Here I find myself on the last day of the month with nothing much to write about. I have done a few bits of work and comics recently, so I'll post a couple of extracts below (I can't show everything as some has not been published by clients yet).

The Brambletye Box had a bit of a pause over the summer due to all kinds of things, a bit of everything in fact - illness, family stuff, work, holidays - all those ingredients of life! Some new art did go up on my Patreon page a couple of days ago, so that's the place to see anything new at the moment.

I'm worried this blog is in danger of becoming a collection of obituaries for the icons of my youth, most of whom are now getting into their last years. In truth, Ozzy Osbourne - who perhaps has survived longer than should reasonably have been expected - was not really one of those icons, but his band, Black Sabbath, was.

Discovering Led Zeppelin directed me to other bands, musical brethren and cousins, with Sabbath inevitably being one of those. Paranoid was my first of their albums, probably still my favourite, though I think Vol. 4 is another of their best alongside their 1970 debut, Black Sabbath.

When I started to learn bass guitar, Paranoid was the first song I worked out and learned on the instrument, going on to then learn NIB and Snowblind. We didn't do any Sabbath songs in my first group as some close friends of ours were in a Sabbath covers band, and we didn't want to stray into their territory, though I did return to Paranoid for a much later band. I also recall learning Symptom of the Universe for a pub jam night where I had to detune my bass by a whole tone so the vocalist could comfortably sing it - my E-string was like a rubber band it was so loose!

Obviously Ozzy was a massive part of the Sabbath sound, and they weren't the same when Ronnie Dio came in (as decent as his albums were), and it was more Geezer Butler and Tony Iommi who I really admired. I did have two Ozzy solo albums (1980s Blizzard of Oz, actually bought because I was interested in Lee Kerslake and Bob Daisley's contribution, both members of Uriah Heep, and 1987's Tribute), but neither got a lot of play, I must admit.

Parts of Ozzy's character were very problematic, but it's sad to see anyone decline, as he has, in recent years. How nice he had such a good send-off at the Back to the Beginning concert just a few weeks ago. I'll definitely be getting some of those early Sabbath records out for a spin over the coming days (and I've also been greatly enjoying Brown Sabbath and their cover versions in recent months).

Here's a little video I made for the weekend showing some of the art for The Brambletye Box from roughs to pencils and then to the finished, coloured art.

Just a couple of weeks shy of his 83rd birthday, Brian Wilson, the creative genius behind The Beach Boys, has left the world.

He was a decent age, he was not in good health, but it's an enormous loss all the same - he really was one of the absolute best of the best when it came to songwriting, arranging, producing - all aspects of musical creation. Many words have been written about him, and there will be many more who will say it better than I could now.

I got into the Beach Boys in the mid-80s - I had a double tape set, the 'Very Best Of' (the one with a lady's bikini'd backside on the cover) which I listened to on rotation. In fact it will have been during the summer of '85, just before I went to live in California for a year myself.

I was attracted, at first, by the vocal harmonies, something that has steered me to much of my favourite music (Queen, Uriah Heep, ELO, a lot of classical choral music from Henry Purcell to Gabriel Fauré and more), but soon became enamoured by Brian Wilson and his creative vision in particular. I got hold of every Beach Boys recording I could, including a number of rarities and boxed sets. In 2004 I got to see him live when he performed Smile at the Royal Festival Hall - it didn't disappoint.

Once described as "the man who heard the last chords of God", he had a troubled life, but what an incredible gift to leave us mere mortals. Love and Mercy, Brian.

I'm going to be running a comics workshop at the Forest Row Festival on Saturday 14th June, from 10 until 12 noon.

Recommended for ages 7+ and teens (or anyone, really!), you can book through the festival website here.

And have a look at the little video for it here.

In The Rainbow Orchid Julius Chancer's car was a red Mercedes SSK. The reason this became his car is because I was visiting family in Reading in the late 90s, when I started the strip, and saw a toy model of the car in a department store and thought it would do as reference. Cars are difficult to draw, and if you have to draw the same vehicle from different angles a model can really help.

The first appearance of Julius's SSK in 'Orchid' and the Lorraine Dietrich in 'Samurai'

In The Secret of the Samurai, which is set a couple of years earlier (when the SSK had not yet been built), Julius drove a blue Lorraine Dietrich (for which I also used a toy model for reference). But for The Brambletye Box, Jules is back with his red Mercedes.

The SSK followed by a Hispano-Suiza in The Brambletye Box

These days there is way more reference available online (I even visited an actual SSK at Beaulieu a couple of years ago), so I've been able to be a little more accurate with some of the car's details. I'm not going overboard - I don't need the drawings to take any longer than they already do. As I've improved I don't need a model for every car - Lily's gold Bentley 3-Litre is drawn with just a sheet of photo reference at hand.

Lily's gold Bentley 3-Litre

An editor once asked me what I found most difficult to draw - my answer was "cars". A month or so later I submitted the first chapter of my comic for him and there, on page one, panel one, was a big white Bentley Continental. "I thought you wanted to avoid drawing cars?", he asked. But that's kind of why I put it in there. I have this little bee in my head that says "you can draw anything", and when I know something will be difficult I find myself writing it in, almost as a challenge.

A Bentley Continental from 'Charlie Jefferson and the Tomb of Nazaleod' for The DFC

This is something that so-called 'A.I. artists' will never understand, and A.I. can never reproduce. It is not just the finished result, it is the process, the choices, the mistakes, the challenge, the struggle, the effort, the evolution - the human being - that makes the finished art. (And, still on A.I., beware the amount of A.I.-rendered cars now online - they're not accurate!)

That Bentley was more modern, and I do find them particularly hard, all curves and streamlined. 1920's cars are a little more boxy - but also more beautiful in my eyes. The SSK is a work of art.

The Mercedes SSK at Beaulieu, once owned by Sir Peter Ustinov

Only recently I discovered the SSK featured as another comic character's car of choice - or in his animated version anyway (I'm not sure about the original manga) - Lupin III drives, and regularly crashes, a yellow Mercedes SSK. This has been eclipsed somewhat by the Fiat 500 he drives in his most famous outing, Miyazaki's Castle of Cagliostro.

Lupin in his yellow SSK

I'm very happy to have that link, in a similar way to when I chose the Breguet 280T as the aircraft that takes Jules and co. to India in The Rainbow Orchid, only to discover, on a later visit to Angouleme, that this uncommon aircraft had also been featured in pioneer French comic character Bécassine's adventures (Bécassine en Aeroplane, 1930).

Bécassine with a 280T, and Nathaniel Crumpole with a 280T

Anyway, in line with this bee in my head to challenge myself, I've crazily written a car chase into The Brambletye Box (a Hispano-Suiza H6 chasing the SSK down the A22), and that's what I'm drawing at the moment. It's enjoyable - but definitely another challenge!

I have updated the Julius Chancer characters guide to include those from The Brambletye Box. It's not all of them yet - just those appearing where I'm up to at the moment.

Now there's quite a few characters on that page (from The Brambletye Box, The Rainbow Orchid and The Secret of the Samurai) I have rewritten it so you can show and hide the various character sets from the stories - let me know if it's not working!

A task that's been on my to-do list for about 5 years now has at last been ticked off - an update and redesign of my Logos For Shows website.

Logos For Shows is my little side-business of providing theatre art for schools, amateur companies and professionals to use for their show publicity. It started back in 2011 out as a reaction to seeing my Oliver! logo being stolen and used all over the place (sadly that still happens) and a chance to license my artwork and make it affordable for those on a budget.

The next thing to do is to increase the number of shows I have available. I already have a second Grease design and some Peter Pan artwork at the sketch stage, and plans for quite a few more to come - it's just a matter of making the time for it!

The Secret of the Samurai English edition has sold out. BD Must gave me three batches of forty books in all - the first batch, almost exactly a year ago, sold out in three days or so, the second in a couple of months, and third more slowly over the past 7 or 8 months.

Actually I do have one copy left, and my plan is to do a nice drawing in it (rather than just a quick sketch) and put it on ebay in the near future as a little fund-raiser. Watch this space.

The online webstrip preview of The Brambletye Box has come to end today with 55 strips in all. That takes it up to the end of page 18, though pages 10-12 and-a-bit are also cut out of the preview.

If you want to see more than this then you can become a Patreon supporter, or it's waiting for the book. I can't yet say when that will see publication, but I can tell you that The Brambletye Box will be two volumes, and vol. 1 should be completed well before the end of the year - all being well!