In 2011, Illustrators Ireland member David McClelland was commissioned to create a series of short comics based upon the songs from the debut album of ‘The Uncontested’.

Each comic / song depicts a character living in a fictional town.

He also created a website to host the comics:

“Before I started on the artwork for the comics, I determined that the internet was going the best medium to present and promote the stories in their musical and visual format. Therefore, in addition to the comics, I created a website to personify The Uncontested and present the stories in a format that uses preset scrolling to pace and guide the reader through the stories.”

See some ,more examples of the work over on the Illustrators Ireland blog…

Check out this interesting Heller post on the invention drawings of Steven M. Johnson.

The Children’s Books magazine Inis has relaunched with a spanking new design including features and reviews.

Illustrate Ulysses? maybe. Illustrate Finnegans Wake? that way madness lies. Stephen Crowe is recording his efforts to undertake such a task here.

Here’s two interesting ongoing epic drawing projects: James Gulliver Hancock’s All The Buildings in New York and Jason Polan’s Every Person in New York.

Here’s two interesting recent reads on the poor uptake in the use of illustration editorially online, and yet how valuable illustration can be in adding uniqueness to a website.

The children’s book blog 36 pages is run by illustrator Craig Frazier, who discusses his own work and gives insights into his favorite children’s books. Check it out here.

WE TOO WERE CHILDREN, MR. BARRIE is a blog about children’s books written by “adult” authors including Graham Greene and James Joyce. They focus on one author a week and they have a Flickr SET for full scans of books, some very nice retro illustration work.

There is a black cloud over the country right now (what a massive understatement!) and it looks like people are finally getting angry at the performances of our so called leaders. Thankfully some people are channeling that anger into creative avenues such as cartoonist Alan Moloney. His series Wheel Spinning Hamster Dead is ripping round the interweb especially through his twitter account @wrathofkang. There is a massive appetite for home-based political cartooning at the moment so it’s great that, along with Martyn Turner, someone is filling that void.

So apparently we have all won some kind of 70 billion Euro Lotto or something. It was on the news so it must be true. Which comes just in time as we naturally all get our pencils sharpened by David Rees at Artisanal Pencil Sharpening for a mere $12 a pop and we’ve got quite a big invoice from him to pay off.