I read something a long time ago that stuck with me. I don’t remember the source, and I don’t remember it exactly, so I’ll have to paraphrase, but it was something along the lines of good inking ability making your pencils shine, and good colours making the work sing. I grew up drawing crudely coloured comics, first in colour pens and then in cheap textas, and somewhere along the way, I fell in love with black and white line art. After that, I left colour by the wayside.

The diary comics helped me to reacquaint myself with CMYK in a low-stakes and fun way, by playing around with watercolour and copic markers on daily throw-away pieces. Now that I’m colouring pages that have taken days if not weeks to complete, I’m colouring digitally, reassured by the comfort of control-z, blend modes, and adjustment layers.

These pages use a limited palette of colours established by my wife Jutta, who comes up with colour schemes that would never have occurred to me- I’m still underdeveloped on the hue side of the artistic spectrum. Obviously, I’ve removed the dialogue and narration, but you’ll be able to read the full comic when it comes out in Dr Mike 2000’s awesome series Universe gun.