Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote… welcome to my April 2026 Newsletter! Read on to see what I was getting up to in April written by a real human (mostly innocent, the salacious stuff is in my other newsletter).
Barrie Tomlinson RIP
I’m opening this newletter with an appreciation.
Eagle and 2000AD fascinated, terrified, and blew the minds of a whole generation of children in the 80s and 90s, some of whom internalised the love of the graphic depiction of weird worlds and characters and channeled it into creative careers of their own. I’m one of that generation. In fact Eagle was my first paid comics gig. As an adult in the age of social media it became possible to cross virtual paths with the very people who created these science fiction dystopian milieux (which even afforded the opportunity to commission one of your heroes to draw one of your favourite characters!). Former Eagle and Roy of the Rovers editor Barrie Tomlinson was one of those people and we ended up following each other on Twitter, where I was able to tell him the huge influence on me he had a part in. He was one of the creative people responsible for the iconic look of Eagle’s Doomlord, and we had an exchange about this which I turned into an interview format on the origins of Doomlord’s mask which you can read here (THIS TURNS INTO A REAL RABBITHOLE OF COLLECTABLE EPHEMERA!)
Sadly Barrie passed away on 21st April 2026 but I’m happy I had the privilege of telling him how much his comics meant to me and influenced me, and I’m sure he understood his legacy was the opening of many young minds.
Cúirt 2026
I’ve done two wonderful singing courses online as Gaeilge with Kerry singer and poet Amano. If you’ve read previous newsletters you’ll know I’m a huge fan of her music and experiencing her courses has opened my mind in my wobbly nascent steps to catch up with the language I should have been speaking my whole life. For Cúirt 2026 Amano was one of An Taibhdhearc’s An Sparánacht Síol artists, alongside Ola Majekodunmi, and they both read their bilingual/trilingual poetry in Charlie Byrnes’ Bookshop here in Galway. I excitedly got to meet Amano and have a quick chat and a pic!
This Month’s Weddings:
I was in Johnstown Estate, Ballyseede, Fota House, and Mount Wolseley this month. Great to be getting back into wedding season and nice to be back in Mount Wolseley in particular after an absence of a few years! Click through any of these links to see galleries of my live caricature work from these weddings or check out the gallery below for examples.
This Month’s Portraits:
I drew artwork for branded mugs for East Coast FM’s Freshly Squeezed with Rob and Laura, and created a caricature portrait for a quad-driving sheep farmer!
Drawing Every Dog:
This month I completed drawings of the English Setter, the German Long-haired Pointer, the German Short-haired Pointer, and the German Wire-haired Pointer. You can see the whole collection of Drawing Every Dog here. The plan is to draw every dog in the Encyclopedia of Dog Breeds, which is somewhere around the 400 mark of different breeds. Wish me luck!
TV: Something Very Bad Is Going To Happen
This month I watched Something Very Bad is Going to Happen on Netflix. Don’t let the Hipster Gothic pretension of the very long name put you off, this is a fantastic bit of horror telly. With its simple premise it really is style over substance: I mean that as high praise because the look and tone of this show are constantly engaging with aesthetics and a sense of foreboding dragging you unpleasantly in medias res (the episode with the found-footage Blair Witch homage is particularly unsettling). Everyone in it is brilliant (took me a while to recognise Captain Stottlemeyer as the dad!). It kind of collapses under its own mythology by the end but at that stage you’re not going to care and does not stop me calling this a flawless piece of television.
Cartoons:
I drew this less-than-complimentary cartoon portrait of our King Midas of Poo, Micheál Martin to mark the fuel protests.
I had my Allergen Hitman cartoon published in the latest issue of UK online compendium of cartoon talent, The New Cartoonist:
(I think that’s everything for now, sure isn’t that enough? Thanks for reading!
If you’ve read this far it’d mean a lot to me if you could click through and leave a comment, the more interaction I get the further the reach I have!)
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See even more examples of my art at the bottom of this post!