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Hey all, maybe you don't need this, but I've set up a forum for making comics. Like the creative common on steroids, I suppose.

it's over at www.channelhex.com/phpBB and if it's your thing you might like it!

Is out now, hope you're picking up a copy - 176 pages of WAR!

https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-1-68247-503-4

https://www.newsarama.com/47732-preview-garth-ennis-pj-holden-s-the-stringbags.html

You can buy it from your local comic shop or from a book shop (probably online mind you, in the current situation...)

Details at my blog: https://www.pauljholden.com/2020/05/17/pj-holdens-live-sketch-show/

The gist, Starting Saturday, I'll be doing Live Sketching from 9pm for around an hour. The sketches will be commissions, A5 pencil headshots for £30. If you'd like one just email me pjholden@gmail.com with the subject "Live Sketch: " then whatever it is you want in the subject. Payment on completion via paypal.

Why a5? Small enough to fit in envelopes that I can post through a letterbox. No need for the post office!

Plus £30 is a pretty reasonable price for a fun little sketch. And you get to watch me draw it live.

I can do about 7 per show, right now my list for Saturday IS EMPTY!

You can watch the pilot here: www.twitch.tv/pjholden

Hey you might like this: https://www.pauljholden.com/2020/05/03/papercraft-dredd/

Where you can download and print your own little Judge Dredd figure...

And you might enjoy this: Where I spend 25 minutes drawing Judge Dredd while talking nonsense...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LaOpvpN0jwk

Look, I'm not saying you HAVE to go off and build mega city 1 themed book nooks, but frankly, I reckon the only reason they don't exist is because no-one had ever thought of them before.

Please fix this.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/christopherhudspeth/book-nooks-bookcases-shelves-creative-art-diy

This is what happens when I have time off. I fill it with things I'm not being paid to do. Anyway, here's a silly one page fan-comic of The Mandelorian. Hope you like it. And as is often the case, there's behind the scenes info at my blog, including unlettered inks and pencils.

https://www.pauljholden.com/2019/12/23/the-mandalorian/

A while ago I had an idea for a Dredd, and after a long time finally scripted it, but that was over a year ago, and I've been sitting on it since. So I decided, sod it, I'll just start drawing it (even if only to the pencil stage). So here's page 1:


And you can read about it here: https://www.pauljholden.com/2019/12/22/dredd-chrysalids-page-1/

Issue 1 if my son thomas's Comic Monkey Arms is available now for download! Torn from the pages of Why Not!?

A comic by a kid for kids, please let us know what you think ! http://www.pauljholden.com/comics/th-comics/monkey-arms/

Happ Dredd day, everyone. Here's a free sketchbook https://www.dropbox.com/s/6o6dsthgz495xa0/Dredd%20day%20sketches.pdf?dl=0

-pj

Full blog here: http://www.pauljholden.com/2019/07/18/island/

John Reppion and I did a fun one page comic, me working from his 280 character tweet style script based on the topic of this weeks Folklore thursday on twitter...



I think we'd like to do more. We'll see...

I've been mulling over a kickstart. It's mostly because I want to a particular format of book and no publishers are doing it, and the endless pitch and punt cycle is getting to me, so I'm hoping kickstarter might be a way to do this.

The book will be a 64 page Starblazer, digest format. Probably nicer production values, probably a paper back AND a hardback will be available, and likely on better than newsprint. But a nice, small digest sized sci-fi book.

Reasons for this are simple: that page size I can draw on page per day WHILE I'm doing paid work and I get to draw the sort of stuff I love.

I've no idea yet how much the book will be (though I have some notion) it certainly will be within the ballpark of this sort of kickstarter venture and I'll be largely aiming to cover the costs of print and distribution. It'd be lovely to do well enough to cover cost of the creating the thing, but that might just not be possible

Here's a mock-up cover of what a book like this might look like and you can read more about it on my blog...


And my blog talks a little about it here http://www.pauljholden.com/2019/06/21/channel-hex-planet-of-the-blind/

If you follow me on twitter, you'll already know this, but my 10 year old son is becoming quite the little creative power house. He's written and drawn a 22 page comic called Why Not!? full of fun one / two page comic strips and jokes.

He's roped me in to ink and letter it too. And it's now available as a free download at http://www.pauljholden.com/why-not/ there's a paypal link there if you enjoy it and want to donate money to tom to encourage him to do more (well, like all comic creatives he doesn't need the encouragement, but he loves the money...)

So if you want to read any of the following:

• Monkey Arms (the boy with the long arms)
  Spacedogs
  Galaxy FC (two pager adventure strip!)
  Electric Kid
  Time Thief
  Head Bump Hero
  Mean Dean
  Tim Teleport
  Broken Reality
  Element Man
  

Come and have a read! http://www.pauljholden.com/why-not/

Anyone seen this?

I think it's incredible.

Christmas Bah Humbug! I've been doing Dreddcember, a Dredd or Dreddworld related sketch per day. I've been doing these, usually at bedtime, spending 30 minutes to an hour on painting (and trying to teach myself how to paint)

Here's the first few from the advent calendar thread (I'll not be posting any more there) and today's to follow...
DAY 1:

Greyscale simple Dredd. This is practically my signature Dredd Head at this point. Pencilled in Procreate.
DAY 2:

Trying to something different than my usual art style. Painted in Procreate. Dredd from the City Of The Damned, after the mutant has blinded him.
DAY 3:

Oh man, this was frustrating. Would you believe I was going for a Dave McKean-esque, Joker in Arkham vibe and fell so widely from the mark it's hard to imagine to that's even what I was going for. Frustrating. (Drawn in Clip Studio Paint)
DAY 4:

THIS... This was much more successful, really wanted something to have a painterly feel, still has my usual chunky vibe going on but also distinct enough to feel different. A+ from my own personal satisfaction pov. (Procreate, using pencil and flat brush)
DAY 5:

Another frustrating one. Just shit. Not happy with this at all.
DAY 5 BONUS!

Ah this is so much better. This was my winding down and trying something as different as I could get - trying to escape all my bad habits (and frequently bad habits are, basically, your style) (Procreate)
DAY 6

A Superfast painted sketch in procreate (15 mins?). Actually drawn at A3 with 300dpi and faster than CLIP Studio Paint on my desktop for painting.
Liked it so much I refined it...

Just tweaking it in procreate, adding some brighter shades. But then I exported it to clip studio and decided to colour it (since I like some of the clip studio brushes)

A comic.

Hey Chums, I'm opening up commissions- first time in a few years - on account of me needing a "oh crap New York is gonna cost me HOW much?"

A4 pencil headshots £30
A4 pencil with a bit of colour £50 (probably splash of water colour on pencils)

A4 pen and inks £50

If you're interested you can contact me at pjholden@gmail.com

-pj

Hey, so, on friday, I ask if any artists have work they want me to go through and see if I can pump up on the story telling stakes - it's all on twitter (and I've started posting on my blog)

This might be interesting to some, and others may want to participate. If you're NOT on twitter, you can post it here and I'll post the art and etc on my twitter feed and on my blog.

I'm giving you a heads up now, so if you're keen you can get in early.. (but I won't be doing it until friday!)

So far on my blog : https://pauljholden.com/tag/fridayfixup/

-PJ

Anyone else watching this? (catching up on Netflix not hit the new series yet)

Superb and funny.

Somewhere between heaven can wait and the prisoner (or, I suppose "what if Lost was a comedy")

Relatively simple premise but brilliant delivery and seems to have an actual purposeful narrative and proper cliff hangers.

PJ

Hey, I'm taking a class on comics in Dublin over 7 weeks (with a one week gap) starting soon...!

If you're interested details are here:

https://irishwriterscentre.ie/collections/all-courses/products/comics-and-graphic-novel-with-p-j-holden

It will probably have a very 2000AD/future shock slant, but will be touching lots of how to stuff.


-pj