Michi Mathias. illustration & comics.
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True in 1897, true today.

27/11/2017

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I've been looking forward to drafting this bit where Holding goes on at some length about the need for people to make the effort to get on with each other, rather than rise to unintended provocation or get upset about silly behaviours. He writes this just after the part in his book where he finds the Bantam bicycles being ridden by two of the party really aren't up to the job, and are slowing everyone down terribly. That's why his arms are pointing like that on the left-hand page -- which will be on the right-hand side in the book, rather than these two being facing pages like they appear. 
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In Holding's book, there's a fair bit more but this seemed plenty to get the point across. One more paragraph I sort of wanted to include but haven't, follows below. Should I?

"May I presume to say that I have had twenty years cruising in the company of many and widely varying men, and each, of course, with his varying mood. This has given every condition possible for criticism and even differences, not to say, sometimes, offence."
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Using #inktober to practise bicycles and people.

20/11/2017

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Since I'd decided to take up the challenge of #inktober again this year (that is, an ink drawing every single day of October), I thought I might as well use it for what I most needed: getting better at drawing people, and getting used to drawing these bikes from 1897 and, in the final frame, having a go at character development for the four guys in the story. 
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"No chain, no problem"

2/11/2017

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I've reached page 15 now of my second / final (?) draft, and it's a bit of the story I've been looking forward to drawing. 

T.H. Holding has rather a lot to say in Cycle and Camp about this particular kind of bicycle and its awkward inefficiencies. Only when I reached the photos in the book did I fully understand these were barely even bicycles as we know them. 

It's incredible to think that not only was this group of four embarking on a pioneering cycling trip with camping gear, on single-speed bikes built in the 1890s, traveling many miles over hills and very difficult unpaved roads, but that two of them were riding these!

​I'm planning a trip to see one in real life soon.
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    READ THIS BIT FIRST

    (By the way, If you'd like to support this and get behind-the-scenes updates: Patreon)
    ​

    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.

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Michi Mathias     illustration & comics