The Ladies' Paradise

Today I've been experimenting with watercolour.

This is a book cover design for The Ladies' Paradise (Au Bonheur des Dames) by Emilé Zola, a novel and documentation of the inner workings of a department store (based on the Bon Marché in Paris), detailing the experiences of the staff and the techniques used to overwhelm the senses, aimed at encouraging customers to spend. (The handrendered typography is based on Zola's own handwriting on the original manuscript.)

New Empress Magazine

I had a nice surprise in the post this morning...

Issue 3 of New Empress is now available from these stockists:

• The BFI Southbank shop in London.
• Wardour News in Soho, London.
• Cornerhouse in Manchester.
• The New Empress webshop.
• The Prince Charles Cinema, London.
• Riverside Studios, London.
• Watershed Media Centre, Bristol.

you-kulele, me-kulele

I've begun to learn the ukulele and because its swiftly becoming my new obsession I decided to make a little information book covering the history of this petite instrument, its ancestor the Portuguese cavaquinho, its close relatives, its place in Hawaiian culture, the basic chords, strumming technique, its popularity during the 1920s with stars like Buster Keaton...but I only got as far as its name: "ukulele" (Hawaiian for "jumping flea") and got so distracted by this little piece of information that instead of the planned information book, I have a little narrative developing, about the peculiar life of a Jazz-age, Gregor Samsa-ish, parasitic beastie.

r-e-a-c-h

alphabet soup

I've been playing about with creating letterforms based on imagery from my web-comic, 

Les Jardin de la Memoir (which has just been updated with some new pages)

You can now find my work on Behance: http://www.behance.net/emmaridgway

Drawing on Location

Lewis kept moving his hands while I was drawing him, so it looks like he has a cat on his lap.

Pumpkins and Peaches

My Grandad Cyril has been growing beef tomatoes, and has been very generous in sharing them with us. He is 87 years old, and his garden always looks full of colour and completely beautiful. I made him a drawing of some of his tomatoes in watercolour and charcoal (Lewis cheekily calls it "pumpkins and peaches").

And so castles made of sand fall in the sea, eventually

My Dad asked me if I'd make him a portrait of Jimi Hendrix.

I've liked his music for a long time, but I didn't know much about his life, so I watched this documentary while making the drawing ("Jimi Hendrix: The Uncut Story"). His family and friends are interviewed, and while there is a tendency for people to elevate him into a prophet-like figure, its really insightful about the meaning behind many of the lyrics of his songs, and about his early life. He had a really difficult life, but he was also incredibly talented - able to play the guitar upside down and back to front, as well as playing songs backwards, by ear. I felt quite sad by the end of it all, but it made me start listening to his music again.

a little rant, and then back to work

"I think the situation is that there are art directors out there who I'm sure think I'm a total bastard to work with, and there are art directors out there who think I'm a complete dream to work with...and I think its in direct relation to how much they try and change me, basically. If I get an art director who likes what I do -that's why I'm doing it in the first place - and then trusts me to do it, and trusts that I know my audience and that I won't just mess around...I'm doing the project because I really feel something for it, I want to do it as best as possible...if theres that air of trust, then we get on famously and I have wonderful working relationships with art directors and designers. 
But the ones who come with preconceptions and want me to change and do something else...it gets very testy. Because really I just like to be left alone to do my own thing, and so I'm just not appropriate for those jobs that need tonnes of roughs and tonnes of development and constant changing, I'd rather not do that. I don't like doing roughs because the roughs just kill it for me. I like to work out the piece as I'm doing it and allow for mistakes and for inspiration and abstraction - for things just to happen." - Dave McKean, (in an interview with Escape From Illustration Island  - podcast episode 61)

New Empress Magazine are currently doing a survey on cinema-going habits - giving entrants the chance of winning a set of DVDs. You can find the survey here.