Clockwork Angel

Last year was a little chaotic, between travel (ah, remember the days), conferences, deadlines, and several bouts with my back, so I didn’t keep the blog entirely up to date with new projects (although they showed up in plenty of other places!).

But very excitingly, I got to work with Walker Books UK for the first time, on a set of pen-and-ink illustrations for the 10th anniversary edition of Clockwork Angel (to complement the 10th anniversary of City of Bones — both also have beautiful portraits by Cassandra Jean, and cover and title page illustrations by Will Staehle — the lovely cover is by Dan Funderburgh).

I will do a process post (possibly for both books! nothing like having a backlog of material) in due course. In the meantime, here are a couple teasers. (Also, when the physical store is back open, I think Book Moon Books in MA, USA might still have some of the original illustrations for sale).

And you can find the book from all good booksellers (and a lot of local independent stores are working very hard to keep getting books to you!)

Image pinched from Walker Books UK, cover by Dan Funderburgh

 

Wild Things map workshop

Photo courtesy of Where the Wild Things Are

Some overdue photos from my map workshop — these are from the first instance of it, held at the wonderful Brisbane YA and children’s book store Where The Wild Things Are who ordinarily give marvellous workshops, and still give excellent advice. Like all bookstores, they could use some return support at this time (see also parent store: Avid Reader).

Here we all are on the back deck of Avid Reader. It was billed as an older kids workshop, and we ended up with a mixture of ages which I’ve always found delightful. Everyone gets both so light and so serious.

Courtesy of Where The Wild Things Are.

At one stage in the workshop, we build a world, to make sure everything is connected and water (absent serious provocation) flows downhill (the two most important cartographic principles), and that hills and forests are where they ought to be for the tale. (My dad, an infantry officer and grazier, used to do this with us to explain tactics or cattle movements).

Below, a cartographer contemplates the sea, which can be identified in the photo above by a very small lighthouse.

It’s the most delightful workshop. We start with the same base story-shape to illustrate, and build it out with adaptations, themes, techniques, variations…

I walk them through the process of illustrating a map, including a lot of my actual work for Holly Black’s Folk of the Air trilogy (I think only the Cruel Prince was out at this point).

(Above is a glimpse of notes I took on trees from many maps in books and old atlases when I was working out the style of The Cruel Prince).

And then everyone gets so busy (I love this picture of hands).

Some versions end up in space. Others appear to have swords stuck through them (this class wanted to know how to pin art to the wall with virtual daggers — I think this was because of the City of Bones 10th anniversary illustrations).

(Spot the little house lurking under a wrist, there).

Art/writing activities:

(This is a variation on the activities in the Old Maps post).

• Build a landscape to fit a story (a fairy tale, your own story, a movie...). On a grand scale, cushions, chairs, odd-shaped objects, and a blanket to throw over them will give you the basic layout. Then you can drape them with shawls and belts and toy houses, potplants, dinosaurs, etc to give watercourses, trees, and habitations. On a smaller scale, an assortment of cups and books with a light scarf draped over will give you a bijou universe. I’ve more than once built a small city out of thermoses, for reference.
• For illustrators: convert this into a map (or a perspective landscape painting, if that’s your style).
• For writers: consider how the terrain affects the story — often it can be the story. What can you see from a particular point (consider To Kill A Mockingbird)? What can’t you see from a particular point (consider “The Charge of the Light Brigade”)? What reasons might make one take the low road in preference to the high road? What (literally, but why not throw figuratively in there and make a family epic of it) stops a person getting from one side of the blanket to the other? If you move the lamp, how much of the land does the light touch? How much of the story could you tell in a glimpse from one hilltop (and who would be there to look?) — Michael Innes does this brilliantly in the opening of his (beautifully written although not unproblematic, in the ways one might expect from a country house murder mystery from the 1930s) Hamlet, Revenge!