World Book Day! An ode to Funnybones….

To celebrate World book day today I recreated a little bit of late eighties/early nineties nostalgia. I have loving memories of a sweaty uniform-clad bum sat in a red plastic chair at Penn Road library, flicking through Janet Ahlberg’s illustrated skeleton family with utter glee. I recall copying entire pages out, drawing the dog both together and in pieces (after running for a bone and hitting a tree). From an early age I had a morbid fascination with anatomy, and how things looked beneath the skin. I’m holding this book responsible for my initial obsession with gothic imagery and body horror.

Timelapse

In my rendition of ‘Funnybones’, it is a spin-off which focuses entirely on the teenage years of ‘White’, the dog . White has become disillusioned with life-dogs with guts and fur pay him no attention and years of falling apart have left him with no body to play with and tightroping thoughts of nihilism. And so he runs away to join the carnival, and there he discovers a new life of hardcore clowning. At first he loves this new tribe of oddballs and is welcomed with open lobster boy arms, but soon the bounding bone rattler is trapped inside an infinite slapstick loop cult of dark, dark comedy, a pom-pom adorning the boney tail between his legs….

Drawn in Procreate

Geek corner:

Edited using Motionleap and InShot. Title is a manipulated font called ‘bone lock’, I used the warp tool to jazz it up a bit and follow the contour of the dog. Names are in ‘ashes to ashes’, currently one of my favourite grunge fonts. Lots of splash but primarily layered up using medium spray can brush in Procreate. Music is ‘Dem dry bones’ by The Delta Rhythm Boys. This was fast and fun.

Cat and mouse…..why do we draw?

A tutorial/time lapse video of an illustration I did as part of my Inktober efforts last year. Often, I have an aesthetic and a loose concept in mind but that’s where the planning ends. I’ve been learning about my own process and much of it deals with context. I can be flippant. I can draw without really thinking too hard, and this can be a good thing. When I started drawing this cat and mouse, I had nothing but the time pressure as motivation. And the time pressure was of my own fabrication. I’ve always been fascinated with what motivates us the draw. On this occasion like many others, there was no client, no brief, no monetary value to making this art. It is easy to forget all about playing. And realistically, we can’t play all day everyday because life and eating and preferably keeping a roof over my head (however leaky), costs something-you have to stick to the bloomin’ project…..But, the playful aspect of these experiments does prove to be somewhat relevant and fruitful in actual real life. When `I sketched out the outline, I had assumed that using colour would be too time consuming. But part-way through creation, I felt compelled to inject these neon pinks which\, against the dark blue background, popped to deliciously. What it bled into, was a series of illustrations which I made in a similar vein, focusing on a limited but colourful palette which can transform the mood of an image entirely. This is a style I’ve introduced to a paid job, so I’m not going to underestimate the power of such faffery.

Layering up in Procreate and animating in Motionleap.

I suppose this is why illustration always appealed to me. Everything is a story. The drawing is the easier part…..the real hard labour is what happens before and after picking up the pencil. What I’m realising more everyday is that I draw because I need to tell stories. And I need to tell stories to cope with being a human navigating its way through what feels like unfathomable terrain. If pictures allow me to frame my version of the world and stop it feeling so terrifyingly tenuous, I think it’s important to know and to also not not know why on earth I’m doing it.

Geek stuff: when layering in Procreate, I tend to start with a sketch and keep this layer throughout as my reference, I will duplicate it and, hiding the original sketch layer, now smudge and shade the determining lines of this one. I will add highlights on a top layer and shadows on a low layer…..as the mid tones build up I am free to merge layers down and re-smudge to create more shading or duplicate layers to deepen contrasts.

Tutorial to show layering dark to light

I can’t boast that every hour of faff results in a lightbulb moment or even a useable piece of art, but each time I came to the black page, I was quicker in deciding what to draw, which colours to push, and I began forming ideas in my mind about how these characters and objects would interact with a world or with each other in larger, more thought-out and methodically composed ‘weird-scapes’ as I’ve started calling them. These larger works are all in states of ‘process’ and shall take time to finish. I am enjoying the progression and the layering. I am beginning to trust my ‘playtime’ but now prioritising my ‘building time’. Building time is when my desire for narrative and explanation kicks in. So, in the January fog of paid work and off the back of ‘play time’, storytelling is filling in the tiny cracks of time I have left after tending to human stuff like eating and moving my body. Building time is spent determining why I draw the things I draw, can they be utilised for something bearing more significance?. Building time is moving what I thought was frivolous art forwards with a purpose. Conscious creation is so much more satisfying, to my surprise. When a really provocative concept slaps you in the jowls and you’re out on your bike or buying bog roll……that momentary muse magic can have you pulling over and voice noting yourself-words spitting over your phone like rapid gunfire. It can be the reason you accidentally bought kitchen towel, your bum receiving unexpected tenfold absorbent ply this week…..The getting it down on paper (writing paper) as an image translation is merely the afterthought….

This is SO MUCH HARDER when physically drawing and painting, you are consistently layering up. With painting on an ipad, your layers are magically malleable; the layer system has changed the way I paint quite dramatically. I don’t know if this is how other digital artists work but it has become my intuitive method….faster but without losing the feeling of ‘drawing’ authenticity.

Feeling at home in monochrome……..

I have been improving my consistency with ‘planning’ illustrations more. I can’t promise to do it every time, but whether it be for myself or for a client, actively making decisions at the sketchy end of things rather than plunging in blind (not saying I don’t do this, I do, and sometimes I’m lucky) and hoping I’ll come back to the surface with two live lungs and a decent picture. So below I’ve added my initial rough sketch, halfway-through and finished artwork. Although I usually hate how ugly the sketches are, they do hold the basic magic, and as you can see, I pretty much stuck to it. I often do this with client work, especially when designing, to ensure I’m going in the right direction and not wasting any time…..so why not foster my side projects in the same way?

Rough sketch

Half way through…..

Finished illustration

Time lapse

I began a lot of monochrome work last year, reluctantly……the lack of colour means working harder on other things…..the light and shadow, the contrast. I think it has been good practice, and there is something about the black and white which transports an image backwards in time. This piece needed to do exactly that. Patent t bar shoes, glorious snails and the ominous shadow of an ancient river man…….I wanted photo realism and grainy texture of a black and white photograph, but with elements of the supernatural. I drew up everything with a spray can brush (see half way pic), and then went to town with a variety of splatter-style brushes. A great brush set for creating soft and almost out of focus speckled effect is ‘Splash’ and has become a fixed go-to in my Procreate toolbox. I’ve wanted to be more experimental with perspectives and compositions….so in this piece we are the viewer and the figure which casts the shadow. Creating just the right amount of slime glisten was my favourite part. I also like the power of anonymity as it lends to the horror genre and allows our imaginations to do some of the work- it’s inside our heads that the real weird stuff happens.

Art process: how to manifest a glitter demon

A quick process video to explain how I draw using Procreate. I draw on the iPad the way I draw without an iPad, (minus the mess and with the indulgence of ‘undo’). I approach digital art in the same way I would traditional. I’ve had to tweak and adjust my process due to the tools I am using. I begin with a sketch layer, getting the concept and composition down using a soft brush (which I generally smudge into the image or delete at a later date). I am in the habit of choosing two contrasting colours as an initial starting point. Then I work on building up layers of dark and light, the smudging and blending help bridge the two values and create the ‘inbetween’ shades. Once happy with a layer, I merge it down into the main colour layer and work on blending the two. Texture is my final focus, to add interest and depth. I’m most comfortable implementing the default spray can brushes, they are a predictable steady flow line and great for blending.

Procreate timelapse

Fancy and decorative brushes are tempting to chuck on in full force (especially when they are so fabulously glitz). But I’ve found too much of a good thing can steer the image away from the organic and traditional flavour I’m trying to achieve. I’m conscious that certain pattern brushes are too uniform to use lazily, and so it’s often an interesting push and pull of experimentation. My solution so far is to use a few different brush sizes, transparencies and even stroke angles to achieve a more ‘natural’ application of the sexy textures. And to again smudge and blend where there would naturally be more shadow. I have a feeling I use Procreate on the iPad in a very old school and possibly clumsy way…..But for me the process of drawing traditionally is where the joy is. And so I try not to take away from that experience too much. What is great, is the infinite possibilities I am offered having drawn up an image digitally. I can manipulate it in a million different ways, animate it, duplicate it, play with the colour values and so on…..I don’t know if this in interesting to anyone, but I am fascinated by the different methods artists utilise in their making process.

How I make stuff

A Japanese version of ‘Chinese Girl’ and a pink version of ‘The Green Lady’

“It’ll be this kind of deep blue”she said. “The kind of color that somehow sucks your eyes and your ears and all your words —the color of a completely closed-in night”

— ~ Banana Yoshimoto, Asleep

So, firstly, new favourite name is Banana……..

An artist I adored as a teenager is painter Vladimir Tretchikoff. My grandad had an A0 book of his paintings which, aside from sheer size, were absolutely stunning to flick through. The metallic blue greens of the skin tones and the vivid floral fabrics draping across these stunning forms-exotic jewellery-clad women of wonder…… conjure a fantastical element to the work, the sitters are exalted to supernatural status. Hauntingly beautiful expressions captured in this semi-surreal aesthetic had my imagination dangling down from a cherry blossom tree, deep in a forest somewhere exuberantly east….. The colour play approach to his portraits is so divine, and yet heralded with the nickname ‘King of Kitsch’, if this is kitsch, so be it, I love it. I wanted to replicate this style to illustrate some Japanese folk stories. I looked to his pieces, ‘Chinese Girl’, ‘Lady from Orient and `lotus Flowers’, ‘Balinese Girl’ and ‘Miss Wong’ for inspiration.

Time lapse of painting drawn in Procreate, animated in Motionleap and edited with InShot

‘The Beautiful Dancer Of Yedo’ and a ton of other Japanese folktales are on my current reading list because I’m a massive geek. This particular story is melancholic, a skilful geisha called Sakura-ki (Flower Of The Cherry), performing for the gentlemen of Yedo......happy on the outside as she dances in bright silks and pours their sake, but her demise is internal as she forever hides her true heart behind the mask. Sad, riveting stuff.

“But Sakura-ko looked down and mused and said, “Little narrow street of the geisha, paved with bitterness and broken hearts, your houses are full of vain hopes and vain regrets; youth and love and grief dwell here. The flowers in your gardens are watered with tears.”

I'll get my butt back over to Japan one of these days, oh the colours, the stories…..

Music is a mishmash of a Japanese lullaby Lullaby of Takeda [Takeda No Komoriuta], Japanese Folk Song - The Red Birds [Akai Tori] which I added an almost dissonant lower harmony to and then mushed with some darkwave beats and klangs for adequate interjections of ‘wtf is going on’…….

Creative Procrastination: I still haven’t done my tax return but I did download my brain (and update my website)

Every January I fail to do things in the correct order. I am predictably sloth-like once the practical left brain is told to do administrative gubbins. The business stuff is not my favourite, and tax….ugh….But the silver lining is that, in avoiding the arduous task in hand, other slightly more creative chores suddenly appear to be fascinating and spring to the top of my agenda, I mean I’m writing this blog post- yet another method of dodging the deed. Anyway, I did whatever any artist does when they don’t want to add together numbers…I updated my website. It’s something I wish I did more frequently and I suppose it is one incentive for keeping this blog…but it’s been reduced down to a once a year job. In rejigging and reviving I’ve come to realise, the process isn’t just for the sake of keeping up appearances and staying relevant for client work purposes (although yeh all that stuff, and it’s nice to retrospectively look at what you made and actually paid for all those bags of coffee and haribo). The ‘renovations’ are incredibly uselful for shaking up the noggin. Flicking through old and newer work, comparing styles and themes….. if I’m lucky there’s a feeling of evolution rather than regression……liking and and disliking certain pieces, questioning and confirming concepts and so on, it’s a good thing.

Website update whoop! But now what…..

What the update did do was to remind me what work had really given me a buzz. What was I most proud of, what should I be showcasing, what do I really want to dedicate more time to this next twelve months? I have been moving towards concept and storytelling illustration more and more. What I enjoy is conceiving a project from start to finish, from a rough sketch or a slapdash line of poetry to something cohesive and polished. I like narratives. I like the gradual unravelling of a story through a combination of words and images. Although children’s book illustration is certainly not off the list, what I’ve felt I wanted to explore is a more diverse audience. Picture books for adults are less common, but art books with commentary aren’t entirely niche……I suppose I’m considering some sort of hybrid. Reflecting on the work I had the most fun with last year; the sci-fi horror concept work for Climax film fest got me relishing in neon light brush and illustrating for folk-horroresque Sweetmeat had a more delicate monochrome approach……then the self induced daily churn out of glitter demons in my Inktober effort was another major highlight, I like the squeeze of this month; whilst drowning in unnecessary deadlines sounds very strange and masochistic, it’s the limitations of time which catapult me out of my generally slower thinking comfort zone and I end up with a bunch of concepts which I can later expand upon. So these things felt the most creative and rewarding…… The spanner thrown into my works here is the parallel interest in animation and motion visuals……but perhaps one thing could bleed into another. It gets stressful thinking I have to create parameters….but equally as menacing is trying to attach a zillion strings to an indecisive bow. For now I have decided not only to discuss my artistic blunders through medieval weaponry metaphors, but to focus on themes and real-life pages which could eventually comprise a book. No rigid motif just yet, a working title which I’m keeping secret for a wee while longer, and an optimistic hope that in doing the work all that will collate and the meaning will miraculously emerge. As I continue to chuck things on this blog over the next few months, hopefully a project outline will take form and I will be able to write with some more awareness of what I’m trying to achieve and convey with a pinch more clarity at the very least. So…..the next post about this can only be an improvement on the current flimsy and vague outline….as of today, I think I’m putting together an illustrated book of auto fiction…… A mythical and supernatural memoir…..I think, something like that. I have scraps of paper with nostalgic rantings scribbled across them in the dead of night. I have sketches of my child self floating in space…… I’ve had to dangle the creative carrot of this book just far enough away that I get this ungodly tax return completed before I get too absorbed in what I want to be an absolute passion project. Too much pressure and unattainable goals verses realistic yearly achievement is key. I need to be okay with making a few things well, or even just the one thing….And there is lots more time for other ventures to percolate. No 100mph attempts on a zillion different projects. Calm down, enjoy the making. That’s the dream.

Happy New Year. Moon girl Vs Dark Matters

Opening 2023 with another timelapse. This piece was originally for a short story which I haven’t abandoned completely-but has transformed into something very different, so can be art for art’s sake for now…..until I pick it up again and use it. Maybe I will, maybe I won’t. Not going to dwell on it. Also the ‘no dwell only swell’ mantra must be adhered to this year. Not simply because it’s a fantastic rhyme that I made up just now but….. because I want to get stuff made…..which means less hesitancy and more decisiveness. Mourning for the ideas and sketches that get tossed aside is not time spent well….they are all parts of the process according to Morcheeba and I’ve been living my life by those wise lyrics since 2003.

This was the first painting I did testing out a fabulous set of cosmic star and galaxy brushes. Their tantalising bristles plunged me into hyperspace where I encountered an enigmatic entity comprised of brooding dark matters…..but then I got myself distracted by a sugary donut shaped planet which I double dunked in a wormhole…..so yeh that translates as ‘the brushes are great, the juices are out of the barrel, let’s just share the things and do the stuff and hopefully there are a few weirdo aliens out there reading this and clicking play. Just don’t hold me accountable for any explanations until May. By May I’ll understand every wonder nugget the world has to offer. Hmmmm……as a backup, there’s this story about a moon girl which is a bit naff.

Sketch

Time lapse. Painted in Procreate, played about with in MotionLeap, edited in InShot.

Happy Solstice; praise the baby Tumnus….

Raising a glass of mulled wine and a luxury mince pie (not just any mince pie, an M + S mince pie because I’m being a fancy pants)….to the hibernal Solstice. The longest night and the shortest day means all kinds of topsy turviness occurring in the Narnian realms…..During the chaos, a baby Tumnus got chucked the wrong way through the wardrobe and began a new and savage life of Christmas consumerism here on earth. Here are some satyr sentiments…..oh and a time lapse.

The sun hangs low

During midwinter

With submissive glow

Beams splinter

Short lived lives

Across fauned faces

Unadorned graces

Transformed spaces

In which they feast

From child to beast

They each feed

Magnificently

Beneath the same sky.

We are all creatures of this land

Leachers on remand

Preachers

And teachers

Canned up.

And this night

The worms spill out

And wriggle

About

The moon soaked ground

Enticing

The red feathered fiends

Like miniature gods

They prey

And beaked heads

clean away

The remnants

Of night

And of day

We are all monsters of this land.

We each partake

In this hand

To mouth

Forsaking

Of souls and logic

Breaking of banks

And ourselves

Relying on Elves

And other magic

To explain

This

Tragic

Human

Phenomena.

I’m not nodding to deer on high,

Nor to a red suit chimney spy

For tis this season

the real show stopper

Is the

aggressive

carnage

Of the Christmas shopper.

🖤Gruß vom Krampus🖤 Misunderstood monsters and a texture brush geek out

This week I’m sharing a time lapse of my Krampus inspired painting, been as it’s Krampusnacht and all that! Oh, and a quick poem from the misunderstood horned goat god himself…..

So many hours and layers......my drawing hand is now aptly claw-like. Krampus has been a favourite character of mine since I was a teenager. Having discovered an Austrian postcard depicting this peculiar demonic companion to a seemingly accepting Saint Nick, I was confused and then utterly delighted. One of these days I'm going to get myself over to the Tyrol for a proper Krampus parade, horned up to the merry eyeballs.

When drawing this piece I realized plastic and baubles take a good getting into before they resemble themselves, very satisfying when you finally achieve a texture that's been driving you nuts. Still work to go on the horns and extra highlights generally, and to decide on a light direction to try and unite the elements a little more, but almost there...... It's all practice. And practice makes stiff fingers and crossed eyes and an empty cafetiere.

Gruss Vom Krampus time lapse

Painted in Procreate. Animated using Motionleap and edited with InShot

Music : Yeah Yeah Yeahs ‘Spitting Off the Edge of the World’ and snuck in some Krampus soundtrack elements to add creep…….

Geek stuff:

As usual I primarily used spray-can medium nozzle brush for drawing and shading, it’s my absolute comfort zone-my equivalent to a soft pencil. For some of the textures I have compiled a little tutorial video below.

Hair and fur; layering up and building texture dark to light using the default Procreate hair brushes in the Materials folder- as well as a set of ‘Nilyn’ hair stroke brushes which are available free to download and import online.

Sequinned skirt: Possibly the first time I used this brush, and now it’s become a ‘sequin’ brush for me, so perfect. It’s the default brush in Procreate’s ‘Abstract’ folder called ‘Opticon’.

Background: Another win with the default Procreate ‘clouds’ brush, in the ‘elements’ folder. Using a large brush and low opacity and gradually adding more dynamic shapes u til a spooky cloudscape is achieved!

The font is ‘Medusa’ with a Gaussian blur layer behind, I love this font and the fun of rasterising and smudging the hell out of it.

Brush tutorial in Procreate

And now a poem……

Always the meanie-it gets my goat

When all I want is to care for and dote

On kiddiwinks good, bad and in between

I’m really not keen on removing your spleen

I’d rather hang out and do something fun

I leave art supplies but you grumble a ton

It’s not out of spite I wrap you up coal

I encourage artistic practice for the soul

I don’t have a list, you’re not under surveillance

Not like St Nick minions who run out of patience

With elves on shelves keeping an eye

On every wrong doing, the Yuletide spies

Me, I’m a hoot, I’ll show you a time

I eat from a trough and my beard too is sublime

I don’t get the deal with rosy cheeked Santa

He’s high on elf bars and chilled cans of Fanta

Father Christmas and all that jazz

He spends his December off on the razz

I’m the one working hard on the books

Admin assistant and on tenterhooks

For the one day of the year my ‘boss’ does some work

Gets dressed up in red and acts like a jerk

I know I look scary, with horns and all the rest

I’m beast with the biggest of hearts in my chest

I’m not gunna bundle you into a sack

If your behaviour this year was slack

I’d never make you into a pie

I’d give you a cuddle, I’m just really shy……

Misunderstood for so many years

Feared by all, it brings me to tears

Underneath the monstrous demeanour

Is a fun loving guy and pro trampoliner

I won some trophies back in the day

My reputation got trashed and they took them away

I’ve a spring in my step, a twinkle in my eye

I’m kind, I’m Krampus! …………………And I love to lie……..

Rough sketch then working light on dark and layering up in Procreate.

Details

Inktober 2022 Week 4: I actually completed the damn thing

For the first time since giving the Inktober thing a go, I actually completed the damn thing. 31 days of drawing, editing and posting a concept. The final week of originals are below. My intention now is to cherry pick any ideas and characters I think could be developed into some sort of narrative and finally, FINALLY get a real start on some book pages. I’m really chuffed to have stuck to the daily deadline and although I don’t expect every piece to mean anything or be of future relevance, the month of crazy process has been great. It has invoked emergency without depriving room for creative thinking (I hope). And, other than a sore hand from hours of scribbling, And a few late night finishing things, Ive somehow squeezed it into my working week/weekends. I now have a new catalogue of images to play with, whether they be a spring board for an entirely new piece, or I create a collage-like amalgamation of characters. I’m excited and as always a little disturbed by what came out and shall be working through the winter on tying together this dark surreal world filled with masked freakoids pining to be understood…..

Final week of bonkers video art to portray my Inktober daily drawings:

Inktober 2022 week 3: moon mad

Week three continued the journey to the moon, where I encountered a wolf donning human clothing and a coy, one armed porcelain moon child…..I am beginning to recognise themes and characters which I shall be stuffing aggressively into a peculiar new world soon enough, for the sake of clearing up this junk cupboard of a mind I have. Here are the original drawings:

And here are the little weirdo critters brought to life……

Inktober 2022 week 2: demon zoo

Week two, still on the glitter demons, though they are becoming fairly animalistic…..managing to stay on track but already regretting my ridiculous idea of animation everything……..it’s so much fun though!

The original drawings are below, followed by a video showing the entire week of work.

Day 9

Day 10

Day 11

Day 12

Day 13

Day 14

Day 15

Day 16

Week 2 video artworks

Inktober 2022 week 1: creature discomfort

Kicked off the first week of Inktober putting far too much time into each piece, as I knew I would. I am bad at slapdash……..But, with a looming daily deadline, I did at least have the self- restraint to stop me going too far into the world of just one concept. I began with a notion of some characters I can only describe as ‘glitter demons’, small cherubic and playful folk, tiny tricksters perhaps. My original intention was to keep things simple, follow the theme and share a drawing a day. What actually happened was an overwhelming urge to bring these bejewelled beings to life….and so I added an extra stage of work by animating and creating mini video artworks for each piece. I think this compulsion is thanks to my scrutinising inner narrator……a stagnant image with no story attached seemed like a get out. What I wasn’t expecting was for the video editing process to add so much feeling to the images, in some ways this was a necessary experiment to force my noggin into conjuring what the story was, or at the very least the essence and the mood-to conceive these creatures and the way they move and chucking music on top managed this better than I predicted.

Below are the drawings I created this week and below that is the video artwork

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Day 4

Day 5

Day 6

Day 7

Day 8

All images drawn up in Procreate, played about with in Videoleap and edited in InShot.

Week 1 video artworks

Handmaidens of the eternal: away with the faeries

Death and faeries this week……firstly a time lapse of what I call the ‘inbetween stage’-adding the initial areas of shadow and colour. There will be a lot of layering and detail to go. This bit is fun and loose and just me fathoming out the composition. This is one of a few paintings I have been putting thought into on the theme of the faerie soul; although these folkloric beings appear mostly cutesy in popular culture, I’m more interested in the dark and mischievous aspects of what they represent in the human experience. T

Time lapse of sketching phase

Music: The Dance`of Death by Audiomachine

he Latin root word for fairy is ‘fay’ meaning fate. No concrete outline for this project just yet but the faeries have taken hold….

Fathoming out composition and playing with colour

As autumn creeps over us I’ve been bonkers for conkers.....conkers smuggling contraband in the form of red locked fairies in hibernation. I love the symbology of magic sleeping and dormant inside the seeds of the trees, awaiting invocation. This concept is rooted to a few ghost stories I am conjuring, and edging towards Samhain gets me in the spooky mindset. Ghost stories and fairytales were my favourite as a child, the tingle on my skin as I imagined the antagonist wandering into fateful woods……these tales of wandering into the unknown were and still are a pure joy.

Time lapse of a conker faery

Music: ‘September Song’ Agnes Obel

Time lapse

Music: ‘Move on’ Anna Von Hausswolff

The autumnal hues of greens and oranges won over here for my palette choice. I am obsessed with this fiery haired cherubic aesthetic…..

Time lapse video of the colour layering

Music: ‘In the tall grass’ Cinderwell

According to Arthur Conan Doyle, faeries are ‘The handmaidens of the eternal’. I’ve been researching the stories connecting faeries and the inbetween…….including many an account of those convinced they were lured by the little folk to a feast, only to suddenly realise they are being coerced into a dance of the dead. I find these detailed anecdotes fascinating, the mix of reality and faeryland as an exploration of a person’s psyche. For now I am busy layering up these little sprites from dark to light as they lead me through both….

Sketch to colour time lapse

Music: ‘All alone’ Like what

Ginger cherub Angel/faery/horned sprite vibe…….

Cosmic Sand Worm (time lapse)

Angry sand worms spring from the enlightened skull of a desert drifter. I am falling deeply in love with turquoise star light. So satisfying cleaning up those beam edges. This was originally a black and white piece I was playing with yonks ago, initially inspired by an Inktober prompt ‘dune’.

Black and white illustration

When I hear the word ‘dune’ my mind is taken swiftly to the philosophical sand storms whirling about in the head of Frank Herbert. I see the baron lands of Lynchian Sandworms, the forbidden zone in Beetlejuice occupied by almost comically crude ghost predators munching on entities lost in limbo.....(and as a side note, also the movie that introduced me to both Geena Davis and Winona Ryder as well as the concept of goth and misery and humour in one neat little fearless package-so pretty significant) This was my starting point. Embracing fully my nerdery when it comes to all things fantasy and sci-fi during the 80’s and 90’s (before I had friends to intervene), these granular memories thrust me through a wormhole of nostalgia. I was scribbling down witches and monsters and conjuring up dystopian worlds way beyond the PG rating using a multicolour biro pen. From the moment I realized my creations got reactions-particularly concerned ones from adults and petrified ones from younger kids, I was addicted. No surface was safe from a Dali-esque doodle.......Forever propelled into a healthily unhealthy obsession with all things surreal and gore. When my sister chose Disney movies, I was clutching a rental vhs with the most gruesome front cover I’d managed to find.....(imagine a seven year old waving the hellraiser movies about with utter glee) This illustration is a melding together of childhood nightmare and intrigue. The triangle carved into the skull is in reference to the higher consciousness they were all hooked on in the 1984 Dune movie, going nuts for the spice etc., (an aspect of the story I didn’t grasp as a kid, long before I discovered caffeine and other worldly mind altering fun stuff), and also a nod to the excellent reworking of Pink Floyd’s ‘eclipse’ which Hans Zimmer has created for the remake. Queen of waffledom at your service.

Full time lapse

Colour illustration

Finished colour illustration

illustrated in Procreate (sketch and colour using spray can, star brushes and luminescence brushes for glittery fabulousness, various texture brushes for sand and cloud brushes for angry worm breath magic) animated using Motionleap

Music mashup: Beetlejuice theme song Danny Elfman, Eclipse Pink Floyd Hans Zimmer cover, metamorphosis. Philip Glass