I’m 52 years old and I’ve been drawing since as long as I can remember. My earliest memory of drawing was in first grade when I was drawing a monster truck*. I remember this moment because someone said I was a “good artist”. I don’t remember before that.
The first comic I remember drawing was around 1980 and it involved the Thing, Hulk, maybe Spider-Man. It was on typing paper, folded in half like a book. But I didn’t seriously draw another comic until 1987 when I got started drawing comics and publishing them in the small press scene. I was very active in that scene all through the 90s, even attending a few conventions (not normally my bag… which I’ll get to shortly).
The first time I was paid to do art was in 1988. A local poet paid me to draw a few pieces for his poetry zine, Promise. In 1994 I got some work published in a fantasy prose zine, the name of which escapes me. And all during that time I was collaborating and drawing for other small press publishers.
In 2000 or so, I stumbled upon the budding indie TTRPG scene and started drawing art for RPGs. I don’t remember which was the first one, but it was likely Adept Press or Clinton R. Nixon Games. At this time I was still publishing comics and then I started to publish gaming material as well. I write a few games, such as The Pool and The Questing Beast.
In 2005, I had my comic Pan-Gea published by Ape Entertainment. I call this my first professional comic book because it was printed professionally and listed in Previews. I was very proud of that moment.
Then I had kids and I dipped out of the scene, more or less. I spent most of the rest of the 2000s and 2010s kind of in my own little world. I was drawing a lot, mostly doing webcomics like Zyn Dweomer and drawing a lot of sex comics and stuff.
It was around 2012 or 2013 that I discovered there was this whole OSR scene going on. I was amazed. I wish I had been tuned in to it earlier because I would have been ALL OVER IT from the start, had I known. But I didn’t.
So from around 2014 I started publishing my own OSR RPG books. In 2016 I started publishing Black Pudding, which was the most successful thing I had done at that point in the RPG scene.
And that brings us up to current. I’m still making Black Pudding and other game books. My jam right now is creating art and RPG stuff as the mood strikes and making it into books.
Looking back over all this, I would say if there is a through-line it is that I am a maker of books. I just love the idea of making a book and I’m always thinking about how it will look, feel, and be read. Even when I’m just randomly sketching I’m often thinking about how the sketches might fit a book page. It’s a bit of an obsession.
*And it was 1975 so I’m not sure it was a “monster truck” or just a truck.
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