The Illustration Friday topic this week was “electronic”, and since I’ve been regretting my (unavoidable) inability to enter the Folio Society illustration competition, my thoughts were on Diana Wynne Jones’s books, and the unexpected co-appearances of magic and more contemporary technologies.
So here is a Howl, of Howl’s Moving Castle, as loosely suggested by a scene that is in the book, but not the movie!
And here is the original piece, with my hand for scale.
Over on Bookish.com, there is a reveal for my cover art for Kerstin Hall’s upcoming novella The Border Keeper, to be published by Tor.com. It includes a video of the art process (if you glimpse a bandage, it was from a julienne-ing incident, not the craft knife).
Floating islands for this month’s printable calendar. It’s brought to you by my patrons at patreon.com/tanaudel (thank you all! and if you’d like to join in, there are also new Dalek drawings going up each month at the moment).
These were a lot of fun to draw, once I stripped out the far too many sketches extending the civilisation/mythos (although there was a floating deck chair I was rather fond of). I imagine the Aeolian harp adjusts them for altitude/turbulence.
The unwonted use of halftone is directly attributable to having watched Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse which was very much an illustrator’s movie.
Edit: I’ve put the image on Redbubble as a print. If there’s interest (or I decide I want it on a sundress:) I’ll look into doing a repeating pattern.
I haven’t done an Illustration Friday piece for quite a while, but here is a little scratchboard hobbit for this week’s topic Hero.
My latest book cover for Utz Books’s editions of Frances Hardinge’s novels (previously: The Lie Tree). This is for Cuckoo Song, a strange, wild, kind 1920s tale of fey creatures, family, and urban planning. It is available for pre-order from Utz Books here (I understand). But if that is not your language, I recommend tracking this book down in one you can read. It’s a delight.
The process, from thumbnail sketches to detailed pencils to cut paper silhouette, is shown below. The details on the original are very small — the whole piece was cut from a sheet of A3 paper, but a lot of room was taken up by vines at the bottom/top.
When I was at World Fantasy in November, I was interviewed by Liza Trombi of Locus Magazine. The interview is out in this month’s edition, and look at that line-up — I respect all these artists hugely. Charles Vess is one of my artist heroes and inspirations and his interview is online: Narrative Impulse (the Singer Sewing Machine story always sounds like something out of O’Henry).
And before I left, Rhianna Patrick of the ABC interviewed me for her segment, and that is online here (full disclosure: I’d just thrown out my back and was on painkillers).
