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"No chain, no problem"

2/11/2017

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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Only 138 pages to pencil, ink and colour

2/6/2017

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This is my entire graphic novel, Two Shillings per Day, all 138 pages of it in rough draft form. Very very rough. Post-it notes in a binder, some not even with pictures, still moveable around if it's too text-heavy in places (very likely) or I just want to change the layout of a page or two (I hope not TOO much of this).

I photographed the whole thing because I had a lot of trips away in May and wanted to take the work in progress with me, even camping where I was playing music at a festival, and the thought of losing it..... well, doesn't even bear thinking about. I doubt if I would have the heart to start over again...but I would have to, eventually.... This made it risk-free and I got some good hours on trains to work on it.

Weirdly, seeing it all laid out like this makes it somehow seem more possible! I even had to count the pages to see if they were really all there. It's a lot, especially as I've never made anything this large before, but I actually think it's going to be doable.

Watch this space.

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Announcing: a new project that really might be too big.

3/1/2017

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I'm outing myself here in the hope this will help keep it going: I've started drafting a graphic novel, based on a 220 page book written in 1897, with hardly any conversation to quote and not much in the way of suspenseful story arc either.

T.H. Holding combined two of his great passions -- cycling and camping -- and set out to try a short tour by bicycle in Ireland. He went with three friends, carrying a tent he'd made himself, although only two of the four rode machines we would recognise as bikes today.

It's full of detailed observations and social history, not to mention the fascinating differences in how camping was done, told in a firmly idiosyncratic author's voice which I am using exclusively for the text.

This has been in my head for the past two or three years, though I honestly had no idea of how I could possibly do it when I first thought of it, and probably still don't, really. But I'm going for it anyway, because I'm excited by it and want this story to be told.

I'm grateful to the Camping and Caravanning Club's archivist, mentioned in previous post, for helpful additional material.

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A research daytrip to Coventry

16/11/2016

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I'm going to Coventry tomorrow.

Because it's the headquarters of the Camping and Caravanning Club of Great Britain.

Which kindly replied to my recent enquiry asking whether they had any more photos of their founder, Thomas Hiram Holding, in addition to the one on their history page on their website.

As Holding was a pioneer of camping in the 1800s and wrote a book in 1897 called Cycle and Camp about the first camping trip by bicycle.

Which I'm turning into a graphic novel.

And I can't wait to see more reference photos and other material from that first trip which will help make my work better. The CCC has an archivist who works there on Tuesdays, and he's already made me a copy of one of Holding's publications from that time which I'm missing.

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

(If you'd like to support this project and get behind-the-scenes updates: Patreon)

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.

"No chain, no problem"

Only 138 pages to pencil, ink and colour

Announcing: a new project that really might be too big.

A research daytrip to Coventry

Read this bit first

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"No chain, no problem"

Only 138 pages to pencil, ink and colour

Announcing: a new project that really might be too big.

A research daytrip to Coventry

​Read this bit first

Archives

Categories

Read this bit first