The Large Amorphous Manuscript

Occasionally, I weep elsewhere about the Large Amorphous Manuscript. It is not a novel. It is, perhaps, an outline that is twice the length of what the final story should be. It is a tangled mass of threads, the back of an embroidery, knotted and tangled. And yet there are some shining colours there, in a dozen sentences of describing trees one will stand waving its branches. It is a dense, rough sketch which must be refined, have its composition straightened out, details lost and added, lines inked darker or faded out, textures flooded in.

Illustration is easier.

Sometimes I draw plot points.

 

“Kindling” in Year’s Best Australian Fantasy and Horror

I’ve had a few weeks of coming over all writerly, and some of the latest news is that my short steampunk-ish story “Kindling” (which I wrote about here and here), originally published in Light Touch Paper, Stand Clear from Peggy Bright Books, has been selected to appear in the Year’s Best Australian Fantasy and Horror 2012, to be published by Ticonderoga Publications in June 2013. So I’m celebrating it with this little steampunk fairytale picture.

In quite a cool little twist, I also illustrated the original publication of Faith Mudge’s “Oracle’s Tower”, and although the art won’t be in this book, I will exercise the illustrator’s prerogative to bask in a little reflected glory.

It is part of the following amazing line-up (with beautiful cover art by Yaroslav Gerzhedovich):

• Joanne Anderton, “Tied To The Waste”, Tales Of Talisman
• R.J. Astruc, “The Cook of Pearl House, A Malay Sailor by the Name of Maurice”, Dark Edifice 2
• Lee Battersby, “Comfort Ghost”, Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine 56
• Alan Baxter, “Tiny Lives”, Daily Science Fiction
• Jenny Blackford, “A Moveable Feast”, Bloodstones
• Eddy Burger, “The Witch’s Wardrobe”, Dark Edifice 3
• Isobelle Carmody, “The Stone Witch”, Under My Hat
• Jay Caselberg, “Beautiful”, The Washington Pastime
• Stephen Dedman, “The Fall”, Exotic Gothic 4, Postscripts
• Felicity Dowker, “To Wish On A Clockwork Heart”, Bread And Circuses
• Terry Dowling, “Nightside Eye”, Cemetary Dance
• Tom Dullemond, “Population Management”, Danse Macabre
• Thoraiya Dyer, “Sleeping Beauty”, Epilogue
• Will Elliot, “Hungry Man”, The One That Got Away
  
• Jason Fischer, “Pigroot Flat”, Midnight Echo 8
• Dirk Flinthart, “The Bull In Winter”, Bloodstones
• Lisa L. Hannett, “Sweet Subtleties”, Clarkesworld
• Lisa L. Hannett & Angela Slatter, “Bella Beaufort Goes To War”, Midnight And Moonshine
• Narrelle M. Harris, “Stalemate”, Showtime
• Kathleen Jennings, “Kindling”, Light Touch Paper, Stand Clear
• Gary Kemble, “Saturday Night at the Milkbar”, Midnight Echo 7
• Margo Lanagan, “Crow And Caper, Caper And Crow”, Under My Hat
• Martin Livings, “You Ain’t Heard Nothing Yet”, Living With The Dead
• Penelope Love, “A Small Bad Thing”, Bloodstones
• Andrew J. McKiernan, “Torch Song”, From Stage Door Shadows
• Karen Maric, “Anvil Of The Sun”, Aurealis
• Faith Mudge, “Oracle’s Tower”, To Spin A Darker Stair
• Nicole Murphy, “The Black Star Killer”, Damnation And Dames
• Jason Nahrung, “The Last Boat To Eden”, Surviving The End
• Tansy Rayner Roberts, “What Books Survive”, Epilogue
• Angela Slatter, “Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean”, This Is Horror Webzine
• Anna Tambour, “The Dog Who Wished He’d Never Heard Of Lovecraft”, Lovecraft Zine
• Kyla Ward, “The Loquacious Cadaver”, The Lion And The Aardvark: Aesop’s Modern Fables
• Kaaron Warren, “River Of Memory”, Zombies Vs. Robots

 

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.

 

A Stranger in Olondria – cover art

I am back from Conflux, although still recovering from the flu which left me spending most of the convention propped up in corners trying to catch my breath. While I collate my convention thoughts, here is an overdue cover process post!

Last year, Small Beer Press asked whether I would be interested in trying a more ‘painterly’ style, for the decadent, festal beauty of the city of Sofia Samatar’s novel A Stranger in Olondria.

Here are the initial thumbnail sketches (you should be able to see a larger version by clicking through to the Flickr page). 

Here is a little colour study from when I was still working out what I was doing – but in the end we went with the larger image from the right-hand page of the sketch above.

Here is the layout sketch, to make sure there was room for text.

The jacket is based slightly on a wonderfully ornate teal cutaway number my housemate bought at a second-hand shop in England, and I mocked-up the skyline on the dining table to make sure domes didn’t cut through walls, etc.

I had not, at this stage, begun the cover for Midnight and Moonshine – that cover happened because certain people got wind of the style we were trying for Olondria – so there was an amount of trial and error in this. I really prefer to have a single final piece of line art so that at the end I can hold something real that exists in the world. In this case, however, I was nervous and drew four separate pencil layers: figure, railing, city and sky.

Here is the linework put together with the colour flats under it. They make it easier to select, colour and change the areas of the picture.

Here is the full wrap-around art for the cover. The most pineapply of the rooftops is based on a roof of Queensland’s Parliament House, and I now do a double-take when I walk past and see it.

And here it is in the wild, seen in Pulp Fiction bookstore in Brisbane today!

 

Illustration Friday: Egg

The morning I went on holidays, I received a new illustration job. So that took care of what to read on the flight, and I spent much of the downtime between weddings, touring Melbourne with my mother, driving to the ACT and hanging out in Canberra working on sketches and making some test cut-paper swatches. So this week’s Illustration Friday picture was made at my older sister’s dining table with note paper and a box cutter. But it was (a) done and (b) posted! Several Illustration Friday pictures of late have only made it halfway.

Also: here is the latest cover o’ mine to be announced! Catherynne Valente’s The Bread We Eat in Dreams, from Subterranean Press. A process post will come in due course.

 

Dragons reading books

This was a cut-paper design for the birth of two friends’ son – both a small piece of art (although larger than some I have made, as I was trying out some heavier paper) and printable as a book plate. Also practice in boys and dragons.

I am not fond of many particular dragons (they are often austere and irritating, or unduly domesticated), but I have a fondness for the species due primarily to poor Eustace crying to the moon, the glorious Dawn Treader itself, and Chrysophylax prancing along carrying baggage, which suggests that the dragons I love are dragons as imagined Pauline Baynes (who of course illustrated both Lewis’ The Voyage of the Dawn Treader and Tolkien’s Farmer Giles of Ham).

The next dragon is in pen and coloured inks. It was for my nephew’s 13th birthday – he requested “money and an awesome card”, so I broke out the gold paint and drew a dragon, as is traditional for us. When he was very small he used to sit through repeated readings of Margaret Hodge’s Saint George and the Dragon (with Trina Schart Hyman’s lovely illustrations).

 

Illustration Friday: Wool

Another cut-paper illustration, to experiment more with shadows and try out some new paper (80gsm – some recent pictures were on something closer to cardboard). It was easier to cut, although not of course as robust.

I’m working on more pen-and-ink illustrations at the moment, too, it isn’t all silhouettes! But I have some possible projects in mind for the cut-paper, and Illustration Friday is always an excellent opportunity to practice techniques and ideas – how much detail and movement can be put into a small image, whether I can draw sheep…

 

A Victorian Wedding Invitation

Last year my cousin Jess asked me to draw her save-the-date and wedding invitation, featuring some of their livestock. I was delighted to, and obliged with several pages of pencil sketches and chickens:

The save-the-date was drawn in pen-and-ink and had a very simple colour-scheme!

I don’t do typography, but I hand lettered these (I do enjoy hand lettering!).

For the invitation, Jess and Dave knew they wanted the dancing couple from the early sketches, but with a pink and purple colour scheme. I sent two variations, with my favourite at the top (some details removed).

There was a slight difference of opinion between the interested parties (more precision was indeed required, as the groom valued colouring between the lines and blue jeans), so when my cousins visited in January, we sat down and finalised the invitation below (some details removed):

It may also make appearances on other wedding accessories, but those are yet to appear…

Edit 6 April 2013: The linework from the invitation was printed on the stubby coolers for the wedding.

 

Illustration Friday: Storm

A tiny (5cmx6cm) cut-paper illustration for Illustration Friday. This is (as so often) a test patch for several other projects, one of which is working on capturing the shadows cast by the paper rather than dropping them in digitally. I do not, however, have a modern functional camera, so this is taken with my phone, and assorted living room lights, and the picture raised by a piece of kneadable eraser. I may need to call on some photographer friends to show me the way. Possibly if I cut the picture to a larger scale, getting a decent resolution for print would not be an issue.

 

Eclipse Online illustrations – December 2012

With another two brilliant stories to appear in Eclipse Online in December 2012, Jonathan Strahan and I ironed out some of the formatting for the illustrations. I had been leaning towards the all-over texture with which I was comfortable, but because the layout of the site was to be quite simple, Jonathan preferred a self-framing image, which made sense!

The first story was Christopher Barzak’s restrained “Invisible Men”, an alternate perspective of a classic. It never did what I expected it to, and reminded me more of Wyndham than Wells, using one of my favourite styles of narrator – tangentially involved, observant, apart.

The first image was a darling of mine – a combination of linework and solid texture, with one scan of the endpapers of my great-grandfather’s autograph album, and another of mysterious stains.

Below it (above) is the final, which I do like  (although it is quirkier than the first) because I love drawing floating things. I should reread the story and see if the change of illustration style changes how I read it. I’m looking at the picture again now as I edit this post, and it amuses me.

The next story was Lavie Tidhar’s fragmenting, decades-encompassing social media biography “The Memcordist”. I had just met Lavie at World Fantasy (he won a World Fantasy Award for his novel Osama). It was at this late stage I realised Jonathan had tricked me into illustrating science fiction!

I tried to avoid the inevitable by dwelling on the memory of basil – my housemate had bought some and so I was able to directly reference it, and then eat it while adding colour on the computer. But it was a (deserving) victim of the decision to go for a self-contained style.

And so here is a robot. Metal is an interesting surface to render, but reflections depend on their surroundings and in this case the illustration was in a white void. Adventures in drawing! Science fiction illustration is traditionally about brilliant sleek schematic black and whites, perfect reflections with a highlight of pale gouache, hard lines, bright lights… Occasionally I find a way into it which lets me have fun with lines instead of rulers, and fluid movement instead of angles. At this point I’m still exploring.