What I Did On My Holidays: Part the Third – World Fantasy and Brighton

Note: If you click on a picture, that should take you through to its Flickr page, where you will have an option to view a larger version.

Part One is here: Brisbane Airport and Oslo.

Part Two is here: Dartmoor.

After a last farewell to Dartmoor, a walk along the Cobb at Lyme Regis, an altercation with a lorry near the New Forest (huzzah for steady-nerved passengers and comprehensive insurance), and the GPS in a final effort to establish its supremacy taking us to Arundel Castle instead of the Metropole, Ellen, Delia and I arrived in Brighton for the World Fantasy Convention 2013.

That is Brian Aldiss with the tea.

I don’t sketch at conventions as much as I used to, now that I know more people (one reason being Artist at Large at the Brisbane Writers Festival was so much fun was that I was officially meant to be drawing over talking). So I had a marvellous time at WFC, but did not draw many pictures. Most of my drawing was scribbling ideas during panels, e.g. this during the “Broads with Swords” discussion:

I did sit at the signing tables during the mass signing in order to draw everyone else – I learned last year that was a good vantage point. And one person did come up and ask me to sign a book I have a story in (ahem), so that was thrilling!

Here are two panels  of people you probably haven’t heard of: A YA discussion with Delia Sherman, Susan Cooper, Garth Nix, Neil Gaiman, Will Hill and Holly Black, and Nifty Shades of Fae with Tanith Lee, Joanne Harris, James Barclay, Angela Slatter, Lisa Hannett, Grahame Joyce and James Barclay. There are also a few Irene Gallo cameos in the pages, because I usually draw the people with cameras.

Unfortunately, I was taken violently ill on Saturday evening and had to leave the art reception early to be miserable in my room. The hotel reception sent up Twinings Peppermint Tea as a sovereign remedy. Ellen also plied me with medicinal infusions the next day.

As a consequence, I only have a tiny picture of my art at the show. I will post some better images of the pictures later!

Absence of pictures aside, I had a wonderful convention – talked to a lot of people, mostly, which is the point. It is difficult to narrow down particular highlights, as I keep remembering things and people to mention – charming ladies’ literary dinners (after the ladies in question unpacked our car in a team while I sat trembling in the driver’s seat), operatic serenades over dinner with the Australian contingent, lunches where no-one simply shared common gripes or tried to curry favour but simply waved their hands and discussed shared enthusiasms (stories, Dianna Wynne Jones and Dorothy Sayers). And of course I wasn’t drawing during any of those conversations – I will try to draw you all next time!

Following the convention, Aimee (Aimee L, not Aimee-my-housemate) and I went touring Brighton. I drew Aimee photographing the giant seagulls. We also ate giant meringues. I bought this marvellous panorama history of Aviation (I want the Nobrow Press Leporello series to be longer and also all of them) and we visited the Royal Pavilion, where we both fervently wished for a coffee book on the subject of wallpaper restoration.

The most touching moment was seeing the paintings of the music room when it was used as a hospital for Indian soldiers in WWI. It had the most beautiful ceiling, which Aimee is photographing here. We ate horrible hotdogs on the pier and collected Shelley to go to Thor II, and all the English people in the audience laughed at the scenes in Greenwich.

The next morning, I caught the train to York, en route to Perth and London…

Midnight and Moonshine – the cover art

Here is the cover for Angela Slatter and Lisa Hannett’s ornate, interlocked Midnight and Moonshine, which is being published very soon by Ticonderoga Publications, with a foreword by Kim Wilkins.

It started with sketches and discussions over coffee with Angela, and then by email with Lisa, searching for an image that would catch the linked stories. In the end we focussed on the mythological elements, with flowing lines, a white raven and Mymnir being beautiful and mysterious.

I took the opportunity to play around with coloured inks, as Angela and Lisa wanted a more painterly style – in the end, we went with the softer style I used on Small Beer Press’ cover for Sofia Samatar’s A Stranger in Olondria, but that had not been finished at this stage.

At Continuum in Melbourne, we sat down in the hotel restaurant and worked out the general layout. It was fun working this way – I rarely get to work up a sketch over coffee with the interested parties, but it is much more fluid and less fraught process than the usual back-and-forth by email. At the top left is Lisa demonstrating arm poses.

Russell, the publisher, had sent me templates for the paperback and hardcovers. These have different dimensions. I layered the templates to get a single template which would let me allow for all croppings in the one drawing. I then did a layout sketch (above, lower left) to make sure there was room for the title, blurb, bar code and so forth, and sourced more cape and arm reference (courtesy of Aimee, and my hand).

From there: pencils, inks, colour flats and a long colouring/texturing/shading session in front of BBC crime shows, nominally keeping my father company.

And… in the end the line work was too bold and “YA”. But the cover for A Stranger in Olondria was in the wild by now, so I had some more experience (and everyone had more reference) for what we were trying to do. In the end, after tears and weeping, the only way to soften the lines was to redraw the whole thing in pencil. Which was much more soothing than aiming for precise inkwork. I griped a lot. They turned out to be wise and correct, but I reserve the right to guilt-trip Certain Authors into buying me coffee.

At this point, the lines were approved but the colours were still too bold. This is one reason why, with short turnarounds, I colour digitally! I knocked back the colour and transparency and brought up the paper textures in the sky. This is the point at which I began to grudgingly forgive Angela and Lisa, because this second version did look much, much better. They said kind and soothing words and presented the cover to Russell, who had been suffering in (not quite) silence. He had one request – to adjust the lady’s shoulder – which turned out to be more possible than I expected (to summarise: everyone involved was wonderful and reasonable and I apologise for my histrionics, subject to the coffee comment above).

And voila, the full wrap-around cover (which appears larger here).

Some time after this, Russell sent over the title pages for the limited edition hardcover and I spent a pleasant morning signing them with Angela over cupcakes. By the end – by even 20 pages – my signature looked like “K twitch-muscle-spasm”.

The launches are at Avid Reader in Brisbane on 30 November 2012, and at the SA Writers Centre in Adelaide on 14 December 2012, and you can pre-order the trade paperback or the limited edition hardcover at the links on the Ticonderoga page.

Storybook Dalek

This instalment of the Dalek Game is for Fables Vol 3: Storybook Love, which, just – I love. I admire the concept and execution of Fables generally, and beyond that I frequently adore (or loathe, or both!) the characters, and those two things aren’t always sides of the same coin. But of course, this also means this drawing is for The Princess Bride, and therefore also for Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid and for Mark Knopfler, and all good things. And for initial capitals in fairytale books, with which I filled far too many pages of old sketchbooks.

In other news: All I’ve been able to manage about the World Fantasy Award ballot (after many tweets of congratulations) is “meep!”

And just today, Ticonderoga Publications announced Midnight and Moonshine , a collection of intertwined stories – cold and cruelly beautiful – by awesome fellow-present-and-past nominees Lisa Hannett and Angela Slatter. And I did the cover :)

Every Dalek’s Just So So Special

This rare coloured instalment of the Dalek Game is for Robert Shearman’s short story collection Everyone’s Just So So Special (being read here by the Dalek) and was particularly commissioned by the Lair (Angela Slatter and Lisa Hannett) for their interview with the author, which you may (and should) read here: The Lair’s Just So So Special or here: The Lair’s Just So So [So] Special.

I do not know if either Robert Shearman or, indeed, a red Dalek owns this table cloth and crockery pattern, but one of them should.

The Girl with No Daleks

This instalment of the Dalek Game is for Angela Slatter’s dark enchanting fairytale short stories collected in The Girl with No Hands, and other tales.

I love fairytale retellings, reworkings, reimaginings – old stories turned out and new stories recognisably true in the context of the old, rules which shift and change but are always the rules of that world. And the colours of fairytales! Sky blue, raven black, dresses of peacock feathers, skin with the sheen of flowers…

More myths and legends, new and re-embroidered, are to come soon from Angela and Lisa…

In other news: In addition to recent cover art activities, I have begun to take a… well, neither closer nor frank & fearless, but at least A Look at the LAM (Large Amorphous Manuscript). Which is, of course, full of fairytales.