March!

Still alive! Still here! Still… a bit feverish, and meeting a deadline (like an adult), but Things to talk about once that is done, like a lovely screenprinting workshop with Milli & Fink, and more Eclipse and Lair pictures, &c…

In the meantime – there’s a new header (above) and a glimpse below of the sort of things that show up on my friends’ phones when they leave me alone with the flu and a project (the messages start at the bottom of the strip and work up, and the marginalised unicorn is a response to a comment by Gillian Polack on some marginal unicorns).

Also, it has been raining and raining and raining for months, and we could either have dry towels or clean towels, but never both at the same time (said the Red Queen) so now I have bought a dryer and am in love with the 21st century all over again.

 

 

I’m home!

I’m back! And scanning the very fat sketchbook.

Here is the very fat sketchbook:

 

 

It is not a very large sketchbook – people kept being surprised it wasn’t double or more. But it has expanded (like me, because I did successfully achieve my aim of eating my way across a continent).

After I show you the sketchbook, and shout “Sandy! Halloween! World Fantasy! Folk circles! Artists! Broadway! Diners! Pirates!”, there will be news and Daleks and Illustration Fridays again. In the meantime, Midnight and Moonshine is being launched this Friday night at Avid Reader in Brisbane, and you should come along!

Oh, and also: here is a new Nina Kiriki Hoffman short story at Eclipse Online (with an illustration by me, she says modestly): “Firebugs“

 

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.

 

Illustration Friday: Fuel

Pen and ink, with a background of old paper added in, for Illustration Friday. My little sister and I gathering firewood while camping (I am the unstylish child in front, and the frilly things around my ankles are denim sock-protectors, although we never called them that – “ratwalls” was the term at our house, while our neighbours called them “dollies’ petticoats”).  My mother always refused to go camping, saying it was primitive enough at the house.

 When I was little, my mother would sometimes find photos in old National Geographics of ancient rural women standing next to woodpiles as large as their houses, and she would tell my father, “There! That is what I want! Please don’t just chop two days’ worth of logs before you go away for a week!”

The woodpile was at the back of the house yard, under the silky oaks and behind the tall narrow white wooden building surrounded by four-o-clocks which was the outdoor toilet. There was a cradle of starpickets to hold logs while the chainsaw was used, a huge stump which was the chopping block proper, an axe, a mallet and wedges for splitting timber down to a size that would fit in our stove. The cut wood sat in a box on the front doorstep, beside a bucket of kindling.

I remember waking up early in the mornings and hearing my father rattling the stove and emptying the ash box before setting and lighting the fire. He would sit with it and have a cup of tea with a cat on his knee, or smoke his pipe, and wake up before bringing tea up to the rest of the family, and threatening to let the dogs into the bedrooms if we did not open our eyes.

We had to adjust the temperature by opening and closing doors, sliding plates and spinning wheels. Pans dried on the rack above the stove, along with a tin of eggshells waiting to be dried and crushed into calcium supplement for the chooks. Behind the stove was a window, and pardelots nesting in the warmth of the eaves would flutter down and peck bugs (or, my father insisted, ground glass) off the window. Once a cat recovering on my father’s knee (after being rescued from a fall into the watertank) launched itself at the birds and landed four-square on the stovetop.

And from time to time the copper hot-water box in the back of the stove would explode and flood the kitchen with sooty water, in which case my mother, on entering the room, would turn around and leave again until all had been put to rights.

 

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.

 

Dalek in the Willows

This instalment of the Dalek Game is for Kenneth Grahame’s Wind in the Willows.

I love that book best with E. H. Shepard’s delicate illustrations – so much gentler and thrilling than later, harsher images, and more in keeping with the lovely, little, wild adventures of that book.

But of all things I love about Wind in the Willows – the canary-yellow caravan and the fight with the weasels and Mole’s homecoming – I love Ratty’s fabulous luncheon basket best. There is something about the English literary picnic – the butter in the teapot in Three Men in a Boat, to say nothing of the Dog, the fresh cake and boiled eggs and ginger beer of The Famous Five, and the Rat’s “fat, wicker luncheon basket” with “cold chicken inside it, coldtonguecoldhamcoldbeefpickledgherkinssaladfrenchrolls-cresssandwichespottedmeatgingerbeerlemonadesodawater -”.

In that spirit, since last Saturday morning was so fine, and I didn’t want to reach the end of the day and have spent it all at the computer, I called up Shayna, Caitie and Karissa. We boiled eggs and packed a basket with cold ham, cheese, cornbread, almonds, chocolate-chip cookies, tomatoes, breadrolls, ginger beer, butter, salt and all good things and went to the botanic gardens, where we lay around on a blanket beside the lake, fending off ibises, ducks, magpies, honeyeaters and water hens, throwing strawberries at water dragons and listening to classic rock on a battery powered radio.

In other news there is a new Delia Sherman novel on the way, with the cover art which threatened to make me spend such a fine day indoors: Freedom Maze - I will post some process sketches soon. I have come home today for French toast and bacon, coffee and reading An Old English Grammar and David Crystal’s The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Language to my father, while my mother comes in at intervals to announce that she has looked up the meaning of “atavistic”, or discuss an article on the art of translating from Turkish (family training is military history/nursing/accounting/arts/law/journalism, we just happen to be fans of linguistics).

 

What I did on my holidays – part 2

This is the second half of my Sydney sketches. The first half is here: What I did on my holidays – part 1

On Sunday morning, I sat outside a cafe near my hostel and drew a terrace house (turned hostel) across the street. The cafe owners asked me to do a mural based on it, but I explained I was leaving soon.

I walked to the city, and updated Facebook and Twitter with this sketch – “The motto of all the mongoose family is ‘Run and find out!’”

I went to St Andrews Cathedral and St Phillips on Sunday. I love old hymns, but can’t get used to organ music – it sounds to me like a remixed traffic jam. I went to the Zine Fest at the MCA and drew hats.

I also went to a Zia Pina in the Rocks for calzone. I love Zia Pina because they serve lemonade in glass beer mugs. I am easily pleased.

The next day, I drew outside the cafe which had asked me to do a mural. They gave me a permanent marker and I drew on their wall. We made arrangements involving coffee and pain au chocolat.

Oh, look! An actual photo of me:

After that, I walked to Newtown by degrees. Here is one of them:

It was sunny and windy. I walked and ate cinnamon waffles and shopped and tried on buttons for size (and was not subtle enough, as the button lady suggested that another variety would be a better size for a Coraline costume). I met Guan and Karen and Ben and Astrid again at Berkelouw Books in Newtown, then walked back across town to Berkelouws on Oxford Street, where I sat for a while to recover. Like this:

Then I went back to my dorm at the hostel for the last time, and gave possibly misguided advice to the Germans who wanted to know about the happening suburbs in Brisbane.

On the last day I went into town again, and was chased by a sweeper in Hyde Park.

I stared at books and bought a pair of shoes (that’s two for the year! Another resolution to cross off the list!) and felt very decadent asking to have them delivered to my house. They have not yet arrived.

And that was the end of Sydney.

 

What I did on my holidays – Part 1

I will now relate the events of my trip to Sydney, with accompanying sketches and the quick cartoons which served as my Twitter and Facebook updates. You can see the sketchbook images at a larger size by clicking on a picture. That will take you to its Flickr page which will give you an option to see it at a larger size. The cartoons are in odd lights because I took them (usually on location) with my phone.

First, to start the sketchbook, are some drawings from the “Art in the 21st Century” exhibition at the Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane. It was an exhibit full of fun – slides from the top floor to the bottom, rooms full of balloons and finches, tables of Lego spires, walls of wishes. At their best, modern art galleries are like carnivals, with hundreds of people looking and making and wondering and having fun.

I went down to Sydney for a week, flying mid-week and staying in a backpacker hostel in Kings Cross because that way I can spend more money on coffee and avoid the crushing loneliness that inhabits hotel rooms.

Here I am waiting for the train to the airport in Brisbane. You may recognise the station from such movies as Daybreakers.

Mostly I walked and drank coffee. Sometimes I sat in bookstores and recovered from walking, and drank coffee. The weather was beautiful. I drew birds, and was not attacked by seagulls.

I went on my usual personal literary tour – the gardens and Pitt Street for An Older Kind of Magic, and the Rocks for Playing Beattie Bow. I meandered through Darlinghurst and started a story about maps and recursiveness (I finished the first draft today).

I went to the gallery, where it all became very recursive, with sketchers sketching sketchers of sketches.

The Archibald Prize exhibition was on, and I went for the first time ever.

I sat in the Domain and watched people sleep on the grass between sports fields, then went to the State Library for more portraits, and then walked through the Rocks and up to Observatory Hill for the Salon de Refusés (the pictures which didn’t get into the Archibald finals). I saw Nick Stathopoulos’ luminous painting of Shaun Tan.

I went to two Sydney Writers Festival sessions with Karen,  saw Pirates of the Caribbean 4 with her and other friends, and was disappointed that it only contained 1 line from the book which ostensibly suggested it. I descended gracefully from bunkbeds without waking German backpackers.

I went to Carriageworks on the Saturday for the markets and drew dogs until Guan and Bec and Karen and Astrid arrived. I carried proteas and marshmallows for Bec, and met Emma Kidd at her stall at the Finders Keepers markets!

I spent a lovely afternoon with Karen and Ben and Astrid. Ben kept comparing Astrid’s intelligence levels to various animals, trying to get an indication of her current developmental level.

On Saturday night I went to Bec’s for a fundraising dinner for Hope Street with Bec, Rachel, Karen, Ben, Astrid, Bec’s mother, George, Elsie, Lachlyn and Tamara. I think that was everyone. Dinner was delicious – chicken and couscous and butterscotch sauce and marshmallows and marinated figs.

To be continued… Part 2

 

Illustration Friday: Bicycle

Since the royal wedding is all-pervading.

In other news: Why yes, I am going to watch the wedding, with (I am promised) trifle and our own running commentary since certain satirical coverages have been cancelled. My computer has been troublesome and the man at the store (for whom it worked perfectly) was astonished at its age (I am given to understand it now has retro chic). I stalked an old French man at the Borders closing sale until he admitted he was not buying the book I wanted – “It is just – the ’20s, I love them… but – too late!” he said, and I answered, “Cheer up, we’re almost there again.” I did let him finish looking through the book. I am not completely heartless. The rain and the flood commission continue. My sister brought some spot-on-CWA-perfect coconut cake home from work. I also have a picture of an echidna on an exercise bicycle but must reserve it for the opportune moment.

 

Future Imperfect: art for Swancon

The Future Imperfect art show is being held at Swancon in Perth over Easter. I cannot go (one day I will make it to Western Australia!) but I am putting 4 pieces in the exhibition. The catalogue is not yet out (I will link to it when it is published), but I have seen it and the art is all large and vibrant – except for my tiny monochrome pieces!

These are all in pen and ink and measure approximately 11 x 11cm (just over 4″x4″).

The text for the picture above reads, “A personal listening advice – portable and adjustable…” and was inspired by articles (new and old) on the Death of the Book. The writing in the top right corner is a reference to “Vere Thornleigh’s Inheritance” by AM Hopkinson (I haven’t read it, but it is serialised in Cassell’s Family Magazine, which is a favourite reference of mine). Those are my eyebrows, and the roses I bought on sale at at the supermarket.

The mechanical magpie is based on iPods and the Emperor’s Nightingale, and a small tin goose Christmas ornament I have. The pearls were my Australian grandmother’s, as was the silver box their case is based on, and the key which has become the winder on the bird. The image behind is an Australian reimagining of some Chinese silk embroideries an ambassador gave her on a cruise.

A rather obvious joke, perhaps, in this one. The text reads, “They will send text messages when they should be studying…” The art is with apologies to the illustrator of Sophie Knightley’s story “The Mascot of Merlin House” which appeared in The Violet Book for Girls edited by Mrs Herbert Strang. The internet says it was first published in 1914. My extraordinarily battered copy was “presented to [Lollie? Sallie?] Harris for attendance” at Wyena State School at “Xmas 1914″. The patterned glass is in all my favourite windows.

The style of this one, like the “Text messages” picture, is intended to hark back to the girls’ adventure books. The nurse is based on a picture of my great-great aunt? grandmother? who looks both startlingly like me and like Mrs Gulch, although with more lace. I’ve toned this lady down a bit. The name of this aircraft is the Victoire, because the first plane in the Australian Aerial Medical Service (later, the Royal Flying Doctor Service) was the Victory. My family never had to use the service, but I did a substantial portion of my schooling over a Flying Doctor radio.