A viral comparison of the government support received by pensioners compared to “illegal immigrants” and refugees is doing the rounds once again on social media. The figures in the post are still wrong.

“f I had a nickel for every time I watched as a superpower collapsed, I’d have two nickels-- which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice. Right?

Wonderful afternoon at Draw Each Other online session, January 14, 2026, with John, Shirley, and 5 artists posing for 15 minutes. #draweachother #portrait #portraitsketch #portraitdrawing #15minuteportraits #quickportraits #ipadpro #procreate #digitalart

on a side note, has Wee Jimmy Krankie started a pharma business? That second one sounds familiar

Two pages from yesterday evening’s DrawingIsFree zoom portrait session (each pose the length of a song) - I declared myself a temporary pope & beatified the artist sitters. Bic biro and metallic watercolour

Instead of begging on tv for a hand me down Nobel Prize medal DJT should stop by the Nobel Museum shop in Stockholm www.nobelprizemuseum.se/en/plan-your... They sell reasonably priced gold foil wrapped chocolate versions in packs of ten and it would be just as valid

My Dad’s disability car gets returned on Tuesday so spent 4+ hours yesterday removing residue from the gaffer tape he put liberally on his car to prevent marks. They say not to speak ill of the dead but I definitely muttered quite a lot of ill

Just putting a pin in this from a conversation yesterday with @mygoditsraining.bsky.social - when the UN etc. we can find out if we are definitively on the stupidest of all possible timelines

BBC website have their first reports and tag on a link to editorial about the US cabinet

A candle for everyone who needs a little more light to take into 2026. Happy New Year all (charcoal and chalk on a takeaway bag (halloumi burger from the ever excellent & lovely The Shack, Arran)

The BBC Sport webpages have some suggestions on how you and a close personal friend can spend the Christmas holidays

Draw Each Other Zoom session portraits in coloured pencil - 15 min a pop

As a former schoolboy (even one who read Commando comics and made models of fighter planes including bf109s and FW190s) - absolutely the fuck not

Käthe Kollwitz's pietà from the Neue Wache memorial to Victims of War and Dictatorship, Berlin #womensart

“Do you tick the…?”

Who could have imagined that one day we’d look back at Sepp Blatter as a comparatively squeaky clean paragon of fair dealing and virtue?

Congrats Albert! You won the whole wheel! - God does not play dice but he does enjoy Wheel of Furtune

One is headed by a monomaniacal authoritarian figure bent on world domination and the other is… oh

Charcoal on cartridge paper - explosion on board HMS Dasher, Firth of Clyde, March 1943

My #pencils4tea portrait/song quick sketches from yesterday evening - thank you to Paul for the music and all of the sitters and artists. Not my typical style or materials but I pared everything back as I was juggling drawing and hosting across two screens with Zoom and Spotify

The A-team for the #pencils4tea free quick portrait session on Zoom are unavailable tomorrow so I’m playing host with a space themed playlist. From 6pm (UK time) - 1 pose per song with attendees asked at random(ish) to sit (you can say no) us06web.zoom.us/j/8566703417...

It has only taken me 25+ years of owning assorted graphite sticks to realise that one of them is actually a water soluble one Quick invented portrait as kitchen countertop scribble on reused paper while I tried them out

The evening set of #drawingisfree portraits done in Neocolour ii water soluble crayons - that completes 1 year of regular online quick portrait drawings. I’ve learned a lot (mainly that I have a lot to learn)

Charcoal on old book for this morning’s #drawingisfree Zoom portrait session. One pose per song

The remants of a 249-million-year-old ocean ecosystem have been found - partway up a mountain in Svalbard! It contains over 30,000 fossils from all kinds of fish and marine reptiles - as well as some more unexpected animals! Discover what it reveals 👇 www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/new...

A drawing of WW2 armed trawler HMT Isle of Arran, rough in places as I’m trying to figure out the particular layout of this ship from fairly poor photos

'Road to the Farm.' (1944) I find it difficult to think of any British landscape painter of Rowland Hilder's generation (he was born in 1905) whose work is as widely known but whose name is not. His work touched a strain of nostalgia for an unchanged and unchanging landscape.

Having a rest today and it is chucking it down outside so I built my friend’s Finnieston crane kit design (Clyde Model Dockyard) www.clydemodeldockyard.com/shop/p/finni...

SUPERB and angrily unvarnished response, by former BBC chairman, Lord Patten. "I don't think that we should allow ourselves to be bullied into thinking that the BBC is only any good, if it reflects the prejudice of the last person who shouted at it." ~AA

The truly maddening thing is that, unlike when I was a young man in science and the materials and engineering just weren’t there yet, the future is *right there.* The problem is *solved*. What’s holding us back is not just greed, but this bizarre nostalgia, an obsession with petro- masculinity.

If you are in the US or Canada, Goodreads are running a giveaway for my new novel, The Survivor, where there are 25 print copies up for grabs. It's the last giveaway we have scheduled, afaik, so if you are interested, here's the link: www.goodreads.com/giveaway/sho...

Playing with overlapping portraits and then separating using improvised filters (coloured plastic document folders) for Drawing is Free Zoom free session this morning

Today’s scrawl - based on a frieze of medieval masons, Royal Bank Place in Glasgow

Every Monday for the last year or so I’ve joined free online portrait sessions called Drawing is Free - I had the privilege of having a conversation as part of Chloe’s series “what it is to draw a face” www.patreon.com/posts/21-wha...

Today’s other drawings - hotel room self portrait in charcoal pencil & pencil sketches of False Killer Whale and Plesiosaur skeletons at the Hunterian Museum in Glasgow

I was feeling really uninspired by today’s “award” prompt for inktober but it occurred to me that I could give myself a participation prize for completing a 2nd year #inktober #inktober2025

Day 30 of inktober - “Vacant” #inktober #inktober2025 0.2mm unipin fineliner, graphite and coloured pencil

A very quick scribble today to keep up with inktober “lesson” #inktober #inktober2025

Not that I’ve been influenced by Autumnal leaves or anything but… inktober prompt of the day “skeletal” - I thought of a leaf skeleton shining with an aura #inktober #inktober2025

I needed to be packed up and out sharpish after drawingisfree_org so minimalist materials of biro on brown packaging card for today’s portraits

27th of inktober “onion” - y’all were the kind of kids that had microscopes and would look at onion skin to see the cells, right? #inktober #inktober2025 0.1mm Unipin pen

inktober day 26 “puzzling” - a quick crossword. All answers are summaries of the answers to: Across 1. Quantum Gravity 2. Fermi Paradox 3. Mechanism of general anaesthesia 4. Baryon asymmetry 5. Nature of consciousness,… #inktober #inktober2025

Oh, satire. inktober day 25 prompt is “inferno” during which Dante & Virgil find a freshly constructed circle #inktober #inktober2025

Just killing time with Catriona, graphite & coloured pencil

Fellow commuters - missed the ferry leaving and trying to swim to catch it

Rush hour in Lamlash is something else - absolute bedlam

23rd of inktober “Firefly” - a Fairey Firefly target tug aircraft based on the photo blackskyphoto.com/wp-content/u... #inktober #inktober2025 black & yellow Indian inks

What's EVIL? Who decides? #CriticalPonerology w/ Dr. Ken MacKendrick dives into: religion vampires angry mobs seeking vigilante justice billionaires homicidal news anchors subjects vs. objects & if your toddler is evil why you should be nicer to your coffee table. www.alieward.com/ologies/crit...

“Button” for Inktober today - I decided to adopt the Americanism of button for badge and to take inspiration from collection.corita.org/piece/82-01 and fondly recall when such qualities seemed like useful things for prospective leaders #inktober #inktober2025

For today’s @inktober prompt of “blast” I was wondering what Eric Ravilious would have made of the night bomber campaign and ensuing firestorms. Inspiration taken from the photo of an Avro Lancaster against the background of a burning Hamburg. Blue and orange inks #inktober #inktober2025