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.

 

Sketchbook update – Christmas

Since I’ve been working on specific projects, the current sketchbook hasn’t been filling as fast as usual. It is, however, still in use and I am uploading pictures every now and then. Here are the latest uploads:

I don’t know what the tree at top left is, but it was fantastical (the whole of the Old Museum, where the Finders Keepers markets were held, is enchanting). At top right are the Black Hawk helicopters which were on maneuvres past my office window for several weeks.

Top left is a game of Triad in progress (as in, the ball game from Battlestar Galactica). The musicians are friends of my parents (he built the bookcases in my room at my parents’ house and now go to the church my parents were going to when my dad could still get out – they are also folk musicians). Bottom right begins the queue to see Santa at Indooroopilly:

And the queue continues over the page, together with a reappearance by the gift tags:

Teapots at the Tea Centre, a shepherd, wise man and angel, my Christmas… branch, and my mother reading “A Visit from Saint Nick” to my nephews, with commentary and morals (there is a larger version here if you can’t read it).

We had a traditional Christmas morning: stockings were opened and cross-examined, then we had hot cinnamon rolls, fresh-brewed coffee and orange juice, had showers, did dishes (we like delayed anticipation) and then settled in for opening of presents. Then my mother made blueberry pie (top left) and we lay around groaning until Christmas lunch at 5pm. That weekend I went up to Toowoomba and watched Sherlock Holmes with friends.

The showing we were going to watch was sold out, so we bought tickets for the next, then went to a coffee shop and drew in each others’ notebooks – Lisa’s is at top right above, Anna’s at top left below, and Aimee’s on the right.

 

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.

 

Post-con post

Natcon has finished. I’m staying an extra day in Adelaide to see the sights (although going to the gallery today with Dirk and Jason has given me a new perspective on art history) and should be back late Tuesday night, assuming I survive frog cakes, chocolate frogs and a hotel which appears to be acquiring a reputation for being haunted.

I’ll upload con sketches when I get back. In the meantime, here’s a page from the last batch (and next in the sequence of tv sketches):

 

Illustration Friday: Rambunctious

Bad things almost always happen to rambunctious boys in fairytales. This is a reference to one of my favourites.

This is much looser than last week’s. Artland in Indooroopilly was having a 30%-off sale (and airconditioning, which is why I was in there) and I picked up (among many other things) some “scratch-etch” board: a shiny white card which you etch with a sharp tool and then rub oil crayon into. This is my first test-drive of it, and I’m looking forward to trying more effects and techniques, and also going for more contrast and precision.

 

Illustration Friday: Pretend

A lyrebird for this week’s Illustration Friday topic, “Pretend”. There are two types of lyrebird: the Superb (which has the more lyre-like tail feathers) and the Albert’s, which lives in Queensland and is the one I have seen in the wild when walking at Mt Tamborine. This is an Albert’s lyrebird drawn with markers. I like the way that, enlarged, it looks a bit like a bird on salt-glaze pottery.

They are astonishing imitators – really strikingly accurate (that’s an Albert’s above and a Superb below it). This is a link to David Attenborough’s by-now-pretty-famous footage of their imitations (on YouTube).

The fun thing about drawing them is they have this natural balance going on – more like an ornament than a bird. The design work is already done.

Just going for silhouettes and facial expressions here.

But it isn’t all lyrebirds! I usually go through a dozen or more designs in notebooks and on scrap paper, fall in love with some and discard most of my favourites because of time constraints and the need to sleep occasionally if I am going to finish NaNoWriMo (42,000/50,000 to date, so I probably don’t need to worry to much there yet). As a bonus – and because I know I’m not posting as often this month – here are two sketches that have been messed with in Photoshop.

I’d like her dress, except for the whole obvious ironing aspect, but the teapot shadow is creeping me out a little.

And doesn’t everyone sing into fans and pretend to be Judith Durham?

 

Ekka Sketches

The Ekka is the Queensland Exhibition – the state show, culmination of all the local shows. Cattle and horses and parades and pavilions, dagwood dogs, fairy floss, strawberries and cream, rides (I went the swinging chairs, which was fun but a bit lonely). My favourite parts are the cattle pavilion, which is always sweet-smelling and somnolent, and the dog trials, and the food.

As no-one wanted to come along with me (even though I had a spare pass), I took my sketchbook and managed to get a little drawing in. Maybe more next year. You can see larger versions of these by clicking on a picture to go to its Flickr page, and then clicking on “all sizes” above the picture.

I started sketching at the woodcut arena (right-hand page above). It was a windy day (the Ekka Winds come every August), so between the sawdust blowing in my eyes and the fact that in the speed chainsaw event the men split a log into seven posts in about a minute, I’m surprised I caught as much as I did.

Top left: There is always lots of free food in the Woolworths pavilion – exotic dips and spreads, olives, cordials, dessert wines, yoghurts and fudge – but most of it tastes so good I end up paying and taking it home. In the handcrafts pavilion (bottom left) there was a demonstration of cake decorating, with a mirror above the presenter so you could see what her hands were doing. The dog show (right) is a lot of fun. I would have liked to have spent more time there in a better seat – the dachshunds were hard to see.

The horses (bottom left) were far enough away that the horses were about the same size as the dachshunds, but it spared me having to capture too much detail. Middle left: there are always fabulous wigs from show bags (also, chocolate). Bottom right is a large and faintly iridiscent plush kangaroo that regarded me unblinkingly from over a seat in the train on the way home.

The gold ink and red bleed-through on the right-hand page are from using the last page of my sketchbook for tests when buying pens – which is an indication that I’ve finally finished scanning this sketchbook in. It’s all up at Flickr here: Sketchbook 05/08 – 08/08.

 

Illustration Friday: Island

A combination of a staff retreat at Noosa and reading My Family and Other Creatures. With maybe just a touch of Lord of the Flies.

Pitt Artist Pens in my pocket sketchbook. The original is a little smaller than this.

 

Illustration Friday: Clutter

I try not to gather figurines, bric-a-brac or dust collectors. When I do, they gather on the bookshelf above my computer and look down at me reproachfully.

This is a quick photoshop sketch of Bruce and Jasmine, trying to get my fingers used to the wacom again (like many things, this process has been half learning to see in a certain way, and half getting my hands to obey me). I like the movement in it but would perhaps put more colour in if I were to do it again. Maybe some red in the shadows.

Comments and criticism are always welcome.

 

Take a screenshot, it will last longer.

Or, “Pining for the F(j)ords”.

This is the Google Maps street view of my house. It was probably taken this year, because you can see I’ve come up in parking hierarchy (that’s my car on the right), but early in the year because the house on the right is about three metres lower than it is now (houses in Brisbane levitate occasionally, and sometimes even do a midnight flit).

This is also the only photo I have of my nasty little Nissan, the car which was acquired as a stop-gap measure after my last car was stolen. This one came with a dead wasp on the back dashboard which I carefully never removed (by not vacuuming the car) because I couldn’t find anyone to laugh at my joke about it (“So there’s this dead wasp on the back dashboard, and I’ve left it there because I can’t work out if it’s a feature or a bug”).

And this is the only sketch I have of it:

At 6.30pm on Thursday I left my house to go late-night shopping, turned right out of my street, and a horrible metallic fluttering started up. With creative application of brake, accelerator, handbrake and gears, I got to the side of the road, called the mechanic to let them know I would be there soon, and drew the car (to the consternation of people coming home from work) because there was nothing else to do in the dark on the side of the road. RACQ arrived and made muttering noises, then called a tow truck, whose driver spent his days off cruising around south-east Queensland on his Harley and taking photos of wildflowers. He took me to Indro, and the mechanics drove me back, and I was home by eight, in time to catch the end of Inspector Rex.

The next day I discovered the engine is not worth repairing or (given the car) replacing. So I have to work out what to do with a defunct 1986 Nissan Pulsar and what to replace it with. Everyone says to get a new car, or at least something younger than 20 years. The trouble with having savings, though, is that I am very reluctant to spend them.

Well, that and I have spent the last few months swearing that (a) I wish I had a station wagon and (b) I will never buy a new car.