May calendar: Selkies!

Selkies for May!

These calendars are brought to you with the help of my patrons on patreon.com/tanaudel, and if you’d like to contribute, or are trying to think of a birthday present for me (it’s in May!) joining Patreon would be a great way to do it. Levels start at $1 a month, and there are many extra behind-the-scenes things, as well.

The colours were tricky for this one. Selkie pictures tend to be very muddy brown or too green. I worked towards these colours after consulting a number of William Morris designs and several photos of seals on beaches at sunset.

The page can be printed coloured or to colour yourself, from the files below. And please do consider supporting the calendar on Patreon!

(Oh, and the Angela Carter foxes are up on Redbubble as individual stickers and many other things)

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April Calendar: Magic Mirrors

The April calendar is brought to you, as ever, by my delightful patrons, who keep art in my life when the exegesis is nearly due. (Patrons also get the calendar early).

This month I decided for magic mirrors. I don’t quite remember why, but here we are. I had several ideas, but they kept turning into Dissertations Requiring Comprehensive Research on Aarne-Thompson Classification Systems. So I stripped this back, kept it pretty multi-purpose (there are a few specific references, of course), and tried to add a hint of Gorey. I particularly like the bat.

It is in two colourways: a nice wine/plum, and a horrible peasoup green which is one of my favourite colours because it reminds me of Ruth Park’s Playing Beatie Bow. (By the way, if you like Ruth Park, Australian literature, creativity, writing history, etc, I highly recommend Ann-Marie’ Priest’s small, delighted, indignant book A Free Flame – and there’s a podcast episode here with the interview that made me buy it: Avid Reader Podcast).

So here they are, printable for personal use, whether pre-coloured or to colour yourself.

 

March Calendar – Be Bold, Be Bold…

This month’s calendar, brought to you with the support of my patrons (who get it early, and you can too!) is for the folktale “The Story of Mr Fox“: “Be bold, be bold, but not too bold, lest that thy heart’s blood should run cold”.

Mr Fox has no actual foxes in it, a feature in common with one of my other favourite folktales-with-a-rhyme (“the bough did bend, my heart did break, to see the hole the fox did make”). That one is about murderous university students, at least as I heard it, although there are many variations on the theme. But it had been a while since I drew foxes, and I wanted to update my fox-and-flowers designs. I’ll add some of these to my Redbubble store once uni deadlines ebb a little.

The picture is also, of course, an homage to the authors who do such marvellous versions of this school of stories, such as Angela Carter and Angela Slatter.

The full, printable calendar images are at the bottom of this post – pre-coloured, or to colour in.

In other news:

Patreon support has just crept into New Dalek Territory, which means I’m restarting the Dalek Game! It’s just for supporters on Patreon (at all levels) for now, until I build up a reserve.

Also! The clockwork birds from February’s calendar are up on Redbubble, with the original version, one with a dark background, and a blue and white variation. They are in my queue to add to my Spoonflower shop, too, but…  I have an MPhil to finish.

And here is the calendar!

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February calendar: Swans and nettles

Welcome to the February calendar (brought to you with the continuing support of patrons on patreon.com/tanaudel – and if you’d like to throw in a dollar or two there or elsewhere to support the calendar, they make all this possible!).

I do love grave, beautiful fairytale illustrations, but I also have a lot of friends who do fancy knitting, and the idea of the nettle shirts in “The Wild Swans” took a detour into a few sweaters I wouldn’t mind owning.

The printable files are at the bottom of this post – pre-coloured, or to colour yourself. You can download them for free (but please consider supporting – you can get the calendar early, and other things, and even $1/month helps hugely).

The fairytale is part of the spectrum of stories that includes “The Seven Ravens”, the next story under discussion by the Australian Fairy Tale Society. The Brisbane ring is meeting from 1.30-3.30 at Avid Reader on 10 February and I’ll be giving a short presentation.

 

And here is the calendar!

All the 2017 calendar art

Happy new year! This is a little round-up of the art from all my 2017 monthly calendars (made with the support of my wonderful patrons on patreon.com/tanaudel). More to come this year (January is already up, if you missed it: Clockwork Birds).

January calendar: highly artificial

Welcome to 2018 (almost)! I’ve started the year with a little clockwork bird calendar, because they are so cheerful, and also because I have a story coming out in April from Tor.com (!) in which I picked up a few threads from “The Emperor’s Nightingale” and ran with them. It is called “The Heart of Owl Abbas”, and like this calendar has a noticeable lack of owls.

As has been the case all this year, the calendar is brought to you with the support of my patrons over at patreon.com/tanaudel. If you’d like to sign up to support the calendar and other art (for as little as $1 a month), you’ll even get it a few days early!

There are two colourways this month, as I was feeling indecisive. Pattern to follow. Please feel very free to print these for your personal use – pre-coloured, or to colour yourself! And if you did colour any calendar pages this year, I’d love to see photos if you’re happy to share.

December Calendar: The River Bank

The December calendar is here!

Clearly I haven’t quite got Kij Johnson’s The River Bank out of my system (and if you are looking for gifts for this time of the year, it is an excellent one – the Washington Post agrees, and included it on its list of “50 Notable Works of Fiction in 2017“!). I’ve started a series of posts about the process of illustrating it – they begin here: The River Bank Process – First Response.

While The River Bank doesn’t make it into winter, The Wind in the Willows of course does, and the image of the mice singing carols outside Mole End is one of my enduring memories of that book. So I ran with that.

I think Toad in his moments of mellower, generous pomposity would have the best tree, and insist on (recognisably) playing Father Christmas.

Beryl skating was one of the first sketches I made for this idea (also, if this were a climate in which sweaters were warranted, I would want hers).

Went a bit stocking mad here.

Now, all these pictures take a lot of time! They have been sponsored all year by my wonderful patrons at patreon.com/tanaudel – they get the calendar early and $3+ patrons also get occasional downloadable stationery (there will be print-at-home cards using some of the images from this calendar). If you enjoy the pictures, and would like to keep seeing the calendar happen, and want to be a patron of the arts, see sneak-peeks, etc, you can join in here at Patreon (a few more supporters and we might yet be able to restart the Dalek Game!). Or if you use the calendar and would like to fling a few occasional dollars in the direction of the artist, this is my PayPal link: paypal.me/tanaudel.

And at last! Here is the December calendar, to print at home – precoloured, or to colour yourself.

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