June 2022 Calendar — wolf boys

Note: Want to support the arts? This calendar is made possible by patrons, who get it a little bit early, along with alternative colourways, and other sneak-peeks and behind-the-scenes art (patron levels start from US$1): patreon.com/tanaudel. It is also supported by those very kind people who throw a few dollars towards it via the tip jar: ko-fi.com/tanaudel.

Here is the June calendar! It’s the first of two calendar pages I’m working on with a lighthearted allusion to some of Angela Slatter’s characters. June is wolf boys, for her novel The Path of Thorns, which will be launched next month.  These are perhaps slightly gentler souls than the ones in her novels, but I’ll offset that with the other piece of art.

Cover design by Julia Lloyd

The Brisbane launch will be on 17 June — it is free to attend, but you will need to book online here: https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/meet-angela-slatter-brisbane-square-library-tickets-342553305157

Here’s a bit of the process behind this calendar art — first rough sketches and then tidier pencils on the iPad, inks with a dip pen and ink. I chose the yellow and grey colour scheme because of a nice 18thc-style pattern in these colours that I managed to find on a doona cover a few years ago. It’s faded now but I found it striking. (It had a design of birds in nests, not wolf boys).

And here (for personal use) are the printable versions — one pre-coloured and one to colour in yourself. If you like them and/or like supporting artists, you can contribute to the calendar (and get it and other behind-the-scenes things early) at patreon.com/tanaudel (starts at US$1/month) or tip me a few dollars through Ko-Fi: ko-fi.com/tanaudel. Either is greatly appreciated!

Also, I’ve started a mailing list (not a newsletter), if you’d like to keep up with any major announcements: Mailing List Sign-Up

May 2022 Calendar — small treasures

Note: Want to support the arts? This calendar is made possible by patrons, who get it a little bit early, along with alternative colourways, and other sneak-peeks and behind-the-scenes art (patron levels start from US$1): patreon.com/tanaudel. It is also supported by those very kind people who throw a few dollars towards it via the tip jar: ko-fi.com/tanaudel.

Here, for May, is a calendar of small fairy-tale treasures, variously defined.

Here’s a glimpse of the sketch I used as a base. It’s drawn on an iPad in Procreate, which is proving very useful for adjusting sketches, moving components, and checking that repeats will work.

This is what it looked like when I was checking that it will join up as a pattern, in due course.

Then I printed the sketch and inked it, as usual, with a dip pen, while listening to the Disaster Girls podcast.

I do want to work it up as a repeating pattern, but I need to jostle a few leaves around and time has been slightly compressed by events. I’ll update this post when I get the repeating design up — in the meantime, there are many other calendar designs available as prints, scarves, cases etc on Redbubble: tanaudel.redbubble.com.

An alternative colourway, for patrons

And here (for personal use) are the printable versions — one pre-coloured and one to colour in yourself. If you like them and/or like supporting artists, you can contribute to the calendar (and get it and other behind-the-scenes things early) at patreon.com/tanaudel (starts at US$1/month) or tip me a few dollars through Ko-Fi: ko-fi.com/tanaudel. Either is greatly appreciated!

Also, I’ve started a mailing list (not a newsletter), if you’d like to keep up with any major announcements: Mailing List Sign-Up

April 2022 Calendar — birds and flowers

Note: Want to support the arts? This calendar is made possible by patrons, who get it a little bit early, along with alternative colourways, and other sneak-peeks and behind-the-scenes art (patron levels start at very low amounts!): patreon.com/tanaudel. It is also supported by those very kind people who throw a few dollars towards it via the tip jar: ko-fi.com/tanaudel.

The April calendar is here! It’s a slightly retro pattern of birds and daisy-adjacent flowers (and bees, of course). A relatively simple design this time, as I was recovering from a (delightful) weekend at Oz Comic-Con — the sketches from that are here: Oz Comic-Con sketches.

This design and two other colourways are also up on Redbubble on notebooks, clothes, throws, prints, etc. Links to those:

• Orange on cream (as here)
• Orange on white
• Turquoise on brown
• Orange on brown

And here (for personal use) are the printable versions — one pre-coloured and one to colour in yourself. If you like them and/or like supporting artists, you can contribute to the calendar (and get it and other behind-the-scenes things early) at patreon.com/tanaudel (starts at US$1/month!) or by buying me a coffee or two through Ko-Fi: https://ko-fi.com/tanaudel. Both are greatly appreciated!

Also, I’ve started a mailing list (not a newsletter), if you’d like to keep up with any major announcements: Mailing List Sign-Up

March 2022 calendar — hares

Note: Want to support the arts? This calendar is made possible by patrons, who get it a little bit early, along with other sneak-peeks and behind-the-scenes art (patron levels start at very low amounts!): patreon.com/tanaudel. It is also supported by those very kind people who throw a few dollars towards it via the tip jar: ko-fi.com/tanaudel.

Hares for March! Delayed by and drawn during the floods, just before power went out. I’m at my parents and we have power again — both their place and mine are above water but lots of other people aren’t — thousands of houses have been flooded. Here are some ways to contribute to disaster relief efforts: https://www.qld.gov.au/emergency/emergencies-services/help-disaster

The base lines are a pen and ink drawing, and my test sketches were in pencil, but I did the final sketch on the iPad — it makes repositioning components easier, and prints cleanly to be used as a guide for inking.

This design and two other colourways are also up on Redbubble on notebooks, clothes, throws, prints, etc. And until Tuesday (tomorrow!) Redbubble is offering 20% off everything with code 20FLASH20. Links to those:

• Blue hares
• Wheat hares
• White hares
• All my Redbubble art

And here (for personal use) are the printable versions — one pre-coloured and one to colour in yourself. If you like them and/or like supporting artists, you can contribute to the calendar (and get it and other behind-the-scenes things early) at patreon.com/tanaudel (starts at US$1/month) or by tipping me a few dollars through Ko-Fi: ko-fi.com/tanaudel. Both are greatly appreciated!

Also, I’ve started a mailing list (not a newsletter), if you’d like to keep up with any major announcements: Mailing List Sign-Up

February 2022 calendar — banners

Note: Want to support the arts? This calendar is made possible by patrons, who get it a little bit early, along with other sneak-peeks and behind-the-scenes art (patron levels start at very low amounts!): patreon.com/tanaudel. It is also supported by those very kind people who throw a few dollars towards it via the tip jar: ko-fi.com/tanaudel.

Welcome to the edge of February!

For this calendar, I wanted to play with some patterns of ribbons and scrolls, to build up a vocabulary of flags to use as labels on maps (and for titles, etc). There’s also a sash for the Brave Little Tailor in there.

Technical details: I drew the line art with a dip pen and ink. I tidied the lines in Inkscape, and did flat colours, textures, and final adjustments in Photoshop. But I used Procreate on the iPad for the initial sketch, and to refine the shading.

And here (for personal use) are the printable versions — two pre-coloured and one to colour in yourself. If you like them and/or like supporting artists, you can contribute to the calendar (and get it and other behind-the-scenes things early) at patreon.com/tanaudel (starts at US$1/month!) or by buying me a coffee or two through Ko-Fi: https://ko-fi.com/tanaudel. Both are greatly appreciated!

Also, I’ve started a mailing list (not a newsletter), if you’d like to keep up with any major announcements:

Mailing List Sign-Up

January 2022 Calendar — tiny forests

Note: Want to support the arts? This calendar is made possible by patrons, who get it a little bit early, along with other sneak-peeks and behind-the-scenes art (patron levels start at very low amounts!): patreon.com/tanaudel. It is also supported by those very kind people who throw a few dollars towards it via the tip jar: ko-fi.com/tanaudel.

Here is a little world to meander through, for the first month of the new year. If you want, you could add in new details and denizens, paths, boundaries, labels…

Here are the sketches (right), and the inks in progress on the light box (left). I’d printed up a 1cm grid template for a previous calendar, so I used that to keep things roughly spaced, but drew the rest free-hand.

The trees are an amalgam of observation, my own habits, and riffs on references and approaches in various other maps, tree books, etc. Most of those are cited in this map workshop post, but some inspiration was drawn from the Ladybird Book of Trees mentioned here.

The illustration is available as a print from InPrnt and Redbubble and is also on a few other items — I’ll add others once I make it into a repeating pattern.

And here (for personal use) are the printable versions — two pre-coloured and one to colour in yourself. If you like them and/or like supporting artists, you can contribute to the calendar (and get it and other behind-the-scenes things early) at patreon.com/tanaudel (starts at US$1/month!) or by buying me a coffee or two through Ko-Fi: https://ko-fi.com/tanaudel. Both are greatly appreciated!

(You can see all the 2021 art in one post here: All the 2021 Calendar Pages.)

All the 2021 calendar pages

Every month (with the support of patrons) I make a printable (and colour-able) calendar page.

And here are all the pages of monthly 2021 calendar art in one place! I’m always a little startled to get to the end of a year and remind myself how much I drew during the year just making these, let alone… everything else. (Here’s the 2020 collection.) I’ve put the individual pages larger at the bottom of this post.

My favourite calendar page keeps shifting. I do very much like the July houses because of the different approach, and the frogs from May because they look velvety. But then the April fairy-tale motifs ended up inspiring the cover design for WQ Magazine. And the fish and waves from February got into two separate projects (illustrations for a secret book and a map for a book that is yet to be announced). But March’s rondels and April’s motifs have proved useful demonstrations for writing workshops.

Then the houses were a useful sampler of styles, but also research for something I’m illustrating and another piece I’m writing (and my mother wanted the line drawing for quilt backing). And all of them were places to try out approaches to surface patterns, or altered techniques, or new tools. And the chairs have been a long time coming, and the chicken-legged houses amuse me…

Note: Want to support the arts? This calendar is made possible by patrons, who get it a little bit early, along with other sneak-peeks and behind-the-scenes art (patron levels start at very low amounts!): patreon.com/tanaudel. It is also supported by those very kind people who throw a few dollars towards it via the tip jar: ko-fi.com/tanaudel. And many of these designs are available as prints, clothes, cases, etc on Redbubble, as fabrics and wallpaper on Spoonflower, and as prints in InPrnt. 

And below are all the designs, larger:

December 2021 Calendar — the mail

Note: Want to support the arts? This calendar is made possible by patrons, who get it a little bit early, along with other sneak-peeks and behind-the-scenes art (patron levels start at very low amounts!): patreon.com/tanaudel. It is also supported by those very kind people who throw a few dollars towards it via the tip jar: ko-fi.com/tanaudel.  

For this December’s calendar, it’s all about getting the mail through. And while the art is not Christmas-themed, there are 25 animals, so you could use the colouring version as an Advent calendar.

25 is a lot of animals, and I was tired. After I’d committed to the idea, I realised I could only think of about 5 plausibly fairy-tale adjacent creatures (it was late!). So now my notebook contains a list of animals made as I remembered their existence (eventually more than 25).

List and first ideas

I decided to stick with flowers instead of stars, since I’d drawn starry animals last December (A Crowded Sky).

Then I shifted to Procreate for the rough sketch (to keep in practice with the program, and it does remove one scanning session). You can just see, below, that I put rough scribbles down (and numbered them!) before drawing the animals. I wanted to keep a plausibly-deniable fairy-tale quality to the animals, so I sketched most of them loosely from memory, then consulted a bit of reference to correct the more obvious errors and angles.

At this stage I was still considering big flowers — not as big as around September’s chairs, but still quite large and cheerful.

But I’d been doing a lot of standard five-petal flowers lately, and wanted to mix that up a bit — and possibly add some shading again. You can see me playing with both ideas here.

I printed out the digital sketch and used it as a guide for inking the animals.

The chewed-biscuit looking edge at the bottom is the ledge of my drawing board which I’ve had for a couple decades now.

Once they were done, I started at the top left corner and began to fill in the flowers. I drew these freehand, although I did occasionally refer to the sketch.

To keep a reasonable mixture of flowers, I alternated 2 flame-shaped trios (and long sprigs of leaves) with one five-petal flower (with stray leaves). This helped distribute shapes and colours (although I wouldn’t have minded having added another yellow flower between the snake and the cat).

I was eyeballing the distance between elements, and occasionally the spacing drifted — for example, I was working looser at the top left of the full page, where I started. In the image below, near the sheep’s front foot, that sprig of leaves brushes one of the flowers near it. On some projects I would later bump those elements around individually on the computer, but I don’t mind the rustic crowding here — it does look more hand-drawn.

And I really like this dense, all-over pattern — especially after the very open chickens of November.

I scanned those lines, cleaned them up in Photoshop and Inkscape, then added colours and texture in Photoshop. Anyway, here are the underlays, without the lines.

And here (for personal use) are the printable versions — two pre-coloured and one to colour in yourself. If you like them and/or like supporting the arts, you can contribute to the calendar (and get it and other behind-the-scenes things early) at patreon.com/tanaudel (starts at US$1/month!) or by buying me a coffee or two through Ko-Fi: https://ko-fi.com/tanaudel. Both are greatly appreciated!

November 2021 Calendar — Chickens

Note: This calendar is supported by patrons, who get it a little bit early, along with alternative colourways, and other sneak-peeks and behind-the-scenes art: patreon.com/tanaudel, and also by those very kind people who throw a few dollars towards it via the tip jar: ko-fi.com/tanaudel. 

For November — some chooks/chickens/hens/poultry who have strayed into fairy tales.

Here are my first sketches playing with the motifs for this design.

I wanted to try doing the pencil sketches directly onto the iPad, to see if it would be easier to adjust/move elements. The jury is still out on that, although with practice I can see it would be useful. It was great for at least thinking about some of the colour distribution in advance. I do have a plan for a repeating pattern, which will require bumping around some spacings, but I’ve been away writing so will put the final together later.

Then I printed those lines out for a guide, and inked them the usual way (dip pen).

Then I scanned, cleaned, and coloured them on the computer. Here are some of the colour flats, without lines and texture. I really like this clear clean blue, and might tinker with the textures to brighten the pattern.

So here (for personal use) are the printable versions — one pre-coloured and one to colour in yourself. If you like them and/or like supporting the arts, you can contribute to the calendar (and get it and other behind-the-scenes things early) at patreon.com/tanaudel (starts at US$1/month!) or by buying me a coffee or two through Ko-Fi: https://ko-fi.com/tanaudel.

October Calendar — Bats!

Note: This calendar is supported by patrons, who get it a little bit early, along with other sneak-peeks and behind-the-scenes art: patreon.com/tanaudel, and also by those very kind people who throw a few dollars towards it via the tip jar: ko-fi.com/tanaudel. 

Here is the October calendar — a simple frolic of star-eating bats.

It began, as usual, in pen and ink — here’s a close-up. I’ve been drawing maps and bats all week, and have become very inky as a result.

Ink drawing of a bat chasing a star

And it is now up as a repeating pattern on various things (dresses, cases, scarves…) on Redbubble — and there’s a collection there of previous Halloween-adjacent designs, too (including more bats, and musical skeletons).

So here (for personal use) are the printable versions — one pre-coloured and one to colour in yourself. If you like them and/or like supporting the arts, you can contribute to the calendar (and get it and other behind-the-scenes things early) at patreon.com/tanaudel (starts at US$1/month!) or by buying me a coffee or two through Ko-Fi: https://ko-fi.com/tanaudel.