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.

 

Illustration Friday: Future

A quick pen and ink drawing, with digital colour, to get back into Illustration Friday. We’ve had a few day-job conversations involving E. Nesbit’s The Story of the Treasure Seekers, (due to: Albert-next-door’s laconic uncle; the name-checking of the characters in the first line of C. S. Lewis’ The Magician’s Nephew; and a delightfully unreliable narrator)  so there’s a mildly Edwardian twist to this image.

There have also, however, been several recent discussions touching on Lovecraft, which may explain the sequel image below.

 

“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

 

Weddings and pictures

Just before Easter, my cousin Jess married Dave in the trees on their property by the river in Nagambie (photos top and left are by my cousin Joanna Hiron). I posted about the invitation illustrations here: Victorian wedding. It was a beautiful wedding, full of music and family, flowers and lights, with small children and dogs underfoot and (I hear) some hay-bale tossing by late in the evening… and they printed the wedding invitation linework on the stubby holders, which was a first for my illustrations. A lovely weekend, followed by a vacation in Melbourne and road trip to Canberra with my mother (including sketching musicians in a hotel in Beechworth).

And on the topic of weddings, here is a little design I did as a gift for two friends, Thom and Lily (both photographers: http://thomascodyphotographics.wordpress.com ) who were married earlier of this year:

 

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).

 

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.

 

 

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.