nothing for tea

I found this in an old sketchbook and thought it oddly suited to the blog page format...

learning on the job

For some time now I have been aware that my use of the photocopier to separate my artwork into a linework stage and a colouring stage was limiting what I could achieve.  In The Selfish Giant, I knew that colour would play an important part in telling the story; what with the changing seasons and the multitudes of children (who I thought needed to appear as bright and varied as the flowers the narrative links them to).  In early tests I found that the photocopier was leaving so much grey on the page that it was impossible to make anything bright at all.

As I had done with While You Are Sleeping, I tried to develop a new method that would be more apt to the story.  This one would involve using a range of coloured lines, the line colour being determined by the painted colour underneath...

Ultimately I wasn't able to make it work and only a few pictures done this way made it into the book.  I really struggled to get things right first time and ended up redoing artwork again and again and again, which is almost always guaranteed to sap all energy from it.  I also found it really hard to get a mark-making method that worked for both the giant and the children in the same spread.  For every picture you see in the published book there are about five other failed versions sitting in my cupboard!  I'm glad I tried though. By the time I had finished working on the book I had finally begun to develop colour processes that felt more like my own (my earlier post making shapes talks about one).  

I think the first thing they told us in art college was, if you don't take a risk, you'll never learn anything new,  which is all very well but there's a lot of falling on your face inbetween times.

further adventuring

Another thing I discovered replaying fantasy gamebooks was that they are great to improvise comics to! Here is a section from the first one I tried:  The Warlock of Firetop Mountain
 

If anyone actually reads this, let me know!  I'm pretty sure I've got more of it in a sketchbook somewhere.

puzzling

Memory is a strange thing.  I could have sworn the poster for the film Labyrinth had an insanely wiggly maze going on forever behind David Bowie.  Can't seem to find it online though...

Anyhow, the version I thought I saw was the inspiration for this Jim's Lion panel I drew today.  Now I'm sort of hoping it only ever existed in my mind!

always wanted to do this

This footage was taken for the documentary on Memory Palace but didn't make the final cut... 

one day the giant came back

Selfish Giant copies arrived at Random House!  I got one yesterday... ^-^

adventuring

When I was small I loved playing choose your own adventure gamebooks.  I rediscovered them in my twenties, vowing this time that I would play them properly and not cheat by keeping my thumb in the previous page and automatically winning every fight.  Curiously, this made for a very different experience.  Instead of living the dream of the all-conquering hero, I found myself playing as a series of characters (I made up a different one each time) who scrabbled around the edge of an adventure before facing an unpleasant and untimely death.  I got really fond of some of these guys (and girls) and was very sad when they passed away.  If anything I think I identified more with them than the heroes I had played as a child.  It's nice to know what happened to some of those skeletons that seem to decorate every dungeon...  If the fantasy universe were the real one I'm pretty sure that would be my fate.

Why did I bring my Bagpipes??

Why must I have such a ridiculous hobby?

Oh, God, another bloody passageway.  East or west - I don't know!

I'm going to die, I know it.  Some pesky goblin's going to jump me and have my guts out.

Entering this tournament and preparing for my almost certain death has taught me one thing: It is a myth that women choose their men as life companions.