Checking in...

 I couldn't help notice my last blog entry was over a year ago and it may well be another year before I am back. If you have found your way to this page and want to stay in touch, there are links to both my Facebook and Instagram accounts at the bottom of this page, both of which I update on a weekly basis.

So, enough housekeeping. The past year I have done a deep dive into the final art for my story Clokwerkz, one that I began a year or two previously while putting the finishing touches to the Mordecai Crow trilogy. To say that this Clokwerkz work has been transformative for me would be an understatement. When I was finishing up Mordecai Crow I was making the transition to digital, executing all of the art for Blood and Fire on my Pad. But because the first two books were already out there I was constrained in my approach to matching the style I had previously used with my brush and ink work in Secrets of Jarrow and Quid Pro Crow.

With Clokwerkz I have been freed of those restrictions and spent the first while simply watching a number of Youtube videos on creating digital art, colouring digitally, and also spending time with refreshers on how to draw the human face and form, as I wanted to bring a more realistic style to this story. 

I also took the time to gather imagery for inspiration, leaning heavily to begin with on the photographs of the late 19th Century French photographer Eugène Atget, who chronicled the streets of Paris at that time with his camera. I also gathered a number of face images from a great data base of face photographs I found, mug shots straight on and in profile of people who had fallen afoul of the law (I won't say criminals, as a number of them were Wobblies and suspected communists!) in the first half of the 20th Century. I have continued to add to this collection of images throughout the process for inspiration as I go forward. 

As I write this (June 2026) I am approaching the halfway mark in my final art. I can only guess at when the book will be done, but I think perhaps a year and a half from now with maybe a release date in the spring of 2028. No promises.

In the meantime, I will continue to share on Instagram and Facebook. It has been an especial pleasure to share the inking reels (another bonus to working digitally) where in a 30 second clip I can record the pencilling and inking of each page - such fun!