So what does one write for the inaugural blog post?

Well, I begin I guess by saying thank you very much for visiting my site! I am very encouraged by the nice things people have said so far and I feel content at last to have all the various strands of my work in one easily update-able place. I have been working in many different media and styles for the last ten years or so and it all has a tendency to get a little fragmented and confusing. Let's hope I continue with this new found efficiency and structure.

The most exciting thing that has been happening lately is the fledgling success of our mobile game Button Up!, which has been a smash hit in China (60,000 users and counting!) and a bit of a slow burner everywhere else. For commercial purposes, owing to the extreme complexity of doing business in China, this does not help us a great deal at present. However at the very least it shows we have a game that people genuinely like playing, which is a huge relief!

Here are some sneak previews of the new chapter and tutorials that we will be releasing in a few weeks.

Something I have been doing simultaneously to building this site ('building' is a slightly strong word here as I am slave to the intuitive templates of Squarespace...) is making one for my father. As some of you will already know, Rodger McPhail is an extremely talented and prolific painter. His many subjects are predominantly wildlife but he can turn his peerless eye to pretty much anything. He has been an influence on me all my life in one way or another and it was a pleasure to have such great content to work with when presenting his portfolio. If you are interested in that sort of thing have a look here.

What remains of my salient news is mostly a small update on my recent adventure in the Netherlands and Germany. I drove around on my own without much purpose from Amsterdam to Berlin via Hamburg, and back again via Köln. I had a wonderful and slightly strange time, met loads of great people, ate loads of amazing, heavy food, drank profusely and saw many sights from the cultural to the banal. It was a terrifying experience learning Dutch and German on the fly from phrase books and I had a few low moments of cultural and linguistic isolation. These troughs were more than made up for, however, by the regular soaring peaks of joy. Here I include a very small fraction of the pictures I took (as I don't want to become *too* self-indulgent, this is only the first post - jeez!).

All that remains to be said is that this will now become my primary source for all social media and blogging things so keep up to date with my work here or via any of the links at the bottom of the page. If you have any questions about my work or want to get in touch about possible commissions or just to hurl abuse then feel free to contact me using the form on my contact page.

All the love

Button Up! - I Don't Know