This week’s adventure…

..being a tour guide around some Glasgow studios (and a cemetery).

I’d like to think I don’t get complacent, but I do. I forget the wonders in my own back yard - in this case, Glasgow. That thing about tourists seeing more of a place than the locals do is true. I guess I am kind of a local in Glasgow now, and it has taken a group of students from my old art school, Massachusetts College of Art and Design, to make me realize I have missed a few of this town’s gems lately.

The MassArt crew gave me a mandate to arrange some visits with Glasgow designers, animators and illustrators - and I have to say, it was a great exercise. It pried me out of my comfort zone (the studio) and, as is usually the case when you depart the comfort zone, I had some eye-opening experiences and met some fantastic people.

It was excellent to visit Glasgow School of Art, check out what the Visual Communication students are up to (which involves some truly amazing multimedia work) and, for the first time ever, tour around the Mackintosh Building. Next we visited the Necropolis, Glasgow’s famous hilltop cemetery. It’s an atmospheric, strange place with fabulous views all around Glasgow.

The next day we visited the very entertaining animation company Once Were Farmers, who spared us time for a show-and-tell of their work even though they were working toward a huge deadline. Freight Design, a graphic design consultancy, let us traipse through their studio too, and look at their classy publishing projects.

The highlight was sitting around a big table that evening with Tom Green from Dangerous Ink magazine, comic artist Vincent Deighan, aka Frank Quitely, comic colorist Jamie Grant and comic artists Nulsh and Rob, looking at stunning original art and magazines.

I am still feeling inspired by all this, as I get back to my own work feeling refreshed and a bit more connected into Glasgow’s creative scene.

Book Illustration Fan Sites #3

The Art of the Bookplate

I have been thinking about illustrated bookplates this week. I have several for kids that you can download on my Fun page, and I have been thinking about designing more. So I thought I’d do a little research on bookplates and found this excellent blog, Bookplate Junkie. Like the other book illustration fan sites I have recommended here and here, this one has loads of wonderful images of bookplate art and design.

I wish people used more bookplates! I think they show how much a book is cherished by its owner. They are also a bit mysterious - when I find an old book with beautiful, old-fashioned writing on its bookplate, I imagine what that person was like, how he or she got the book, and what happened to him/her.

I am glad there are people like Bookplate Junkie, who care about these artistic little slips of paper that say so much with so few words.

Book Illustration Fan Sites #2

Prancing knights, geometric landscapes - I absolutely love this blog.

Thank heavens for people who are passionate enough about book arts and illustration to scan pages and pages of historic book plates and put them up on the web. If I ever need inspiration, BibliOdyssey is one of my first ports of call.

A fiendlishly interesting selection of work, nicely presented. Bravo, Peacay!

Friday Freebies

Two new downloads for kids (and grown-up kids,too).

It’s been too long since I added downloadables to the Fun page on my website, so I’m fixing that today. I just put up a new Mermaid Bookplate that you can print out and then cut out and paste into a good-sized book or notebook or even sketchpad.

And it’s time for a new maze, so I made a Sun Maze in honour of the summer solstice on Sunday. It’s a pretty tricky one and you’ll need a super sharp pencil because the paths are quite narrow. It might take you a minute to find where you are supposed to come out. Here’s a hint: it’s just to the right of the sun drawing in the middle.

To find both these downloads, visit my Fun page and scroll down to Bookplates and Mazes. I promise to add more soon!

Book Illustration Fan Sites

Two bloggers who know what they like.

Now here’s a gorgeous blog with a great title. (I’m going to make you click on the link to learn what it is. I think it’s worth the trip.) Its author, Will, is a connoiseur of beautiful historical illustrated books whose images he takes the time to post for our enjoyment. His blog is thoughtful and well researched, especially on his series of Lost Illustrators from the past. (The concept of Lost Illustrators intrigues me. There are a number of ways you could imagine them…a desert island full of people busy scratching images into books made of bark? Illustrators seized by the urge to run away to said desert island? I could go on.) Will has chosen some very worthy illustrators to spotlight. All of them have inspired me, so thanks, Will.

I also recommend the extraordinary early 20th century book covers from Japan. There are delightful and strange images here, clearly influenced by Western art trends like Art Nouveau and Art Deco.

The other blog I am enjoying is Julie’s Children’s Illustration blog. Nice images of illustrators’ work she admires and a whole lot of links to other interesting blogs and websites.

It’s Friday. Go on, put your feet up and look at the cool artwork on both these blogs. Enjoy.

Philip Pullman

I wonder whether most people regard Philip Pullman as an author and illustrator, picking up on the fact that he made the striking black and white images throughout the His Dark Materials trilogy.

If you visit Philip’s newly expanded website, you will be in no doubt of his illustrative talents. He has created a gallery page showing his illustrations from all three volumes and the book jackets used in many foreign editions, from the Faro islands to Indonesia to Galicia.

I found this section interesting because (in some cases more than others) it shows how other countries’ publishers choose to represent the stories. I am intrigued with the Dutch jackets for His Dark Materials, though I am not sure how much they would entice a child to pick them up. They have used three paintings by the Greek-Italian Surrealist painter Giorgio de Chirico.

I identified two of the jackets as The Mystery and Melancholy of a Street and Torino Printaniere. I guess the publisher decided to show us the arrid, haunted Italianate cityscape of the books’ parallel universe, Cittagazze, rather than main character Lyra and the huge polar bear, Iorek, who seem to be on many of the other jackets.

The most frightening jacket has to be the Slovakian cover of The Subtle Knife - if that deranged pair of eyes doesn’t keep you awake at night, I don’t know what will!

What I’m Working On Now #3

Rosmore by Teresa Flavin

Now you may be wondering: who is the Rosmore in the image? She was inspired by a powerful character in the historical fantasy novel I, Coriander by Sally Gardner, published by Orion Books. Sally is also an accomplished illustrator and designer, which comes across in her highly visual writing style.

I enjoyed the book very much and felt inspired to illustrate Rosmore in her feathered stole and head-dress, sitting in a chair with huge carved wings. She regards herself in a mirror. You might guess from the image that she’s not a particularly sympathetic character, but I don’t want to give Rosmore’s role in the story away - so why not read I, Coriander yourself? It’s well worth it.

I have Sally’s subsequent books about the French Revolution, The Red Necklace and The Silver Blade, in the queue of books I will be reading next!

Tales from Outer Suburbia

Another stunning book from artist and writer Shaun Tan

Maybe this week’s theme should be “My Heroes”, what with Nick Bantock yesterday and Shaun Tan today. Both gentlemen are certainly alchemists, creating lush worlds from the seemingly ordinary.

Today I have been swooning over Tales from Outer Suburbia, Shaun’s new collection of short illustrated tales. It took me quite a while to get past the end pages, wall to wall doodle-fests of tiny creatures, aliens, robots and caricatures. And then come the full colour illustrations, many bathed in dusty late afternoon light. There is a sense of space to these paintings that reminds me of the American West: big sky and endless tracts of boxy houses. But then Shaun Tan is from Western Australia, so perhaps that big sky feeling is something shared with America.

But just when you are thinking, yeah, wide open spaces - bang! - the next story is about a tiny foreign exchange student who lives in a teacup. Here Shaun’s virtuosic skill in drawing close-ups of household objects is breath-taking. It reminds me of one of his other books, The Arrival, a wordless picture book that was so moving it made me choke up in Borders when I first looked at it.

And then another surprise…the next story’s illustrations are homages to Japanese wooodcuts, with delicate colour and texture. Is there anything this man can’t do? Because as you go along, you find dense hatched ink drawings, beautifully tinted with subtle colour. And then further on, ye gods - is that scratchboard (scraperboard to some folks)? Toward the end of the book, there is a full page spread that looks like pastel or oil pastel, a
riot of pink textures.

Ahh, what a pleasure to read and look at. And so are Shaun’s other books: The Red Tree, The Viewer and The Lost Thing.

If this isn’t enough inspiration for a Friday afternoon, have a look at Shaun’s website and prepare to swoon.

New Website Gallery

I have been hard at work on my website recently, upgrading some functions and modernising it a bit. My recent Dreamweaver training is starting to make sense. It has been a bit of a learning curve but I am getting my brain around it and looking forward to learning even fancier stuff to put on my site. With the invaluable help of webmaster Malcolm, I have a slick new slide show format on my Portfolio and Gallery webpages, and some new work to show. I was grinning from ear to ear when I finally got those pages right. I love “Ah-hah!” moments.

What I’m Working On Now

Magic Mirrors

Morwenna sketch

One of the themes I love working with is “enchantment”, both in my writing and artwork. One tends to feed the other. While I am painting something, bits of story ideas float around somewhere in my unconscious mind. Sometimes I just have to stop painting and write for a while to get it down on paper.

While the next novel’s plot ferments in my head, I am painting a series of acrylic paintings on paper and wood that have a fantasy feel to them. Six of these pieces are wooden frames with mirrors in them. I like to think of them as Magic Mirrors.

The first one I am posting here is called Morwenna. She’s a dark character I sketched while I was leading a workshop recently for Young, Gifted and Talented teenagers in Keswick, Cumbria. I thought she’d look interesting on a mirror.

I don’t know why she came to mind. Maybe it was because the students and I were chatting about how wildly popular vampire novels for teens are at the moment (Morwenna seems a bit vampiric, but I don’t think she is really).

Morwenna Mirror

Here’s the finished painting. Yes, in real life the mirror is square, but I had to photograph it obliquely so I wouldn’t catch my own face in the reflection!

Detail

I am working on the second and third mirrors now and I’ll post them when they’re ready.