Time is running out! (Auction update)

The artscaresyou auctions end tomorrow night (local time). If there is anything you want, take action! (Bidding info here - you don’t have to be a livejournal member).

A list of all items is here . Notable items include a steampunk necklace, original Shaun Tan artwork, an autographed Good Omens, a Pendlerook Mary Shelly doll and some marzipan noses.

There is also my original framed pocket villain paperdoll (currently at $30, and postage included).

The fundraising effort is 90% of the way to its goal - Bid now! Bid often!

Villain, with another paper doll for scale.

 

Illustration Friday: Routine

My father refers to himself as a “high maintenance husband”, so for this week’s Illustration Friday topic “routine” I showed my mother giving him some routine maintenance. Not, as one of my housemates thought, being tortured.

I haven’t used scratchboard since the last time I used it for Illustration Friday (Worry, in May). It was easier this time (and this is a very small image: 5.5×7.5cm), but there are many things I will do differently next time - especially the shadows and outlines. After using pen and ink so much, scratchboard is an exercise in negative thinking.

Here’s the sketch:

ETA: One of the comments made me realise that there are two possible misinterpetations: the torture; and that my father makes us wait on him hand and foot! He has MS and needs assistance to do a number of things now, including cutting his fingernails. But when he was up and about, he was anything but demanding :)

Comments, critiques and further possible misinterpretations welcome. I can learn!

 

Illustration Friday: Detach

A sepia illustration for this week’s Illustration Friday topic: detach. Referenced surreptitiously from my father while we were watching Dr Who (although not a likeness, you can tell from the expression it’s not really his cup of tea).

This is one of a series of chapter-header illustrations I’ve been working on for an adaptation of a favourite legend, but was also drawn with this week’s theme in mind.

Newsflash: Two days ago I mentioned your opportunity to buy a villain (and other shocking objects) until 28 August 2008. Artscaresyou has now added an index of auction items, which should make the process of choosing (and bidding!) much easier. Here is how to bid, and the reason for the auction (i.e. Paul Haines’ bowels liver).

 

Buy a Villain!

Paul Haines, Australian horror author, having been diagnosed with bowel cancer, had sections of his bowel removed and enduring six months worth of chemotherapy, has recently discovered he has spots on his liver. Paul has met this news by reloading his guns and is going to fight it with two other forms of chemotherapy for cancers like his, combined with a monoclonal antibody called Avastin. Avastin, however is not part of Medicare or the private health system’s funding at this stage. It costs $20,000 to do it. Money that he doesn’t have.

So the Aus Spec Fic community is raising money through donations and the ART THAT SCARES YOU auction, live at artscaresyou from 14-28 August. There are Jane Yolen poems, anthologies, early Shaun Tan originals, signed books and anthologies and more being added over the two weeks.

You even have the opportunity to get a Kathleen original! A very small villain, with villainous disguises (vampire, ninja, invisible man). Original pen and ink on 5.5×9cm card.

(The superhero paperdoll in the background (not part of the auction :) is from a printout of the self-portrait paperdoll from my first moleskine exchange contribution).

Bidding information is here.

WARNING: Some of the contributions and posts are dark, horrific (in the sense of genre) and/or visceral (in the sense of, well, viscera), so if you aren’t into that but want to help and get some art, read the post headers before you click through to particular offerings.

17/08/08 ETA:

Newsflash: Artscaresyou has now added an index of auction items, which should make the process of choosing (and bidding!) much easier.

 

Vanuatu: Illustration

I haven’t forgotten Vanuatu: I’ve been uploading the sketchbook (almost there!) and sorting through photos for a presentation at church. Here are the illustrations I did for SIL/VBT. The originals are still on Efate. (If you want to see details, click on the picture which will take you to the Flickr page, and then above the picture click on “all sizes”).

LW wanted a design for a notecard from SIL/VBT (Summer Institute of Linguistics & Vanuatu Baebol Translesen (sp?)). It was to be photocopied and/or printed in black and white, so I did a few designs (based on things lying around in Vila) and styles: nautilus shells, basket/bags, frangipani.

The middle nautilus shell (above) and the book and flowers (below) are my favourite:

I went further with the basket design for the other illustration job. These are my thumbnail sketches and the cover for “Histri blong yumi” (our history), a collection LW was putting together of stories by translators’ children. The picture couldn’t be very specific to one island or one family, so I ended up doing a basket (I can’t remember which island this design was from, but I think either Efate or Pentecost) and hibiscus and frangipani and shells and a book. I asked LW what sort of things western children being brought up on the islands would likely carry around with them and she said the girls usually had beads and her sons had always had their shanghais and spent hours wrapping the handles with colourful designs in tape.

 

Red Islands

My first entry for moly_x_32 was featured on Moleskinerie!

This is a cross-post from moly_x_portrait1. To see larger versions/detail, click on the image to go to its Flickr page and then click on “all sizes” above the picture.

My entry in Jan’s moleskine - Jan right side up and me up side down. I continued some of the patterns and words from her entry.

The full spread to-date.

My contribution to the mix & match sign-in page.

 

Illustration Friday: Sail

“In days gone by when the world was much younger, men harnessed the wind to work for mankind…”
– Alan Bell

Pen and ink illustration of a salt mill.

Comments and criticism are, as always, welcome.

I have completed the illustrations in the next sketchbook in our Portrait Party Moleskine Exchange and will post those soon. [ETA: now up].

 

Illustration Friday: Poof!

This week’s Illustration Friday theme became (indirectly) a 150 word short story written and illustrated on sticky notes and titled “The Entymologist”. This is a further working-up of the cover drawing. Comments and criticism are always welcome.

Here is a teaser of some other sketches. You never know, something may come of them*.

*That is not a promise.

 

Sleeping Beauties

Cross-post from moly_x_32:

Queenslander houses, with their high stumps, polished floors, deep verandas and wooden lace, are not designed to keep heat in. They are freezing in winter (they also have many of the features of a wildlife corridor, but that’s another story), and so instead of working at one of my desks (one of which is in the annex and so basically a cold-room) I did my first entry on the coffee table while sitting crosslegged on the floor in front of Inspector Rex.

Here is my coffee table and floor:

This is the full spread of my first entry, featuring bougainvillea, veranda railings and flowery prose:

And a detail of the pop-up (with real Queenslander architecture in the background - those are coloured glass windows looking over the back yard):

And some real bougainvillea from my parents’ yard:

All pictures are on Flickr, so you can click through and click on “all sizes” above the picture if you want a close-up.

ETA: It is posted and on its way to Robin. I didn’t take a photo, but the sign-in page is just the inside front cover - draw a little thing (I did a flower) and put your name and general location. I also put a flower postage stamp on the front cover, so if you have any stamps or stickers and this book comes through your hand, feel free to add them! And there are some moo cards in the back pocket for those what wants one.

 

Illustration Friday: Canned

Blame Aimee for the mermaid chunks, they were her idea:

This one is a sketch I did today on my lunch break of a wheelie bin and an old bell at the cathedral grounds near work: