Back from Toowoomba, trailing ghosts

I’m newly arrived back in Brisbane (just in time for a snap lockdown!) after a wonderful but intensive week as artist/writer-in-residence at Concordia Lutheran College in Toowoomba — my old boarding school.

I’ll post more about it when I’ve organised my thoughts and have some photos from the school that I can share. However it was a wonderful week of workshops with grades 5-11 (and incredibly supportive librarians and teachers) on writing, ideas, the illustration process, using drawings to write and narrative structure to draw, and industrial fabulism, and the Gothic, and the Australian Gothic, and Australian Gothic Birds. The students went all-in, and developed ideas for some fascinating (and not infrequently horrifying) work.

I am now going to sleep very thoroughly. But to keep you awake, here’s a quick sketch I did based on one of the ideas the Grade 5s had, of a ghost with a clock where its face should be.

October calendar

Some spooky things in trees for October!

I did this at the last minute, which is why there is so much going on in the picture. I also watched a lot of Frost tonight. And did some other illustrations. And it is 2am, good grief. My eyes basically look like the eyes in these pictures.

I changed the order in which I coloured the under-layers, and am getting closer to a useful effect.

By clicking on the images below, you can print the calendar either pre-coloured or for colouring in.

 

And I’ve put it up on Redbubble, too, on assorted things.

Illustration Friday: Shades

Trying out different approaches to cover, preparation for some upcoming work. The illustration above is all digital (using a coffee-and-ink texture I made last year). The one below (which I prefer – I like the clear lines of ink better than softer digital in general) is pen and ink with digital colour – the only texture is from the drawing paper.

Possibly I prefer the one below because I would like that sweater.

Edit: Aim for next week is to get the picture up before the topic changes over.