Monoprints

"The Palace of Dreams" (click here for close up)

I was experimenting with monoprints last night. I like the grain and the looseness of the line.

I worked into this one with white acrylic, ink and gouache.

a grumpy cat (possibly based on Dan's cat Blake...)

jar of brushes and ink

brush pen drawings from my sketchbook...

I've been getting some lovely comments on my Society6 bags while out and about recently - from cloakroom attendants in the National Gallery to friendly ladies on station platforms. This one features a mythical Peryton, a creature described in Jorge Luis Borges' Book of Imaginary Beings.

You can buy my Peryton bag here: http://bit.ly/1uEd51q

Wolpertingers in the Woods

Not usually drawn to make something this busy, but I felt a certain folkiness was called for.

Beginning to animate my drawings...

I've been learning how to turn my illustrations into GIFs this morning.

Visited my family back in Stafford over Easter - spent a lovely day working in the garden with my mum, accompanied by her two guinea pigs. We have some red tulips that my Grandad Cyril planted before I was born which come up every year. I love how eternal flowers are. (I planted freesias, which are her favourites, and lettuces, which I suspect the guinea pigs will gobble up).

(Bacon the guineapig)

My Grandad Geoff sat for me and let me paint his portrait, which was lovely...I hardly ever get chance to paint people from life any more. It's nice to paint someone you love and admire so much. I was so impressed with him for sitting still for so long too - he never, ever sits still. He always has to be busy doing something. His childhood nickname was "lightning".

Later, while having a sort out and throwing away sentimental ephemera I came across a couple of bits and pieces I made a while back:

(the piece above was from an idea for a comic about Prosopagnosia or face blindness)

"mirrors and copulation are abominable, since they both multiply the numbers of men."

A couple of close-ups of the collage I'm working on at the moment, using open source material from the British Library: https://www.flickr.com/photos/britishlibrary

British Library: We have released over a million images onto Flickr Commons for anyone to use, remix and repurpose. These images were taken from the pages of 17th, 18th and 19th century books digitised by Microsoft who then generously gifted the scanned images to us, allowing us to release them back into the Public Domain. The images themselves cover a startling mix of subjects: There are maps, geological diagrams, beautiful illustrations, comical satire, illuminated and decorative letters, colourful illustrations, landscapes, wall-paintings and so much more that even we are not aware of.

The Library of Babel

I had the idea for the hexagon maze as a way of depicting solopsism (the idea that only ones own mind is sure to exist and everything else is a creation of the mind) - I sketched an image of a man in a hexagonal room with each wall as a mirror reflecting endless crowds of other people. 

In "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius", Borges also imagines a land with a language which lacks nouns, where things are only understood in their relationship to other things, and events are only recognised as part of a sequence. Lost objects are duplicated with gradually lessening precision, archaeological finds can be brought about by hope or suggestion, tiny items can have the mass of giants, while towers of blood and transparent tigers are hardly worth mentioning. So I experimented with illustrating these ideas across a maze, almost like the panels of a comic. 

It was only more recently, when I was developing the hexagon mazes into collages, that I happened to start reading Borges' The Library of Babel...which to my surprise was set in a huge labyrinth of hexagons. 

(In short, I began illustrating one Borges story and ended up illustrating another I'd not yet read.)

"a thing produced by suggestion, an object brought into being by hope" - Borges

A postcard for my brother Lewis

Peryton

Peryton: a mythical deer-bird hybrid with the shadow of a man. After killing a man, it casts it's own shadow. Thought to have flown from Atlantis as the island was being destroyed by an earthquake. Possibly invented by Jorge Luis Borges in his "Book of Imaginary Beings"

Interesting fact about Jorge Luis Borges: his grandmother Fanny Haslam came from Hanley in Staffordshire, and she used to tell him stories when he was small. Occasionally Borges slips her surname into his stories.

Alternate version:

Wolpertinger

The Wolpertinger is a fanged rabbit-deer-squirrel-owl-hybrid from Bavarian Folklore.

Magical Eels

The Abaia is a huge, magical eel in Melanesian mythology.

It dwells at the bottom of lakes in the Fiji, Solomon and Vanuatu Islands, and considers all creatures in the lake its children - protecting them fiercely from anyone who would harm or disturb them. People foolish enough to try to catch the fish from a lake containing the Abaia are immediately overwhelmed by a large wave caused by the thrashing of the Abaia’s powerful tail.

(I painted this while listening to Welcome to Night Vale - if you liked Twin Peaks or Stephen King you might enjoy it)

The Monkey of the Inkpot

“This animal, common in the north, is four or five inches long; its eyes are scarlet and its fur is jet black, silky, and soft as a pillow. It is marked with a curious instinct – the taste for India ink. When a person sits down to write, the monkey squats cross-legged nearby with one forepaw folded over the other, waiting until the task is over. Then it drinks what is left of the ink, and afterward sits back on its haunches, quiet and satisfied.” 

- Jorge Luis Borges "The Book of Imaginary Beings" citing Wang Tai-Hai, 1791

(I tend to get though ink pretty quickly, and I suspect there may be one of these little creatures nesting in the drawer of my desk)

Mythical Creatures

My very kind brother gave me a set of Winsor & Newton gouache paints for my birthday, and I've been busy using them to make paintings of mythical creatures. (I always forget how good it feels to paint with gouache...and whenever I use it, I remember my tutor at Falmouth saying: "it has to be just about the consistency of single cream").

This is a Fenghuang, an East Asian bird with the head of a golden pheasant, the body of a mandarin duck, the tail of a peacock, the legs of a crane and the wings of a swallow. (Descriptions vary...in some it also has the neck of a snake and three legs.)

Process pics

A few months back I completed a painting for a client in New York who commissioned a portrait reflecting the style of classical Hollywood.

I really loved working on it - it taught me to plan out my images beforehand, because I have always been someone who draws straight off in pen and ink without any kind of pencil guide, and I always felt like drawing in pencil first was somehow cheating (thanks, Aubrey Beardsley).

But actually, the longer the process of making something, the more room for discoveries to be made, and it's often where the best ideas regarding colour and composition have chance to step in.

Lately my process is: detailed light pencil sketch (focusing on areas of colour) > then watercolour > then add ink lines (sparingly). 

If I draw in ink before I watercolour the tendency arises to stay too strictly within the lines, and the colours can't interact as much. There is still plenty of room for improvement - I always feel that I could paint much more loosely than I do - but it's all part of the learning process.

 

first sketches

 

pencil and watercolour

watercolour, gouache + pen and ink

final piece

close-up

Billy Bragg

Dan and I went to see Billy Bragg a couple of years ago - we waited in the snow, but it was worth it - his gigs are full of such warmth and humour, and he's easily one of the most likable musicians. 

I've been meaning to do a portrait of him for ages, so here it is.

Were most of your stars out?

These are two new pieces which I made for Bloom at the Garden's Gallery in Montpellier Gardens, Cheltenham. The exhibition features work by fellow Falmouth graduates Sophia Bloxham, Lucy Boden and Liz Clayton, as well as our talented friend Katie Thomas, and runs until Tuesday 14th May.

I decided to get away from using the computer to colour my illustrations, and it made me realise how much happiness I get from painting and collaging. There is something about making things with your hands, and discovering through making, which a computer cannot replace. I have a box of collage materials dating back to my first year at Falmouth - different types of paper, sheets painted in acrylic, bits and pieces collected in terms of colour - and it was nice to let the materials shape the direction of the work. 

I have a few of the instruments pictured - the banjo, ukulele, melodica, glockenspiel and autoharp - although I would never consider myself a musician - I have a very talented brother who plays guitar beautifully - but I like to make music in a very amateur sense, for my own amusement.

The typewriter illustration is based on a quote by J.D. Salinger from one of my favourite books, Seymour, an Introduction. 

The quote comes from a letter that Seymour writes to his younger brother Buddy:

"When was writing ever your profession? It’s never been anything but your religion. Never. I’m a little over-excited now. Since it is your religion, do you know what you will be asked when you die? But let me tell you first what you won’t be asked. You won’t be asked if you were working on a wonderful, moving piece of writing when you died. You won’t be asked if it was long or short, sad or funny, published or unpublished. You won’t be asked if you were in good or bad form while you were working on it. You won’t even be asked if it was the one piece of writing you would have been working on if you had known your time would be up when it was finished…I’m so sure you’ll get asked only two questions. Were most of your stars out? Were you busy writing your heart out? If only you knew how easy it would be for you to say yes to both questions. If only you’d remember before ever you sit down to write that you’ve been a reader long before you were ever a writer. You simply fix that fact in your mind, then sit very still and ask yourself, as a reader, what piece of writing in all the world Buddy Glass would most want to read if he had his heart’s choice. The next step is terrible, but so simple I can hardly believe it as I write it. You just sit down shamelessly and write the thing yourself. I won’t even underline that. It’s too important to be underlined. Oh, dare to do it, Buddy! Trust your heart."

"Respectable people...what bastards!" - Emilé Zola

Lewis recently introduced me to the work of the writer Emilé Zola - at the moment, I have just begun reading The Belly of Paris. I admire his ability to go out and document the world around him in great detail - his books are precious resources, capturing the essence of a place and time before the existence of film. 

More festive pattern making...

sweet-wrapper blue...

reprising my interest in sami culture and gouache...