Observation Journal: In-world surface patterns

This observation journal page features a little exercise in thinking through some thematically appropriate in-world surface patterns for fairy tales.

I’d been making notes, on and off, reminding myself to pay attention to the surfaces of things (in writing as much as drawing), not to forget the human urge to ornament surfaces, the narrative usefulness of surface ornament, and had played some sketching and writing games varying surface detail in stories. (It ties a bit to thoughts on staginess and strong aesthetics too, of course.)

On this page, I picked a couple of fairy tales, and just leaned into what might be story-appropriate ornaments.

First, for Cinderella: pumpkin-coloured brocade, silks hand-painted with vines and doves with beaks the colour of blood, jacquard in gilt & grey like the scales of a lizard, wigs fantastically styled into bowers and coaches, or featuring a real clock that struck the hour.

The second half shifts through several stories:

A deep blue overdress stitched with a full of snowflakes, thickening towards the hem so that no blue remains visible. A bed carved by a master-carver with castles and briars and a girl going off sturdily on some adventure. The back of a rocking-chair carved with a comfortable-looking wolf.

It is all self-referential, but to an extent that adds to the depth and concentration of a small world — and the details could be swapped out where breathing room is needed.

I discovered my default mode was direct references to the story, or foreshadowing. But as I pushed it further, it became wider references to the shape of the world (the importance of glass to fashion at that moment, the tales told within the world). And that of course lets you push further to ask: Who makes these things? What fashions prevail? Who is responsible for the glass, with or without enchantments? Who put these stories in the carvings?

Writing/art exercise

• Pick a fairy tale (or another story you know well), and a key (or favourite) scene from it.
• Make a list of important objects and colours and themes from the story as a whole. (Pumpkins and glass and lizards? Newspapers and bicycles and dogs?)
• Consider that key scene. Where could you add surface ornament? Wallpaper and clothing? Graffiti and paint jobs? Jewellery? T-shirt logos?
• Make a quick sketch (drawn or written) filling those surfaces with story-appropriate designs, as thematic or literal as you like.
• Where do they add to the story? Where do they raise questions about the world? Where do they overcomplicate things, or make the world too small or self-aware? Do you like that artificiality, or want to open the world up? (There’s not a wrong answer here, but it’s interesting to feel out the edges of your preferences.)

March Calendar: Step off the Path

Welcome to the March calendar, brought to you with the support of my patrons, who make this much inking time possible, and who get the calendar early — and other things.

This month’s design finds its origins in a combination of William Morris designs and red-figure pottery (both of which are much livelier in real life than in reproduction).

Below are versions you may download and print at home, pre-coloured or to colour. I’ve also put the colour version up as a print on Redbubble. No scarves, etc., (yet, or at least not without some heavy intervention), as I did not design it to fill that shape.

If you do use and/or colour the calendars, I’d love to see photos in the wild — please feel free to share! And if you’d like to join on Patreon (or otherwise throw a few dollars at the calendar) — thank you for helping make these images happen!

Illustration Friday: Old

  

I’m quite fond of my hands, and all, but I need to find a camera angle that’s less in love with my knuckles.

This little cut of Red Riding Hood’s old (=connection to topic) grandmother is part of an ongoing project I like to call OH MY GOODNESS MY PHONE DOES TIMELAPSE VIDEO.

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Illustration Friday: Red

 

For all my love of Little Red Riding Hood, the myriad analyses of its meanings and origins, the fun that can be had reimagining and reinterpreting it, my favourite explanation for the emergence of the story remains that in which it is a fireside tale, meant to frighten the hearer when the teller shouts, “And it gobbled her all up!”

Incidentally, Charles Dickens loved Little Red Riding Hood as well, and it can be quite entertaining to trace the themes of the fairytale through the wonderfully twisted plot of Our Mutual Friend.