Michi Mathias. illustration & comics.
  • home
  • about
    • now
    • interviews
  • DIY Vegan Cooking
  • graphic novel
    • synopsis
  • comics
    • Just a Normal Day?
    • Up, Down or Stay the Same?
  • contact
  • work with me
  • 2022 planner diary

First seven pages inked & coloured!

1/1/2022

0 Comments

 
"First" doesn't mean page one here; I'm starting partway through the book, trying to find a sequence of pages that will show as many representative aspects of the trip as possible - cycling, camp, cooking, towns, conversations with people along the way... it's not easy. These may or may not be the right pages but it's great to be underway with the final (?) at last! 

Final doesn't necessarily mean final, as I'll probably end up wanting to re-draw some of these panels later on. But that's okay.
​

At this point in the story, the four have been on the road for almost two days, and have just arrived at their second camp.
Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
0 Comments

pencil draft is FINISHED!

5/11/2021

0 Comments

 
After about five years of planning, researching, thumbnailing and pencilling... I've at last reached page 151 which is (I think!) the final page of Two Shillings a Day.  Below is the draft of that last page as currently envisioned: 
Picture
The "list of things necessary" refers to Holding's detailed instructions and advice at the end of his book regarding all the particulars needed for camping - how to sew a tent,  operate a campstove, carry jam, etc etc. 
Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
Now preparing for the inking and colouring... I'll aim to show regular progress here. 
0 Comments

How TH Holding started the Camping and Caravanning Club

29/10/2021

0 Comments

 
A delightful short film (3+ minutes) with a few quotes from and photos of Holding and some early camping sites, made by the CCC in 2014.
0 Comments

Essential pack list for cycle-camping

27/6/2021

0 Comments

 
Picture
In 1908, eleven years after carrying out and writing his book about the world's first portable cycle-camping trip, TH Holding wrote The Camper's Handbook.

​It's a massive 400 pages of very comprehensive detail on every aspect of camping, on which he had become a notable expert.

The section on cycle-camping includes this packing list.... all of which can fit, amazingly, in one large handlebar bag which was Holding's favoured means of carrying equipment. 

I love seeing what things were considered essential then, and which we would still include today!

0 Comments

pages 98 and 99

16/5/2021

0 Comments

 
Picture
I realise I haven't been remembering to keep this blog updated, though if you follow my newsletter or Patreon you'll know that progress is being made! Albeit slowly... I'm currently drafting page 108 of about 148. 

Here's a draft from a couple of weeks ago, as the four rode the seventeen miles from Maam, after they'd obtained hot potatoes from a farmhouse and cooked up an excellent lunch in the field, on to Cong.

I think I need to make that "huge piano encased in a box" a little bigger when I draw the final version, actually. 
0 Comments

I get to talk about this as a newsletter guest!

21/8/2020

0 Comments

 
I was thrilled to be offered a guest spot in the weekly mailing produced by a superb filmmaker whom I follow.  Adam Westbrook writes The Third Something full of "ideas, sketches and reflections on the creative process" and it's always deeply thought-provoking and entertaining, very highly recommended even when it isn't all about me! This one is, and I get to talk about figuring out my weird way of drafting this graphic novel, which finally got me unstuck and able to make (slow) progress on it. Click on image below to read.
Picture
Picture
0 Comments

How it started, and all about the process

5/7/2020

0 Comments

 
This is a talk I gave at Laydeez Do Comics in London back in January 2020, about the making of this graphic novel from initial idea to the endless research to page layout methods and more... 
0 Comments

Four men in a tent this size?!

4/11/2019

0 Comments

 
Picture
Picture
Picture
Using the instructions from T H Holding's book for making your own tent, I worked out the size of this paper model to be in scale with my little grey man, putting his height at 5'8" which is a good guess for Victorian times. I wanted to have a reference for getting the relative sizes accurate, now they I've reached the part of the story where they've pitched the tent for the first time and started camping. It's still very difficult to imagine four grown men, one rather large, sleeping in such a space but we know they did! 
0 Comments

First twelve pages - done!

30/3/2019

2 Comments

 
When one is approaching publishers with a graphic novel proposal, it's my understanding that standard practice is to show about twelve sequential pages finished enough to get an idea of the artwork and the storytelling. That's been a great impetus to actually get the beginning done in something like final form. 
2 Comments

Hedgerows and tin openers

6/1/2019

0 Comments

 
This is, of course, a story about a cycling trip... but this is part of why I love it: diversions into all sorts of subjects, expressed in inimitable verbal style by the highly opinionated T.H. Holding. 
Picture
Picture
0 Comments
<<Previous

    READ THIS FIRST!

    I'm making a true-story graphic novel...

    Touring and camping with a bicycle is a common activity today, but it was not so easy in the late 19th century when cycles were heavy steel with just one gear, roads were unpaved, batteries and nylon and zippers didn't exist, and even outdoor activities were undertaken in woolen three-piece suits!

    Travel back in time to meet the master tailor Thomas Hiram Holding, a keen cyclist and camping enthusiast. He combined these two pastimes in 1897 when he invented a lightweight portable tent and embarked on a pioneering cycle-camping tour with three friends in Ireland.

    This graphic novel is a faithful adaptation of Holding's own book Cycle and Camp, bringing to life a time of horse-drawn mailcars, kitchens with peat fires for cooking, and farmhouses shared with cattle. Part travelogue round rural west Ireland and part how-to manual - including sewing ones own tent - his adventure is re-told entirely in his own idiosyncratic and rather opinionated words. 

    Holding’s fervent wish that anyone could now enjoy a holiday in the country without exorbitant cost proved so popular that he started a cycle-camping organisation, an organisation that became today’s Camping and Caravanning Club.

    (And, if you'd like to support this and receive ridiculously detailed behind-the-scenes updates: join me on Patreon)

    Archives

    January 2022
    November 2021
    October 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    August 2020
    July 2020
    November 2019
    March 2019
    January 2019
    November 2018
    June 2018
    April 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    November 2017
    June 2017
    January 2017
    November 2016

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed


Michi Mathias     illustration & comics    

Picture