Hourly Comic Day 2025

A day in the life, as told through comics

1st February was Hourly Comic Day, the annual event that unites comic-makers around the globe: the goal is to illustrate every waking hour of your day (though everyone insists there are no rules). I started doing Hourly Comic Day in 2021, but this was my first HCD on a Saturday — I was excited to draw a different kind of day!

Two new things that will help me share my Hourlies this year: I have a Substack and I have a scanner! Here we go…

I had to pack some unusual objects to bring to my art club…

I went to a fancy West London park looking for peacocks to draw (in my other sketchbook) but for my Hourlies I captured a very funny toddler moment:

My day was busy, so I didn’t write much about my current podcasts, music etc — but as well as the new episode of Answer Me This! I caught up on the Severance recap show.

I love this river crossing — it’s a footbridge from Embankment station, going south towards Waterloo. The pedestrian bridge is alongside a rail bridge carrying the trains into Charing Cross station, a terminus that connects me to family outside the city. It represents both London and home.

Did I schedule an art club specifically for Hourly Comic Day so I could make my Hourlies more interesting? Yes. Yes I did.

This was the fifth edition of Knickknacks Art Club, my meet-up for still life drawing — everyone brings an object and we sit and sketch together. It has made me so happy to do more social art with friends, and to meet new people through it. On top of that, in January someone in Australia did their own KKAC! How cool is that?

Because I was busy I spent less time drawing food, but I did also snaffle a ham and cheese baguette at 10am, in case you thought I had missed a meal!

My cultured friend Thyra invited me to join her at a classical concert for the year of the snake. I should have drawn the nice conversation we had with the lovely elderly Chinese lady who sat next to us (and shook our hands when she left!), but I got a bit side-tracked by some mixed political messages…

Finally, I arrived home feeling peckish so I improvised a mix of butter chicken, Bombay aloo and fresh spinach. I’ll chuck fresh spinach into anything I can, it makes me feel like I’m cooking even when I’m not!

My hourlies stopped here, but I tended my Duolingo streak (“我是英国人”), went on TikTok and then finished reading Sabba Khan’s beautiful graphic memoir The Roles We Play.

Thank you for reading my Hourlies! Did you take part? Would you join in next year?