Season's Greetings!

This friendly polar bear and I hope you had a wonderful Christmas, or at least a few happy and cosy days off. :)

My wares + BICS

The above is a picture of my recent wares (complete with some natty new display materials... I love the double postcard stand!). :D Pictured are:

* The Great Silkie of Sule Skerry (standard sized book)
* The Great Silkie of Sule Skerry (new pocket-sized version!)
* A6 postcard - "Wish"
* A6 postcard - "I eat my greens"
* Off by Heart (on poetry) - a new mini-book (details coming soon)

This past weekend I had the pleasure of selling this humble array of items at Birmingham International Comics Show, on a table with work by other wonderful folks from the Midlands Comics Collective. BICS is a great event, but as quite a bit of what's sold there is superhero/sci-fi related or quite masculine, I always feel a bit like a fish out of water at first!
Nonetheless, I met some great people and got my hands on this amazing concertina by Micah Lidberg (Nobrow Press). <3 <3 I've wanted it since the guys from Nobrow gave a talk at my university earlier this year, so I couldn't resist when I saw it at the Gosh! comics stand with 20% off the price.

Up next is Handmade & Bound, where me and the other girls at Whirlygig will be attending to sell lots of lovely bits and pieces. :) If you're free and can make it to London on the 21st of November, please come along and see us!

I eat my greens

My scanner seems to hate gouache (I keep spending ages trying to get the levels close to the original image!) but I like painting with it. And I love tortoises. =D

Wish

Painted in gouache.

Thinking of making this one into postcards or a print. :)

Silkie - now available to buy!

I've just made up some more copies of The Great Silkie of Sule Skerry, and they're now available to buy online!

Click -->HERE<-- for Folksy listing
Click -->HERE<-- for Etsy listing

I'd recommend Folksy myself, particularly if you're in the UK, but I know more people are on Etsy so that's an option too. :)

While I'm here, maybe I should finally get around to linking to my favourite version of the song? Yes, I think I'll do that.

Poem: Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half-sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive (stamped on these lifeless things)
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings;
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of this colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

The Great Silkie of Sule Skerry

Here are a few images from my latest book/zine, The Great Silkie of Sule Skerry. it's been a poem that's interested me for a long time, so I enjoyed doing it. :) Thanks to everyone who bought a copy at the zine fair, particularly Fehmida, who gave it a great review on her blog. <3

 I'd encourage you all to read the story, or - better still - listen to it sung as a ballad (it really is beautiful). Or, y'know, you could buy a copy of my book. ;) But maybe that's a topic for another blog entry, eh?

Poem: "The Eagle"

The Eagle

He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ring’d with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.

— Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Poem: "Saint Francis and the Birds"

I'm not especially religious, but I find religions and their stories very interesting. I also enjoy poems, and I liked this one by Seamus Heaney so I decided, as a quick exercise, to illustrate it.



Saint Francis and the Birds

When Francis preached love to the birds
They listened, fluttered, throttled up
Into the blue like a flock of words

Released for fun from his holy lips.
Then wheeled back, whirred about his head,
Pirouetted on brothers’ capes,

Danced on the wing, for sheer joy played
And sang, like images took flight.
Which was the best poem Francis made,

His argument true, his tone light.

—- Seamus Heaney

Fun with charcoal

Some more development sketches for "Silkie". :)

Little gouaches

Sorry these are a little pixelated. I thought it was my scanner being awful, but apparently it is my laptop misbehaving; a different scanner produces the same awkward results. Nonetheless, here are some little gouache pictures from one of last summer's sketchbooks.

The Great Silkie of Sule Skerry

"I am a man upon the land

And I'm a silkie on the sea

And when I'm far and far frae land

My home is in Sule Skerry."

I may have finished my degree, but [in between clearing out my student house and planning holidays...] I'm still working on my next project. I'm planning a black and white book, based on a folk ballad from the Orkney Isles called The Great Silkie of Sule Skerry. As with many folk stories and songs, versions seem to vary slightly (some are longer or shorter than others, for example), but it's very beautiful.







Here are some rough drawings I did to start things off. :)

Whirlygig Does Whitstable

Whirlygig, the fledgling collective I'm one-fifth of, recently had its first exhibition at the Show Off gallery in Whitstable. Borne of a chance encounter at very short notice, it was a lot of fun, if extremely stressful! :)




(still setting up in this picture, hence the spirit level and Doritos... :))



We weren't expecting to make money, as we were really doing it for the experience; but we ended up not only breaking even but in profit, which is wonderful!

Not only that, we got some really helpful and encouraging feedback (our first collaborative project, Birds in Hats, proved a hit also). Onwards and upwards!

Little decisions

A few editorial illustrations for a short project; they're based on an article about the decision-making process. :)







Each of them has something that isn't quite right about it, in my opinion, but at least there's something I like about each of them too. May develop the latter two further, particularly the one with the shoes. I like those shoes.

More cards..!

Here are a couple more cards..! I've been taking the opportunity to practice using Illustrator some more. The bunny one comes with a few different messages (for Easter and Mother's Day as well as "thank you").





We'll be printing tomorrow..! Lots of people have done designs, so hopefully printing will go well.

A couple of things

Here are a couple of recent acrylic paintings that, well, I liked enough to put up here. They're just experimental/developmental pieces really, but I enjoyed doing them. :)





I suspect the first one was unconsciously somewhat inspired by Ruth Brown 's picture book A Dark, Dark Tale... it was one of my favourite picture books when I was little, and probably still is really! I'm quite pleased with how the colours turned out in both of these. :)

More cards

Spring is hopefully not far off, and we need to raise more money for our degree show publication, so we're having another card sale! We'll be selling Valentine's cards, Spring season cards (Mothers/Father's Day/Easter etc), and more general designs. Here are a few of mine..!




I have some more designs I'm working on, but not sure about them yet. Hmm..!

Allerleirauh - disguise yourself as yourself

Rather regretful that I didn't make this post in January sometime, but dissertation took up my time and left me in a befuddled state for a while afterwards -such is life! Here are some of the spreads from my book. I enjoyed working with furry brushstrokes and muted colours. :)