from that very biased perspective, but I did think that maybe RO would get a little bit wider coverage than it did, the main reason being that it's still not very common for the UK to have a brand new comic work published by a mainstream book company. The real heart of the UK comics industry is most definitely the independents and self-publishers, and the big wider world of book publishing - while getting more and more interested in comics - is still a tough nut to crack.

As a matter of interest let's take a quick look at the Amazon graphic novel charts as they appear on 31 December 2009 (not very scientific, but an interesting reflection of what's selling now). In the weeks immediately after its launch, The Rainbow Orchid troubled the number one spot in the Children's Comics & Graphic Novels category two or three times and has been in and out of the top 50 and 100 many times (it changes hourly and the Christmas period saw it back in the top 25 on a regular basis). It also got into the top 100 general Comics & Graphic Novels a few times, though that is a harder chart to break.

What do these charts consist of, and how many of the titles are original UK comic works? If we don't include reprints or collections, foreign works (i.e. US, European or Japanese manga - which are pretty much all reprints and collections anyway) or adaptations of literary works (i.e. not works written originally as a comic) then the numbers are interesting.

In the Children's Comics & Graphic Novel chart I count four titles in a hundred (six if you include the 2008 and 2009 Beano Annuals, but I'm not certain of their content): Salem Brownstone (Walker); The Adventures of Super Diaper Baby (Scholastic); The Tragical Comedy or Comical Tragedy of Mr Punch (Bloomsbury); and The Rainbow Orchid (Egmont). (When I did this count a couple of months ago, it was pretty much the same).

In the General Comics & Graphic Novels chart I count two, though I am being rather strict: Logicomix (Bloomsbury, though the book is not by UK creators) and Dark Entries (Titan). There are also two books that are difficult not to consider original-works UK books, despite having US publishers, because of the creative teams: From Hell (Top Shelf) and Scarlet Traces (Dark Horse). When I analysed this chart a couple of months ago, Bryan Talbot's excellent Grandville was also a mainstay of the chart (and will no doubt be in and out of it again in the coming months).

I know I'm being very skewed here, and for me 2009 has been one of the best for fantastic graphic novels (thank you NBM, Cinebook and First Second!), but from the point of view of a UK 'graphic novel' industry, it's a revealing exercise.

Overwhelmingly, the UK comic book industry is made up of reprints and collections - and I'm in no way questioning the value and quality of these books, many of which I own and love. 2010 will certainly see comics go from strength to strength with more strong material from David Fickling Books, Escape Books, Blank Slate Books, Jonathan Cape, Walker Books and many more.

2009 saw the graphic novel book charts dominated by Watchmen, riding high on the wave created by the film adaptation. The other big-sellers (though nowhere near the Watchmen numbers) have been various Batman titles and manga, mainly Death Note. The arena of children's graphic novels is dominated by Egmont thanks to Tintin and Ben 10, with Asterix making up much of the rest and Artemis Fowl and Buffy the Vampire Slayer getting a look-in.

The Rainbow Orchid sales started slowly and suffered slightly from distribution problems with Waterstones (still not fully resolved, but getting there), but it was spotted quite widely in Borders (R.I.P). My local independent bookshop sold a fantastic number, and I've done really well with sales through my website and at various comics festivals. In the weeks just prior to Christmas it seems RO did good business on Amazon, with plenty of chart action almost daily. So, although I don't know exact sales figures for The Rainbow Orchid, in the 20 weeks since launch, and comparing with the recent 40-week Nielsen top twenty charts published by The Bookseller (which don't include every outlet), I can be pretty happy with how things have gone so far.

A big part of sales is the marketing, and I've not been able to market the book as effectively as I'd like due to the fact that when volume one came out, I had to spend my time working on volume two. I'm very lucky to have Egmont as a publisher who, along with my agent, are taking a long view with The Rainbow Orchid. When all three volumes are completed and available then I can't wait to get out there and get promoting, and though it's not a flash-in-the-pan success, I've every reason to feel optimistic about the future of the book.

Thanks for all your support so far - I'm so lucky to have it. Here's to 2010.

I started writing a review of The Rainbow Orchid in 2009 and my ramblyness got somewhat out of hand - it's ended up far too long, and unfinished, so I'll have to revisit and edit it down after Christmas I'm afraid. The new Adventurers' Society newsletter will also appear after Christmas.

In the meantime, have a lovely seasonal break (if you celebrate one), stay safe, happy and well, and thank you very much for all your wonderful support in 2009. Click on the figure of Julius Chancer below to see the full Rainbow Orchid Christmas card.

Here's a quick post just to cover a few of the more recent Rainbow Orchid reviews. And don't forget the December sale is still on, though it's getting rather close to Christmas now if presents are what you have in mind (and what a good Christmas present The Rainbow Orchid would make!)

It was a lovely surprise on Friday to see The Rainbow Orchid mentioned by Nicholas Tucker in The Independent's best children's books for Christmas. Influential website Love Reading For Kids listed it as one of their Books of the Year, as did Mousehunter author Alex Milway. There was a lovely review on The Book Zone (For Boys) and Swedish comics review site Shazam also gave a very positive write-up (Google translation here). The review pictured below comes from The Teacher, the magazine of the National Union of Teachers which enjoys a print run somewhere in the region of 320,000, so some nice exposure there too.

Since finishing volume two I have been busy completing some commercial illustration work, so apologies for the lack of posts here recently. There will be an Adventurers' Society newsletter before Christmas, and a round-up of how volume one has done since its launch in August, here on the blog.

Just a very quick post to let you know that I'm lowering the price of signed and sketched-in Rainbow Orchid books by £4, and the same for t-shirts. Visit the shop here.

This was my first time at Thought Bubble (now in its third year) and the furthest I'd travelled to attend a comics event, but I'd heard such good things about the Leeds-based festival that I didn't want to miss it this time, and certainly wanted The Rainbow Orchid to have a presence there, if possible.

A break in the heavy rain on Friday afternoon helped with the journey up, though we were a little late leaving and managed to hit Cambridge at peak time, adding about an hour to our journey. We spent the night in the lovely little village of Belton in Lincolnshire, courtesy of Elyssa's dad and his partner, a perfect place to unwind and relax, not only from the A1, but the previous day I'd finished the very last panel of volume two of The Rainbow Orchid, and this was my first opportunity to just do nothing - and enjoy it!

We were up early on Saturday and braved thick fog to carry on up to Leeds, having to divert twice due to traffic accidents, but we still made it in good time. I was delighted to find that my table was right between two very talented artists - long-time RO friend and supporter, Graeme Neil Reid (aided and abetted by Jeremy Briggs of Down The Tubes), and manga artist extraordinaire, Sonia Leong. Both had their sumptuous art on display for the crowds, and I spent my few idle moments admiring the utter professional quality of their work - outstanding stuff.

There's not too much I can comment on regarding the substance of Thought Bubble, as I spent the entire day behind my table, selling and sketching in books, and talking to people about The Rainbow Orchid. As ever, it's such a boost to talk face-to-face with readers, both old and new, and I'm still taken aback by the generous enthusiasm people show for my comic - it really keeps me going after all this time.

What I can say is that Thought Bubble had a really nice vibe and a wonderful variety of attendees. And for a one-day event, I did very well, selling almost as many books as I did over two days at the MCM. I was really impressed with the friendliness and organisation that went into the festival - I can see why so many people have such good things to say about it.

I didn't attend any of the after-show events, I'm sorry to say. Elyssa and I found our hotel (the City Inn, which was really nice) and then went out for dinner, getting back to the hotel just as we really started to flag. It was nice to be able to take our time getting home on Sunday, stopping off for lunch once again in Belton, then driving on back down to Sussex (another hour added to the journey with the M11 closed, but Radio 4 kept us company). Some take-away fish and chips ended the weekend very nicely. I have no doubt I'll be at Thought Bubble again next year, a truly wonderful comics festival.

Well, this is being posted on actual Armistice Day rather than Remembrance Sunday, but it's here to keep up the tradition. Unfortunately I have no time to research and write-up a new post this year, so I'll just link to the previous years' entries for those who haven't seen them before.

In 2004 I did a write-up of Mark Cameron, killed at the Battle of Jutland. In 2005 it was Charles Hodgkins, who served at Gallipoli. In 2006 I wrote about Walter Cameron, wounded in France with the Scots Guards, and in 2007 it was brothers David and John Ewing, both of the Royal Army Medical Corps. For the 90th Anniversary, in 2008, I wrote about MC-winning Andrew Stewart, and also presented a memorial list of my nine known relatives who were killed in the Great War.

From The Rainbow Orchid volume II, Julius Chancer in the trenches at Gallipoli, partly based on the experiences of my own great-grandfather, Charles Hodgkins.

I drew a panel a few weeks ago and decided to take some photographs of its development on my iPhone, with no particular reason in mind. But now it's inked and coloured I thought I'd put the sequence up on the blog along with some brief notes.

You can click on the image (below) to open it up bigger in a new window.

1) This is the rough sketch I drew in my little sketchbook so I had a plan of what I wanted. It's a secondary establishing shot, looking down on the characters in the train carriage of a 1920s Northwest Frontier train.

2, 3) Here the panel has been started on the actual page. I started with the figure of Lily first, lightly, then drew in the structure of the environment (three-point perspective on this view), then sketched in the other figures to fit. You can see I changed Lily's pose to cross her legs in (3).

4) As I started some of the environment detail I realised my two figures at the bottom of the panel were not quite placed correctly for the seats. I liked their fairly natural poses, so lightboxed them into my sketchbook, erased them and continued detailing the surroundings.

5) Here you can see I've lightboxed the figures back from the sketchbook and into the scene again, this time placed correctly.

6) Most of the surroundings are in now and there's another slight change to Lily's pose as I give her a water bottle to hold - those carriages get hot! One component missing is the Punjab infantryman's rifle as I needed to get reference for a Mark III Lee Enfield.

7) Here are the finished pencils scanned in, complete with correct rifle.

8) And here is the panel inked.

9) The completed and coloured panel. There's a bit of cheating going on with this scene because the reader's view has to be outside the carriage in order to fit the whole thing in, but you can do that kind of thing with comics!