Modern Faerie Tales – Holly Black

So this was fun! I was asked to design a single header for each of Holly Black’s three novels in the Modern Faerie Tales series: Tithe, Valiant, and Ironside, for this omnibus edition.

They are delightful novels — as is the new The Folk of the Air series (The Cruel Prince, The Wicked King, and The Queen of Nothing), which is lightly connected, and for which I did the maps. Holly has a gift for (and works hard at) balancing a rather gritty 21st century mundane with a stunningly wondrous (but cruel) magical world. If you grew up on the urban fantasy of the 80s and 90s, you’ll know the feeling of Holly’s worlds — grit and glitter and death and magic.

Which is to say, I recommend them all, as well as having had a Grand Time drawing in them.

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Note re links: I’m experimenting with affiliate links, which means I might get paid a small commission if someone buys something after clicking a link on my site. This is early days, so I’m really just testing out the program links at this point!

January 2020 calendar! Bees!

Happy New Year! (Almost but not quite). I’ve hurt my back and am mostly horizontal, which makes drawing tricky, but I clawed my way to the drawing board and there is still a calendar, now, just barely, for January 2020.

It is bees! So many bees. I thought this would be simpler than earlier, pre bad-back plans I had, but I was extremely wrong. As ever, pre-coloured and to-colour-yourself files are below.

If you would like to support the calendar, and other similarly misguided artistic endeavours, into 2020, it would help your friendly, horizontal local illustrator very much. Patreon is here patreon.com/tanaudel (starts at $1/month!) or there is a tip jar at paypal.me/tanaudel.

AFTS Conference — keynote speaker

Art by Erin-Claire Barrow.

 

In exciting news, I’ve been invited to be the keynote speaker at the Australian Fairy Tale Society conference in Sydney on 8 June 2020.

The topic is “Magic Mirrors”, and I’ll be speaking mostly from the perspective of a fairy tale artist, although the writing side will definitely get in there. But then, it’s all stories, isn’t it?

If the conference sounds like your sort of thing (it skews a bit towards storytelling/storytellers, especially as it follows on from the weekend’s biennial International Storytelling Conference), the call for entries is here:

Call for Presentations – 2020 Australian Fairy Tale Society Conference 

 

December Calendar: Phantom Dancers

The December calendar is here! (With the invaluable support of patrons on patreon.com/tanaudel and paypal.me/tanaudel — if you enjoy the calendar and other art and have even a dollar or two to spare, it all helps).

If it’s all a bit green for you, I can only blame a combination of the colour scheme of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (quite a heavy influence this month) and I Capture The Castle, but I’ve also made an oat-and-mint version. Or, of course, you can colour it yourself.

The printable (for personal use) files are below. And so on to December!

The Queen of Nothing — the map!

The Queen of Nothing, the third in Holly Black’s Folk of the Air trilogy, and sequel to The Cruel Prince and The Wicked King is now out! I’m visiting Massachusetts at the moment and got to ride along to Holly’s first event of her tour, at An Unlikely Story. But now I can also show you the map.

I have loved adjusting the map for this series (although altering wave patterns in ink with each new ocean detail, and splicing them in digitally, was certainly a challenge!).

Under the map (above) are sketches of possible treatments of the corners and new details. But other new pieces came from the little thematic sketches I made along the way (no spoilers).

A few of the little original ink drawings of tiny new details are now available at Book Moon Books in Easthampton, Massachusetts (or will be by tomorrow, when I am sketching there!). Below is the tiniest.

(The cover art is not by me. Sean Freeman has been illustrating those, with design by Karina Granda. BUT I did draw the foil designs under the dust jackets on the hardcovers — and got to meet a girl with the Cruel Prince design tattooed on her arm, which was very exciting!).

Art by Sean Freeman, design by Karina Granda, tiniest fox by me, SNAKE by Holly Black

Sketching! (Surprise…)

(Edit: This was Friday 22 November)

As part of Cottage Street, Easthampton’s Grrl’s Night Out event, I will be doing some sketching at Book Moon Books. There will also be some original art for sale, for a variety of projects including (but not limited to) ornaments and illustrations for books by Holly Black and Cassandra Clare…

Be Bold prints

The original of the Be Bold, Be Bold paper-cut design has sold, but the white-on-black print is available on Redbubble, as an art print or other things (e.g. a hardback notebook which I think looks rather striking).

The other, more fox-centric, “Be Bold” (originally a calendar page) is also available as a print, etc, too.