The Fairyland Project

A few weeks ago I got some books out of the library and one of them was Catherynne Valente's latest installment of the Fairyland series, The Girl Who Soared Over Fairyland and Cut the Moon in Two.  Catherynne Valente uses such rich language and her descriptions are so imaginative that I wanted to do some illustrations based on the book. 

In fact, I thought, why not do a chapter illustration for every chapter in the novel?  Which I promptly set out to do.

As of now, I have all 21 chapters thumbnailed, have moved onto the roughs for about five of them, and have finished three.  I think I'll post these in sets of three, as and when I finish them.  They don't take all that long to make, individually speaking, but I have other projects on the go and occasionally one of these will stall a bit as I try to deal with a difficult part.

I'm hoping to avoid spoilers for the book, mostly.  You won't learn who cut the moon in two (or why) from me!  Those of us who read the first two books will see September reunited with some friends but that's not much of a surprise to anyone.  What would a Fairyland book be without a wyverary?

But hopefully I'll get some practice in and people will be intrigued by the book and the whole thing should be good fun for all.

Anyway -- here are the first three chapter illustrations of Fairyland 3.

Chapter 1
September Looks at the Moon:

Chapter 2
Boomer and Beatrice:

Chapter 3
The Blue Wind:

So far I'm enjoying playing with real ink again and reviewing my compositions.  I'm starting to idly plan what other books I'd like to do.  I have a small supply of kids' books I never quite got rid of.  Classics like The Witches and The Phantom Tollbooth and The Neverending Story.  The more I think the more books I'd love to illustrate!

Oh well, I'll just keep going with this and see where it takes me.  Maybe the next book I illustrate will be one I wrote myself. :)

Alphabet of Thorn

I started this as a digital piece way back in January 2011.  (Has it really been 3 years already?  Really?)  I've been meaning to do some illustrations in coloured pencil and this seemed like a good candidate, since it had a simple design and the digital piece wasn't going anywhere.

Here is the last WIP of it I posted to this blog.

So this version has a few problems with it, but I like it quite a bit better than the digital.  The face turned out much better.  I'm not entirely sure about the texture.  I've been looking at the famous Drew Strouzan's work and wondering if I should experiment with pencil crayon over watercolour.  Apparently he used an airbrush with acrylics, but there's no way I am going to buy an airbrush.  But it seems to me that you could do something interesting and similar with watercolour.

Anyway, my plan is to do a collection of illustrations in pencil crayon.  Except that I am going to have to buy more pencil crayons because this drawing (painting?  This week someone said that people refer to pencil crayon works as "paintings" which I find very odd) has used up a good chunk of my frequently-used colours.  Now that I am replacing my Prismacolors with Polychromo pencil crayons I'm going to have a devil of a time matching the colours.  Apparently charts exist, but you have to pay for some of them.  Which means that I will be making my own (rather incomplete) charts.

Back to this picture.  It is loosely based on the fantasy book "The Alphabet of Thorn" by Patricia McKillip, which is not a children's book but it is a book I would have happily read as a teenager had I been one in 2004.  Right now I am trying to decide what book to do next.  Today I am leaning towards Bunnicula, but I may tackle something I haven't read before.

Goldberry

A late Christmas present for a friend who is a Tolkien fan.  Pen & ink, 7.5x9.5".  Now that I have the new transfer technique down, I'll probably be doing more work like this to sell at Artwalk.

I'm pretty happy with it. :)

I used one of Faestock's gorgeous gown photos as reference for the folds.

Thorn WIP

What I've been working on today:

I started a pic last January loosely inspired by the book The Alphabet of Thorn. The sketch wasn't very good and I abandoned it. I started throwing on some loose colours today when I found some nice reference for candlelight.

I hope it turns out nice. I sure need a few good porkfolio pieces.

Beauty

From Tanith Lee's short story "Wolfland".

Void

Loosely inspired by Michelle Sagara's "Cast in Chaos".

The Remedy

Finished! And mocked up as book cover, even.

Funeral

Speedpaint scene. Minimal reference. Loosely inspired by the funeral scene in Pamela Dean's "The Hidden Land".

So You Want To Be A Wizard

Roughs for the next kids' porkfolio piece:

This month I'm working on a comic buffer so not much non-comic art is going on.

Un Lun Dun - Version 2

A different approach to Un-London:

Did it over the weekend. I think the cartoony approach works better for me? I don't know.

Speed Scenes - Owl's Well That Ends Well

The opening scene from Donna Andrews's "Owl's Well That Ends Well".

Speed Scenes - Bonehunters

An excerpt from one of the Malazan books. Not entirely happy with the central figure (I think it's Apsalar) but hey -- there's only so much you can do with a speed painting and no ref.

Speed Scenes

Since my last digital painting didn't turn out so well I'm taking my husband's advice and doing some speed-paintings setting up scenes from books. It feels like I'm falling down on the roughs, so the roughs have to improve. I'm trying to improve depth and lighting.

Gregor & Bennis from Jane Haddam's fabulous mystery series:

Titania Concepts

This week's CHOW was Queen Titania. Had no time to do the finished picture, but I did come up with a few designs (click for bigger):



I've got a partial watercolour of that last one, I ought to finish it one of these days.