PJ Holden's Blog

Was listening to a radio show that touched on the fact that the short story the Alfred Hitchcock film ‘The Birds’ was based on (also called ‘The Birds’) was really rather good, as well as being set in Cornwall (where my wife is from, and we’re we’d recently been to) it was also an allegory of the Blitz.

So I sat down and read it, and it IS good.

And I then started watching the movie. Which is also good (if you can ignore some of the ropier effects) the imagery is amazing, and the while the blitz allegory is entirely gone, it’s pretty good.

(Though, frankly, Melony seems a wrong ‘un – driving 60 miles to play a prank on a bloke she just met after getting her father’s employee to dig up his home address? I mean, it could take a turn for the psycho…)

Anyway, another frustrating time with digital paint, but there it is.

mmm… Always frustrated that things are less realistic than I want. I don’t think I knew what I wanted from this digital paint job, but this isn’t quite it.(I like the Kirby crackle though…)

This is one of many pages I did for Dept of Monsterology book 2. This was one of the 49 pages I drew in a month. Some of those pages were, hand on heart, some of my favourite pages I’ve ever drawn. Lookit hitlers little left foot.

You can buy a digital collection of book 2 for just £6.99 on Comixology – it’s a bargain! 

(and hey, if you’re not already a Patreon of mine, you can sign up for $1 to see early pics and some exclusive pics, and get a behind the scenes peek, with articles on Clip Studio Paint and Comics story telling for the early bird price of just $5 – only a limited number of slots at that price!)

I wanted to try and paint something in Clip Studio Paint, more impressionistic than I normally do – or at least looser. The first Rogue was done with that in mind but it totally got away from me, like some small bits (I like that he looks blue without … you know… being entirely blue).

Wasn’t what I wanted though, so thought I’d have a go again this time using a photo – so I nabbed a random “male model” sketch off the interwebs, and scribbled roughly the look and painted the colorus based on the lighting in that. It’s miles better. Frustratingly so. Much less faffing in the colours, and the lighting (despite him being blue) is much more believable. I should probably do more studies of this nature.

Auditioned for a play. Got a part. Local am dram.

Bit nuts, this is lining up to be the busiest year ever for me. But then, that’s all the more reason to do something else. Something that I can switch myself off for and just be somewhere else.

I’ve acted before- 20 years ago and went back to it last year, did Macbeth and had friends I’ve known for decades come up and say “I’ve never seen you stand so still”. Then I did another play where I was a narrator and stood on stage stock still for an hour. I liked the stillness. I like the knowing that I have something to say at an exact moment. The most awkward bit of rehearsals I find are the bits before and after the rehearsing where you’re mixing, and I still find myself standing alone amongst a crowd.

It’s wanky to say it, I know, but I like just losing myself in someone else’s lines.

Look there’s me playing ross (centre) in Macbeth! What a tubby little man I have become.

(I still want to do a mega sci-fi fantasy epic of Macbeth… but it’s unlikely to ever happen…)