Wanderlust – the Iceland art show

Wanderlust is Light Grey Art Lab’s exhibition of art from their 2016 Iceland residencies (which I attended). The exhibition is full of gorgeous art which, if you cannot get to Minneapolis, you can also see online – and buy in the art shop (including the originals of my paintings).

I sent in a set of four watercolour illustrations for a story I have been working on, which rose from the process of learning to filter stories through different landscapes.

I had been wanting to use more watercolour instead of digital colour over my line work.

I started researching a particular school of ink-and-wash illustration, and then went sideways into pencil and watercolour.

Here Our Heroine is set a task by three unusual ladies.

The Sun, the Moon, and the Stars

One of several dresses of unconventional material.

A Gown of Moss

This is a rock we stood on when looking for puffins.

She stood on a rock

She pulled him from the sea

They are at a pretty typical scale for my work – and the originals are available from Light Grey Art Lab.

Originals

 

 

Hedge of Yellow Roses – Year’s Best

The Year’s Best Australian Fantasy & Horror 2015 is out, and includes my short story “A Hedge of Yellow Roses”, which was originally published in Hear Me Roar, and also won a Ditmar!

“A Hedge of Yellow Roses” is the story of Vermeille, a vagabond knight (perhaps), who bears three messages out of a kingdom torn by revolution, and on the way stumbles across an old farmhouse and its enchanted, enchanting residents.

The Year’s Best also has all these other most excellent reasons for buying it:

 

• Joanne Anderton, “2B”
• Alan Baxter, “The Chart of the Vagrant Mariner”
• Deborah Biancotti, “Look How Cold My Hands Are”
• Stephen Dedman, “Oh, Have You Seen The Devil”
• Erol Engin, “The Events at Callan Park”
• Jason Fischer, “The Dog Pit”
• Dirk Flinthart, “In the Blood”
• Kimberley Gaal, “In Sheep’s Clothing”
• Stephanie Gunn, “The Flowers That Bloom Where Blood Touches Earth”
• Lisa Hannett, “Consorting With Filth”
• Robert Hood, “Double Speak”
• Kathleen Jennings, “A Hedge of Yellow Roses”
• Maree Kimberley, “Ninehearts”
• Jay Kristoff, “Sleepless”
• Martin Livings, “El Caballo Muerte”
• Danny Lovecraft, “Reminiscences of Herbert West”
• Kirstyn McDermott, “Self, Contained”
• Sally McLennan, “ Mr Schmidt’s Dead Pet Emporium”
• DK Mok, “Almost Days”
• Faith Mudge, “Blueblood”
• Samantha Murray, “Half Past”
• Jason Nahrung, “Night Blooming”
• Garth Nix, “The Company of Women”
• Anthony Panegyres, “Lady Killer”
• Rivqa Rafael, “Beyond the Factory Wall”
• Deborah Sheldon, “Perfect Little Stitches”
• Angela Slatter, “Bluebeard’s Daughter”
• Cat Sparks, “Dragon Girl”
• Lucy Sussex, “Angelito”
• Anna Tambour, “Tap”
• Kaaron Warren, “Mine Intercom”

 

 

 

April Calendar – The Goose Girl, and other enchanted waterfowl

Since it is fine weather for ducks here in Brisbane, this is a very fitting calendar! You can support these calendars through patreon.com/tanaudel – my thanks to all the patrons who have made them possible so far.

“The Goose Girl” has long been one of my favourite fairytales, although it is one of the few with quite ordinary waterfowl. It’s more common for wicked usurpers to go around changing true royalty into ducks, a habit I first encountered in “The Three Dwarfs in the Wood”.

Sometime’s it’s swans.

But my favourite waterfowl (today) are the plain but helpful ones of “The Enchanted Princess” (also featuring bees and ants that pay their debts).

I read all of these first in two astonishingly-illustrated volumes of A Treasury of the World’s Greatest Fairytales, edited by Helen Hyman and with illustrations from Fratelli Fabbri Editori, although the individual illustrators aren’t identified.

You can download the images below to print at home (either pre-coloured or to colour in yourself). And if you do feel like throwing a dollar or two in the hat at patreon.com/tanaudel, I would be very grateful (and if you support at $3+ a month, you get the calendar early).

 

November Calendar: Unicorns

Days early, it’s the November calendar! I was going to do something complicated with hands, but then I thought: you know what would be easier than something for which I have reference on the ends of my own arms? Unicorns. Unicorns would be easier.

Then it deteriorated into reportage on rampant unicorn-theft, and here we are. (Unicorn… foal? unicornlet? corncub? I suppose it depends on the design).

You can download the design to print pre-coloured or to colour yourself by clicking on the images below. It’s also up as a print on Redbubble: Unicorn Thieves.

I’d like to keep doing these calendars and similar extra art next year, because I love them and hope you do, but they do take time out of my paying deadlines. I’m considering starting a Patreon, hoping to keep a version of the main calendar design free but to give supporters extra behind-the-scenes details, input and material. More detail in due course!

 

The Bush Bride illustrations – for Angie Rega

Before I went overseas, I mentioned I was working on some illustrations to accompany a live reading Angie Rega was to give at the Australian Fairy Tale Convention.

That went very well, and I can now show the finished illustrations. I cut them as one continuous image: the back, with pencil lines, is shown here. It was very tiny. I did not cut myself. I cut myself pretty badly trimming green beans in New York, but this is safer than cooking.

This I scanned in and tidied up.

Because it was to be projected behind Angie while she read, we decided on a fairly clear, strong colour palette. Here is the first of the three slides the image was divided into. The background goes from dawn to day to night.

And here is the whole series as one image. If you click on it, you should go through to its Flickr page where you will have the option to view it at a larger size.

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Illustration Friday: Nostalgia

Once…

The beginnings of fairytales (historic or galactic) are freighted with nostalgia, bearing endlessly back into a past that may not have existed and yet always has been long gone. It’s part of the logic of fairytales that I love, a clear warning that they happen on a plane of myth and symbol. “Outside, over there… Maybe it did and maybe it didn’t… Now hear o my best beloved, and listen, and attend… A long time ago…”

These two sketches are from fairytales-in-development, at the point where I was finding my way into that tone. Pencil and watercolour above, ballpoint pen below.

And here’s another, the cover of a sketchbook for a project with Angela Slatter. This is just for me, but here, too, I aiming to strike the note that will let me enter the mood and story when I sit down to draw (along with a key to the colours I’ve used).

 

Illustration Friday: Prince

Life has been somewhat fragmentary lately (more or less under control, but more commuting than usual). So here are some sketches working towards the Illustration Friday topic. I keep a separate little sketchbook for working through ideas, just playing around and chasing associations, crown angles, etc.