Beginning sketches: The Tallow-Wife

Since Angela Slatter has started posting teasers (instagram.com/angelaslatter), I can let you know about one of my current projects! I am currently sketching my way through her manuscript for The Tallow-Wife and Other Tales, the third volume in the Sourdough and Bitterwood Bible sequence. I also illustrated The Bitterwood Bible (The Bitterwood Bible Cover Art and Illustrations), and if the The Tallow-Wife sounds familiar, it might be because I previously illustrated the title story for a limited-edition chapbook: The Tallow-Wife.

As usual, I started by making a big pile of these little sketch-folds — cutting sheets of nice A3 paper into long strips and folding them with a bone-folder.

I like these mini-sketchbooks for several reasons:

• I can make them of my preferred papers.
• A handful of them will fit in a small pencil case, for working when I’m out-and-about.
• They’re so short there’s no pressure to either fill or not ruin them.
• They make a pleasingly fat little stack as I work through.
• At the end, I can bundle them all up into a single book, and it’s a nicely shaped object that’s impressively long when unfolded.

Here’s a page testing pens, to see which matched best which previous illustrations.

It’s such a pleasure to just draw through these stories as I read them — they are very beautiful, and a chance to revisit a favourite world.

And finally, a long and angry fox.

For more, for now, I recommend following Angela on Instagram or Twitter.