an operating theatre

This is what they look like isn't it?  ...well it's what Jim thinks they look like anyway!

Memory Palace preliminaries

I haven't posted these before.  They are my initial drawings for the Memory Palace book itself.  Only two of them were used in the end I think.  I made my brain hurt trying to work out what the tones would be for various lighting conditions.  When it is believable it seems to make a big difference.  I really like the feeling of depth that is possible if the lighting is right!  ...Now if only I could work out how to do that in colour ^-^!

 

treasure trove

More Bell X1 goodies arrived today...

The album on vinyl:

And this t-shirt!!!

last lion lap

I finished the penultimate dream sequence for Jim's Lion this week.  There will be five illustrated dreams in the book... now I've done four of them!

roar !

perspective boost

A little while ago I blogged that I was trying to improve my grasp of perspective in drawing.  Since then I have been working at it a fair bit and I can feel it starting to sink in.  I had never realised in the past how useful it could be to to make you believe that everything in an image is in the same physical space.  I have been trying to practise in my free time on journeys and such like.   I can seldom draw with a steady line as the bus or train will be jiggling away like a good 'un.  The joy of it is that doesn't seem to matter.  I think these pictures, whether composed solely of figures or figures in a landscape, feel like they are happening somewhere.  That is a really exciting development for me because for the longest time I have wanted to be able to make stories full of all kinds of places... I just had no clue how to draw them.

arrivals

Hot on the heels of The Selfish Giant the limited edition Bell X1 Chopping Board Edition arrived today...

I'll have to remember to take the cd out before I put it in the washing up ^-^

The disc itself looks really nice!  I must make a mental note that brush drawings seem to survive reproduction much better than pencil ones!

And then the new Loaf arrived on the same day:

They have done a brilliant job with the printing.  It is totally possible to read every word in mine, which was a worry because the writing was always going to be tiny...

Here are some glimpses of other stories in this issue: By Becky Palmer...

 Viviane Schwarz:

And Robert Bidder:

MONstaz

I did some illustrations for the Awfully Bad Guide to Monster Housekeeping to raise money for the Ministry of Stories... The idea was that children would come up with the text for the book in story workshops at the Ministry and what they made would be professionally printed, edited, designed and illustrated.  Neat for them... I would have LOVED that when I was small.  Anyway it made for some mighty strange monsters.   The ones I had to draw were described in great detail.  'Twas a hard job to fit all the monster features in!

those red blobs are the monster's thoughts floating loose around his head