MX42 / Illustration Friday: Frozen

Jadis of Charn, the White Witch of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. I’ve defined the nose a bit more since scanning this. Also, I’ve learned one lesson from my painting attempts – I can’t expect to work at the same scale and level of detail as I can in pen and ink!

This is for both Illustration Friday and for Lady Orlando’s “Witches” themed moleskine for the 42nd Moleskine Exchange http://moleskinex42.blogspot.com/.

In other news, here are three discarded designs for a bookplate (the final will be revealed once it is finalised):

Scratchboard:

Pen and ink:

Scratchboard again (with garish colours for kicks):

 

Moleskine Exchange: Mice, for Jenn

Mice wouldn’t be my first choice as pets. I have lived through mouse plagues when cars went off the roads because of sheets of mice. They ate through wood and Tupperware and books and if you went out to the shed, they would be running around the bottoms of drums. The cats pretended they couldn’t see them, the local boys earned pocket money building better mouse traps and little old ladies devised novel ways of reusing mousepaper (like fly paper, only for mice).

But even so, I always liked sitting quietly on the stairs of the veranda and watching them dart out, all quick and dark-furred with their tiny delicate ears and fiercely curious faces. There was an old piano on the veranda, and the mice inside used to slide up and down the strings, sounding tiny notes.

The quote at the top is from Rose Fyleman’s poem, “I think mice are rather nice”. The music is from one of my favourite films.

For Jenn’s moleskine for the 42nd Moleskine Exchange http://moleskinex42.blogspot.com/. This is part of the international moleskine exchange (http://www.flickr.com/groups/moly_x).

 

Sketchbooks circulating

I’ve finished uploading my last sketchbook! It isn’t all goblins, either. There’s a chair in there, and some Daleks as well (of varying degrees of authenticity). There are NaNoWriMers and people sitting under jacaranda trees and my ex-car (not dead, just pining for the… no, bad car pun!). The whole thing is here: Sketchbook 08/08 – 03/09.

In other (but no less drawn out) news, this is my contribution to Lynne’s moleskine for the 42nd moleskine exchange. Her theme was “superstitions” and this is a combination of “be careful what you wish for”, “don’t tell people what you wish or you won’t get it” and the fairytale of the 7 ravens. Brush and sepia ink and a touch of watercolour. Could have been better planned.

 

Suspicious Characters – the portrait party exchange continues

I missed the movies last night, so went home and went for a walk/run which was wonderful, and the reason I am wearing a singlet and have my hair all over the place in the picture below.

This is my contribution to Remi’s moleskine for the first portrait party exchange (http://mxportraits1.blogspot.com/). This is part of the international moleskine exchange (http://www.flickr.com/groups/moly_x/).

It is sepia ink executed with a dip pen and crow quill nib, which I love, although I don’t usually carry them around the country with me. I kept breaking old nibs when cleaning them or drying them on my skirt, so bought new nibs and a holder on Thursday and flew to Canberra. They do, however, make impressive props when I demonstrate how many pens I carry in my handbag.

Here is the sign-in page to date with my contribution:

As usual, you can see more detail by clicking on the picture which will take you to its Flickr page, and then clicking on “all sizes” just above it.

 

Impossible Tree

My contribution to Ste’s moleskine for the 42nd moleskine exchange, in which I sort-of-failed-to-reread-the-theme immediately prior to leaping into the picture. It was meant to be “something from your imagination that isn’t based on anything in the real, physical world”, so I’ve called it “Impossible Tree”.

 

Little Foxes

This is a cross-post for the Moly-X Portrait Exchange 1:

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My entry for Emma’s moleskine, with a dip pen and ink. Whenever I think of Emma’s art I think of little foxes, but these ones have escaped. (That’s me on the cover of the book). You can see a close-up here.

The new blog header is taken from this entry, coloured in photoshop.

 

My handbag bends the laws of physics

Cross-posted from the Moleskine Exchange 42 blog.

My contribution to Anna-Denise’s “What’s in my bag” moleskine. This is a representative example, not a comprehensive survey (also, not entirely to scale), but I would like to state – for the record – that yes, I do currently have a sonic screwdriver and a furnishing needle in my handbag :). The “Open other end” label is the sticker on the back of my every-day moleskine (I put stickers on them to tell them apart, but I try to scavenge them wherever possible – this was from Reverse Garbage, an offcut store). One of the stamps is from the envelope the book came in. The Melbourne stamp was floating loose in my wallet – I keep them in there in case I am filled with an uncontrollable urge to send postcards, but for the record am from Brisbane, although I have been to Melbourne.

The flickr page is here and you can see it larger here.

I was worried I wasn’t going to be able to get sketchbooks and other projects done, so I took this one to work yesterday and worked on it in Starbucks on the way to work and for a few minutes after I finished. I don’t have a pencil case in my handbag at the moment, so it was drawn straight on with markers which was probably a character-building experience.

 

Oh, Western Wind

Cross-posted from the blog for the 42nd Moleskine Exchange. To see larger images, click on the picture to go to its Flickr page and then click on “all sizes” above the image.

Here is my contribution to Chensio’s moleskine (at last!). I ran with the idea of wind, because it certainly looked like a windy day on those first few pages. I swept the end of the circle of dancers up into the air, added a scattering of numbers blowing apart, a flowing scarf, autumn leaves, a flock of nannies (my favourite part :) and The Goose Girl (from the fairy tale), along with scraps of poems.

Here is a close-up of the nannies:

And here is a snippet from the all-in work on the back of the pages:

 

Portrait Party Moleskine continues

I’m back on deck and catching up with moleskine exchanges. This is cross-posted from the Moly_X Portrait Exchange One. You can click on the picture to see it larger on its Flickr page.

Vast Expanses of Blue

My contribution to the sign in page for Marina’s moly – I can dance, but I can’t dance well!

Self portrait executed in broad strokes (and illustrating the dangers of using flash photographs for reference).

When doodling gets out of hand.

 

Vanuatu: Sketchbook

My poor maltreated Moleskine. It is held together with duct tape now (on the inside, so I can’t pass it off as industrial punk) and has been soggy and dirty and flecked with volcanic ash and had a near miss in the Port in Port Vila.

But it survived and the picture pages are scanned and up as a set on Flickr: Vanuatu 2008 Moleskine.

This sketchbook has fewer receipts and brochures and tickets than the American one (although there are one or two pages of receipts and boarding passes I didn’t scan in), and is better scanned and – in the drawings at least – more colourful due to my acquisition of more markers. My handbag was (is) full of markers (and pencils, erasers, sharpeners, gel pens, blending pencils, etc).

But next time I will carry the book in a ziplock bag. Just in case.

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Now, so far I only have one question to answer about Vanuatu, and my answer is: no, to the best of my knowledge there are no longer cannibals in Vanuatu; that doesn’t stop the tourist trade trading on that piece of history; and from time to time startled linguists have been ’discovered’ by anthropologists searching for cannibal tribes.

Any other questions?