Three weeks ago the hawthorn had burst into fresh green leaf and our local ponies were tucking into it. My comic strip is based on actual events: we were following two ponies along the lane, one of which whinnied and backed along a track when surprised by a blackbird bursting out of the hedge.
I was asking the rider of the other pony why hers, which was unruffled by the blackbird incident, kept so close to the hedge:
“It’s the hawthorn, he likes anything he can get his mouth around!”
As we stood back to let the ponies go by, a couple of the people who live by the stables were standing nearby drinking their morning coffee.
“Some of the ponies around here could do to see a psychologist!” I suggested.
“Not just the ponies,” the man agreed, “Some of the people too!”
I’ve struggled with this comic strip. I started drawing on my iPad in Clip Studio Paint, then decided that I’d be better drawing with pen on paper and finally, for the last two panels, I went back to my iPad. As you can see from my rough, I thought about including the blackbird incident and the hawthorn nibbling as panels but then I decided that, rather like a situation comedy, this strip should focus on the relationship between the two ponies on their home turf.
On balance, I probably prefer the extra action in my original rough, but it’s time to leave this strip and go on to a fresh one, and I have got plans to take the characters further afield.
