Juvenilia

Here are some of what I will pretentiously call my juvenilia: comic book stuff I was doing in my teens when I should've been revising for my O-Levels. The Judge Dredd drawings are obviously channelling Brian Bolland; and by 'channelling' I mean 'shamelessly swiping the style of'. I wanted to draw comics when I was that age (and kind of still do to be honest) but never thought I was good enough. I was too slow; never really mastered sequential 'story-telling'; tended to focus on the figure to the exclusion of learning to draw 'anything and everything' - the usual problems with half-arsed wannabes.

I think I sent samples off once, to the publishers (I think it was D.C.Thompson) of little comic booklets, like Commando. I got a rejection and didn't persevere. It always seemed like an unrealistic ambition. Soon after I went into Graphic Design, which I guess was the more realistic alternative; and it did give me the chance to cartoon every once in a while, if the brief warranted it.