Conflux9 – Speculative Art and Bookcovers, also a unicorn and a dragon

So, a few days before the Natcon in Canberra, the doctor tried to diagnose me with pneumonia. The x-rays came up clear, but I had several days of  alternately lying around only being stopped from climbing the walls because of not being able to breathe (I’m a terribly twitchy patient), and trying to frame art which usually makes me feverish if I didn’t start that way. I was recovering by the time I reached Canberra, but was still quite unwell and spent most of the convention propped up in corners conversing with people who stayed still long enough, and losing my breath whenever I got excited about something. Yet I still managed to Meet People, and Meet People Again, and Pass People in the Distance, and Plan Plans, and Have Plans Planned At Me (thanks all, quite sincerely), and create an impromptu conversation pit and find out that Lewis Morley has a laser, which is awesome and giving me Ideas. Also, to win two Ditmars (Artwork, for the Midnight & Moonshine cover, Fan Artist, and the EG Harvey Award for my piece “Once” in the art show), but fortunately all that required me to do on the day was negotiate the seating plan at the ceremony.

Here is the art hanging at the show – “Ex Libris” at the top and “Once” below. Both went to very good homes:

I took part in two panels – the first on speculative art and the second on whether cover art sells books. Both were very well attended (thanks everyone!).

Speculative Art: Shauna O’Meara, Les Petersen, Lewis Morley, Marilyn Pride and Mik Bennett

A lot of the conversation in this turned on the dynamics of paid work, and how that has or hasn’t changed – demands and expectations, the move to lower pay, faster turnaround and so forth. Whether it’s possible to make a living, and how, and whether you can choose and follow and succeed in and live off a single career path. But there is still a lot to be excited about (case in point: LEWIS HAS A LASER and the world cannot fail to be awesome and full of potential while that is the case), and I got to (rather more breathlessly than the topic merited) talk about the chances for people to create new things and put them out in the world (hello Kinds of Blue!) and the generosity of artists (the brilliant resource that is Gurney Journey). I know you can’t always eat ideas, and artists should be paid, but sometimes, brilliantly, serendipitously or due to industry or innovation or kindness the two coincide. And it’s art, and speculative art after all, we get paid to draw dragons, and while the first part is good and right and necessary, the second half is incredible and sometimes it’s healthy just to get excited about the possibilities. I may have begun hallucinating slightly at this point but everyone was very patient.

Does Cover Art Sell Books? Mark Gascoigne, Rowena Cory Daniells, Cat Sparks, Shauna O’Meara

Rowena led this off with a slide show on how she puts together a “resonance file” for her novels, even including photo shoots (much more professional than my lounge-room reference photos of people in cloaks and pyjamas), and Mark supported this approach with reference to authors who put together Pinterest pages of reference which helps a lot in bringing together ideas for covers. I do this a bit myself – it’s a handy way to corral links and ideas which people sent me and also to build up the feel of a world or idea (for some reason, with my own stories, it works better for me in reinforcing ideas after a story is already written). Mark also discussed cover trends and how it is necessary to be ahead but not too far ahead of the trend – that something too far ahead can confuse readers (and bookstore buyers). Also, thumbnailing (how a cover will appear online/in ebooks) and the “blokes in cloaks” trend.

Cat sprung the “what lets self-published/small press covers down” on me, so I talked about how useful an art director is as a mediator of ideas and personalities, and let loose on the trio of typography, dimensions and paper quality which are usually the biggest giveaway, and talked about a short story I once adored and how I looked out for ages for a novel by the same author, and when it came out it had the poorest imaginable cover and in spite of several attempts I couldn’t read the book. I also believe good typography can save bad art, but nothing can save bad typography.

We talked about the template approach which Tor.com uses for its short stories (uniform, professional layout and typography) which unifies and complements the gorgeous art they commission, and the potential for this to be used by small press and self-publishers to create a brand and allow them freedom in tailoring the art while still looking professional.

 

American Sketchbook – Part 1: World Fantasy and Toronto

General notes: These are sketches with (mostly) Pitt Artist Pens in a little Moleskine sketchbook. You can see larger versions by clicking on the pictures, which will take you through to their Flickr page. Update: Part 2 and Part 3 are now up.

Summary: I had an amazing time! It was a very busy holiday, bouncing from Brisbane to New York state, Toronto, Pennsylvania, New Jersey/New York, Colorado and California. Either I was sitting and eating a lot or walking and eating a lot. World Fantasy was my first overseas convention, Illuxcon my first art convention, everyone was wonderful, I met people I hadn’t really thought of as people, just names on consistently amazing books and art. My plans to eat my way across a continent, conduct hands-on research of how an art show operates, and visit the locations of What’s Up Doc were also successful.

 

Going Abroad – posts may be intermittent

In less than 12 hours I should be on the plane to America and Canada for the World Fantasy Convention and Illuxcon. I am… packed? And have art for the art show (with only one week’s notice – this may have broken some of the laws of physics but my local cutter-of-mat-board is a superhero).

 Also, I am veering from blind panic to anticipation, which is encouraging:

I will post if I can while I am travelling – if you follow me on Twitter or are friends on Facebook, I may also post quick updates and photos there. Until I return, however, the Daleks and Illustration Friday pictures must languish on the desktop.

And if you are at either World Fantasy or Illuxcon, please say hello! WFC is my first overseas convention and Illuxcon my first illustration convention, and I will know far fewer faces than usual.

 

Lady Churchill’s Dalek Wristlet, or: Continuum8

I went to Craftonomicon/Continuum8/Natcon in Melbourne! I survived! Daleks were drawn on people!

This counts as a version of the Dalek Game as it is for Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, and Kelly Link was one of the guests of honour, so there are connections (also chocolate-and-book-fests) all over the place.

Drawings of small witches / small drawings of witches were delivered to Jonathan Strahan!

Here is one:

Here is the other:

Light Touch Paper, Stand Clear was launched, with many wonderful stories. My story, “Kindling”, about a delivery boy and a waitress named Minke and the trouble with detailed maps, is also in it. ASIM 56 was also launched, which has an emergency Llama illustration in it, but the website has not yet been updated with it (it’s that new). There was cake.

Here are some people working at Brisbane airport:

Not many pictures were drawn because there was a box of free yarn, and Emma lent me a crochet hook (which I broke), so I made many octopi. Please to note the state of the crochet hook:

Several were worn as fascinators at the Maskobalo, and all have found good homes. I attempted to write the pattern down, but it is awaiting translation into contemporary notation.

Maskobalo!

And more people:

I have so much chocolate in my system right now. ANYWAY, moving right along, that is Kirstyn McDermott at the bottom left, looking so much like an evil queen that it was very disconcerting when she smiled. As she eventually did when it turned out the stand-ins for the delayed Ditmar trophies squeaked! There was a chorus of squeaking rubber octopi all evening long. Congratulations to all winners!

Mine were blue (she said immodestly, thereby implying she received more than one - thank you for the votes, and congratulations to all the nominees!).

Mostly I spent the weekend talking to all the wonderful people, forgetting where they live (as far as I know their natural habitat is hotel bars), drinking coffee and chocolate, planning Lovecraft readings and receiving many many books. I bought two, gave one away and came home with 20, so it is good I packed light, although light enough to bring all those back in onboard luggage is also light enough to have packed nothing suitable to wear to the awards, so packing needs finessing before I got to Toronto.

I had a book cover due this weekend and have just sent it off which is why I’m a little excited. Plus, residual convention high and two squeaky blue Ditmar octopi sitting on the bookcase staring down at me, and the trailing glory of long conversations and plans.

Calmer tomorrow!

 

Conflux 7 Sketches

Over the first weekend in October I went to Conflux 7 in Canberra. I had a wonderful time, talked to nearly everyone, went to book launches, drank coffee, was given a beautiful bouquet of flowers, banqueted like it was 1929 (I have no pictures of that, but there are quite a few around the traps), spent time with some of my favourite artists, writers and people, then spent several days afterwards simply recovering.

If I do a full con report, you won’t get any report at all, so here are the sketches (the cartoon ones are the sketches I draw and upload on Twitter and Facebook as I go). Clicking on pictures should give you an option to see them at a larger scale.

 

Worldcon – Aussiecon4

I don’t travel with a camera and I don’t write detailed convention reports. There are many excellent detailed reports out there, and I never do anything with the photos and always get the names wrong (sorry, Chris!). So here, instead, is my sketchbook. It is a very small sketchbook (there is a photo at the end for scale) but you can see the pictures larger by clicking on them to go to their Flickr page.

I’m back from Worldcon in Melbourne! I took two weeks off, which turned out well as I spent much of the first weekend at work, and most of the first Monday cutting matt boards, mounting pictures, matting them in cellophane and jettisoning non-essential plans. On the Tuesday, I flew to Melbourne and walked across the city centre to a hostel in an old convent. Its chief recommendation is its cat, Brother Francis (see below) and a common room with fireplace.

It rained and was very cold.  On Wednesday, I went into an unidentified doorway and found myself at the launch of the Melbourne Fringe Festival – Lord Mayors and Members of Parliament, free ale, comic hula-hoopers and Barry Morgan from Morgan’s World of Organs.

I also found a cafe with a wonderful mushroom, lentil and cinnamon dahl, medicinal teas (the owner believing the problems of the world can be relieved by the proper application of herbs) and sprouts growing in a yellow birdcage. That afternoon, some very kind Worldcon volunteers smuggled me in the back door under the noses of UN security so I could ask silly questions about hooks and pegboard. On Thursday the convention began. I spent most of the morning setting up in the art show, then emerged into the rest of the convention and was quickly overstimulated – So Many People To Talk To!!! I calmed down a bit by Friday, when I realised that getting to know everyone at the convention was a lost cause. Below, in the propeller beanie, is John Hertz, DUFF winner. On Friday I was able to see the 15 minute animation of Shaun Tan’s The Lost Thing.

It was my first art show. I spent a lot of time going back to check it out and talk with artists there. I also went to several bid parties in the evening and acquired the stickers on the right, below. I went to various food courts and restaurants and ate far too much with many old and new friends.

I did not get to nearly as many panels as I highlighted in the program, but I did go to most of the artist panels – Richard Harland led a panel with David Cornish and Shaun Tan which was a lot of fun because Richard was so fascinated by the process of illustration and David and Shaun kept commenting on each others’ techniques and approaches. I also went to a reading by Catherynne M Valente which was an unexpected delight (I think I was meant to be elsewhere. Also, for some reason I have written Aussiecon3 on that page when it should be Aussiecon4). Richard Harland and Jack Dann were meant to read one after the other, but instead did the voices in each others’ readings (and encouraged audience participation in angry mob scenes). There should be more theatrical readings at conventions! The Ditmars were awarded Friday night – congratulations to everyone I didn’t see, or mistook for someone else!

Here are some masquerade costumes, including a rather affectionate Cthulu. That evening, some brave souls and I ventured in to the Filking room and had a wonderful time – harps and ukeleles, guitars and fiddles, silly songs and serious ones.

The following day I contributed to public acts of harping (by carrying a harp and egging Ann on). There was more coffee and food, and a rehearsed reading of Norma K Hemmings 1950s play The Matriarchy of Renok (containing the immortal lines “Inferior male technology!” “Inferior female repairs!”). The Hugo awards were that night, and although it was all stately and formal (mostly) it was exciting to be there! More filking that night.

I spent most of Monday at the art show, doing paper work (I sold 10 of 13 pictures and won Most Humourous!), and had an extensively bar/restaurant oriented evening before collecting my bags and moving back to the hostel. On Tuesday, I found the Wunderkammer, caught up with (con-going) friends for breakfast and lunch, bought art books and comics and discovered we now had a government.

I sketched in the cold in Federation Square. There is a big screen in the square and sometimes they show the news, and sometimes Meerkat Manor and sometimes they turn the camera on the crowd. It is fun to watch peoples’ reactions (also, it enables very small selfportraits). I stopped at St Pauls Cathedral to listen to evensong, and then it was a long cold walk across town back to the hostel. I stopped in a Greek bakery and a mall on the way back.

I spent most of the non-con days walking far too far and eating far too much, and the evenings reading ghost stories in the hostel common room, so a fairly ideal holiday. Below left is another hostel guest taking some time with Brother Francis. On Wednesday I walked back to the galleries and saw the Tim Burton exhibition (details below) at ACMI, and the Masterpieces of Europe exhibition at the NGV.

As usual, I sketched people looking at paintings instead of the paintings. Then I walked back to the hostel, gathered my bags and trekked back to Southern Cross Station, took a bus to the airport and flew home.

Here are some sketchbooks with a yardstick and a good reference book for reference. I put different stickers on the front to tell them apart – the current book (open) is “No Door to Door Traders” which seems to puzzle people.

In conclusion, I had a wonderful time, miss everyone already, have a handful of anthologies to write submissions for and have lengthened the list of people whose work I hope to illustrate one day.

 

Conflux 6, Canberra

And so Conflux is over, the last of my conventions for the year, and I am back in Brisbane with a few extra books and… a lot of mat board, for some reason.

Guests of honour this year were Jim Minz of Baen Books, Marc McBride (illustrator of Deltora Quest) and Emily Rodda (author of Deltora Quest).

There were some external complicating factors, but I had a great time and got to catch up with old friends, make new ones and transact some bookplate business (of which more once the file is signed and sent).

I ended up being on three panels – Short Story Writing (the one I was meant to be on) with Cat Sparks, Simon Petrie, Mark Farrugia and Yaritji Green, Dealing with Writer’s Block (as an ersatz-Karen Herkes) with Jack Dann and Richard Harland, and one of two extras on Australian Comic Writers and Artists with Mik Bennet, Liz Kenneally and Jon Sommariva. The differing dynamics of panels are fascinating, but I learned a lot on all of them (and discovered that the ultimate power of being a panellist lies in people taking your book recommendations seriously). Also, I have a dream panel which would put artists, authors and publishers together talking about book covers.

And of course we dressed up. It was 1880s style for the banquet, although in my case that was a tiered green cotton skirt, a sofa cushion and my year 12 formal dress (!) with a number of safety pins. The masquerade was a prelude to a concert, so we didn’t have many attendees, but I was there (with the heavy black plastic frames from a pair of 3d glasses, a cute white blouse half-unbuttoned and a Superman t-shirt) and in one of those unexpected twists of the universe shared the dancing prize with Richard Harland (just be careful mixing bouncy soles with Footloose).

Outside of the convention, I managed to drive my older sister’s car rather hi-tech car (you know that scene from Independence Day – “Oops – oops? What do you mean oops?!”). I caught up with an old friend I haven’t seen for 9 years, and today I went to Floriade with my older sister and nephews before flying back to Brisbane.

 

Splendour Falls

I was on a panel about short story writing yesterday, and two ASIM editors mentioned issue #41 of Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine , but I had only received issue #40 recently and didn’t register until after the panel that #41 was out and for sale in the dealers’ room.

My story “The Splendour Falls” is in this issue It’s about wishes and dreams, and getting them and giving them up, and possums and housemates and Kismet and literary references from Shakespeare to A. A. Milne. 

Conflux is going very well and we ate a great deal at the historical banquet last night (1883 Louisana, this year) and I know photos were taken of costumes, so I am sure they will show up the internet at some point.

 

Continuum 5 and Ekka 2009 sketches

Request: If you recognise someone in one of the Convention sketches and I haven’t labelled them, would you please let me know? If you want to see more detail, clicking on a picture will take you through to its Flickr page, then you can click on “all sizes” above it.

On Wednesday last week I went to the Ekka (Brisbane Exhibition = Queensland Show = State Fair), and on Friday morning Aimee and I flew to Melbourne for Continuum 5 (had to get up incredibly early – I booked my tickets when I lived closer to the airport).

The loop train which runs to the exhibition grounds was a steam train! Also, I love the boat at top left – it is always moored near the city botanic gardens and looks like the wooden shoe from ‘Winkun, Blinkun & Nod’.

They are redeveloping the RNA Showgrounds and this is the chairlift’s last year. I took it and it was a wonderful slow ride over the halls and the stalls and the rides.

Sheepdogs are difficult to draw. If you blink, they are suddenly in the same pose but a different position.

Lots of dogs! I almost lost my heart to a greyhound. The tiny little dog at the bottom right is from Pompeii. That is Aimee getting stuck into the icecream.

The Pompeii exhibition at the Melbourne Museum had a number of the plaster casts. The most affecting part of the exhibition for me was looking at a display on the history of the archaeology, and seeing drawings of Victorian (era, not state) children looking at some of the same casts we had just seen. We also saw Phar Lap and the mechanical chicken, from Cole’s Book Arcade, which – according to the caption – “boasted 5 mechanical hens to enliven the shopping experience”. Cole seems to have been the Willy Wonka of bookstores.

If you want to sketch fast, sketch fencers! These are mid-battle-between-airships. Chelsea Quinn Yarbro was the international guest of honour. Those backs at the bottom right belong to Marilyn Pride and Lewis Morley.

Maskobalo! I am still twinging from dancing all night (except, obviously, for when I was sketching). I wore the dress I wore to the Regency banquet in Canberra a few years ago and will post photos when I track some down.

Juggling. Too early. Too much chasing things across the floor. Lucy Sussex has edited a book of Australian travellers’ diaries which should be out later this year and sounds fascinating. Jack Dann set up the direction of the panel to allow Gillian Polack to lower the tone of the panel on history :) Later, Gillian, Aimee, Julia and I saw an exhibition of Regency dresses at the art gallery. Most were of their era, but Aimee swooned when Julia pointed out Colin Firth’s costume from the BBC P&P.

Rachel Holkner was c0-chair of the convention. On Monday, Aimee went to see a Star Wars exhibition. I went to St Kilda by tram, then back to the city.

There was a Dali exhibition at one of the galleries, but I didn’t go in. I looked at the collections and found the little Madonna Joan Lindsay wrote about her husband (who was director) acquiring under the Felton Bequest. There were some excellent exhibitions on at the State Library (also, a churros cafe nearby!) including Changing Faces of Victoria, where I saw Ned Kelly’s armour, and Independent Type which had an incredible array not only of Australian books and early editions and paintings of authors, but manuscripts: Peter Carey, Manning Clarke, Ned Kelly, dozens of others, and even one of the “original” Ern Malley poems with the telegram indicating it might be a hoax.

 

Discontinuum

Continuum 5 is over. Talked out, overfed, underrested – all as it should be. I have several pages of sketches to scan and upload when I get home (which is late tomorrow, so sometime after that) and will locate photos as other people post them (I’m not traveling with a camera lately).

I completely forgot that I’d forwarded Emilly links to some of my older sketches (posted for Illustration Friday back in May last year) and so was pleasantly surprised to see them in the con program book!

Also, as Gillian mentioned, I am working up ideas for a small-scale project for her (elegant but with whimsy, boldness and feminity, which will be fun).