Blog project: The Selfish Giant - rough illustration no 2

With this project I want to switch between watercolour and black and white illustrations to fit in with the mood of the story, so here is the first pen and ink rough:

I'm imagining the giant as tired, fed up and grumpy after his long journey home, and thoroughly disgruntled to see children playing in his garden. So he shouts at them to clear off, and all the colour goes from his life!

Blog project: The Selfish Giant

There's been another lengthy absence from my blog due to unforseen family circumstances at the start of February. Thankfully, I can now resume my usual creative life.  In the interim, I have had the excellent news that I was awarded a merit for my diploma in children's illustration!

This seems a good time to paint and draw another blog project, and I thought of doing "The Selfish Giant" by Oscar Wilde , which was suggested to me last year as a story which would suit both my pen and ink and water colour work. I have been wrestling with sorting the story into suitable segments to illustrate, and in some ways I find this task easier by actually making the images! My plan is to make a dummy book of the roughs for the story, so here is the first:

Setting the scene showing the children playing in the giant's garden of peach trees on their way home from school.

Completing Things

One of the more bizarre effects of breaking my finger last year is that I have become very comfortable with not completing things!  In the first part of 2011 I had embarked on many projects, ranging from a Woodland Trust graffitti knit bluebell , to my half-made sketch books , to reorganising my collection of cds, to tidying the garden, etc, all of which I was forced to simply leave as they were on May 2nd. At first, this proved to be quite a challenge because I usually derive a lot of pleasure from celebrating the finished results of a project, and the excitement and energy of my success spur me on with my next scheme.

Last May I encouraged myself to live with the chaotic mess of my many works in progress because I believed the optimistic forecast of "six weeks" for my broken finger to heal.  In fact, nine months later, my hand is now just about sufficiently healed for me to resume work on these tasks. In the meantime, I notice that living with unfinished projects has become a habit.  Breaking my hand did not diminish my enthusiasm for starting things, so my flat is now in danger of being over run by works in progress!

It is commonly thought that it takes 21days to form a habit, so I'm going to challenge myself to focus this February on completing as many of these items as I can, beginning with these wonderful mittens:

The pattern is Ysolda Teague's "cotton reels", which are forming a wonderfully warm doubled yarn fabric that would be perfect for current freezing temperatures.  I have one thumb to knit, ends to darn in, and a ribbon string to attach to the loops so I do not loose a mitt. Wish me luck!

Learning How To Make Books

My next goal for enhancing my real life portfolio is to add some dummy books: last year several children's publishers admired the contents of my portfolio, and said that they would like to see demonstrated how my illustrations could work in a book!   I also want to follow Viviane Schwarz's example, and make my own sketchbooks specifically for some characters I am in the process of dreaming up.

 In fact, I began experimenting with making books early in 2011, then put the construction phase on hold because of breaking my finger and damaging the tendons.  Every week I notice new improvements to my hand, and am delighted this week to be able to do the necessary cutting, marking and stitching to complete the making of this pink sketchbook:

I've also finally sewn together these:

which were being held together with loops of ribbon. It makes such a difference to be able to turn the pages like a real book!

When funds and time permit, I'd like to treat myself to a course in bookbinding at the fabulous Shepherds Falkiners -  my rudimentary skills, mostly gleaned from watching videos and experimenting, could be vastly improved with some practical guidance!

Happy New Year of the Dragon

Here is Fiery Fred the young dragon who had not fully learned to control his fire: I painted him early last year, but he seems very apt for today! Happy chinese new year of the dragon.

 I've been very quiet on the blog, partly at least because my fabulous friend Deadly Knitshade showed me how to use Instagram ! This app is fantastically easy to use, and cuts out a whole layer of techy stuff with scanners, etc that I use to post things to my blog. With the on going s-l-o-w healing of my damaged hand, Instagram has proved fantastically user-friendly: I had a lot of fun making a Pumpkin advent calendar on Instragram in December.

The good news is that I also found some brilliant hand exercises, designed for musicians, which work on the tendons: the Cowling System . I've been using exercises twice a day since the beginning of November, and have seen great improvement to the strength, mobility and control of my hand, so I can highly recommend these.

More good news: this gang of humpties went to live together with a lovely young lady and two cats, and have been having some great adventures from photos I have seen:

Finally, I'm both drawing and playing my guitars again, so there will be more to see here soon!

Pumpkin's adventures part two

On Sunday evening, Pumpkin was very excited to join me and friends Nick and Paul at a Jameson's Cult Screen Club screening of  "Invasion of The Body Snatchers" at the Union Chapel.  Here he is admiring the magnificent building, and enjoying watching the actors who are setting the scene before the film starts.

Then on Monday, at Stitch London, Pumpkin made friends with a crocheted and knitted zombie completed minutes earlier by the talented Toria, and I suspect had a sneaky swig of my glitterberry drink!

Here he is with another new friend, the famous Cooey the pigeon! Pumpkin enjoyed these adventures so much he's keen to accompany me again, although he has drawn the line at going to work.

Happy Halloween

It's almost Halloween, so Pumpkin humpty has come alive! He's already found an ally in Poppy the  black cat. I'm wondering what mischief they have planned for tomorrow night?

Undiscovered Voices

This is the drawing I made in August for the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators "Undiscovered Voices" competition: I had great fun making the drawing  - those are my own casually discarded boots on the floor!

Congratulations to the eight lucky shortlisted illustrators: Kim Geyer,  Jennifer Graham,  Julia Groves,  Amber Hsu, Heather Kilgour , Shana Nieburg-Suschitzky,  Nicola Patten,  and Rachel Quarry.  I'm looking forward to seeing their interpretations of "Undiscovered Voices" in December, when the six winners will be announced.

Cranford knit-a-long September 2011: finished mitts

Here are the completed Cranford mitts: I actually began knitting the darker pair in April ie before I broke my finger! Then while the finger was healing I decided to put the mitts on hold, lest my guage knitting the new-fangled English style was different to my life-long continental style knitting. So, it feels a mile stone in the healing process to have completed this pair of mitts : )

Bookworm and Knit The City

 Gosh! Comics was the exciting venue for a book signing by my friends at Knit The City on 16th September.  I knitted a tiny friend to take with me:

Questia, a Blinkin' Book Worm (the pattern can be downloaded for free here from Whodunnknit).  She was rather taken with Plarchie the recycled plastic squid - something about liking his colour - but felt it wise to gaze at him from a relatively safe distance, although he usually only eats humans.  She did not notice the tip of tentacle creeping from behind the books!  I left Questia at Gosh! - she seemed so at home there among all the fabulous books.

Hand healing is progressing painfully slowly

The healing of my broken finger and damaged tendons is progressing - as confirmed by the physiotherapist yesterday, which is excellent news. However, the process is painfully s-l-o-w. Unfortunately for me, the precise way I hold my hands to draw and paint is extremely painful.  When I forced myself to complete a new detailed illustration for a competition in August,  my fingers swelled up again, and I felt like a character in Harry Potter being forced to draw by Dolores Umbrage! Apparently, tendons are like elastic bands, and in the healing process they have been tightened by scar tissue, so I need to loosen the scar tissue and very gradually stretch the tendons again to full range of movement.
Naturally, I am very disappointed about this: I am keen to get back to normal work with pen and paintbrush.  Patience is required though, and acceptance that I can only do very short bursts of drawing at the moment.  These tiny sketches are from the fantastic Womad at Charlton Park in July, and are of a scale and type that thankfully I can currently do.

Etsy shop

I'm very excited to have updated the link from here to Dragonfly Sky,my etsy shop: the etsy mini app creates a far more attractive button on my blog, and it shows an item from current stock!

Orange hat

This orange bobble hat I knitted over the weekend is now on its way to the excellent St Mungo's, whose work with the homeless impressed me in the days when I did development work for housing associations. It was very easy to say "yes" to knitting a hat for them when Stitch London asked for volunteers to contribute to the knitting of a batch of thirty hats, and I'm looking forward to seeing how St Mungo's use them!

At the edge of the photo you can just see a  glimpse of children's character story I am developing, too: I will post some drawing soon.

Head injury and the importance of getting checked

Life has thrown me another of it's curve balls, just when I thought I'd be able to get back on track with my plans!

This photo is of me and my friend Nick on a wonderful day out in Whitstable on 5th August. On August 12th he sustained a nasty bang to the head on the tube, which resulted in a small cut, but no signs of bruising. However, Nick did begin to suffer continuous headaches which pain killers did not disperse, and also began to vomit heavily and frequently. Neither of us made any connection with the bang to his head.  To summarise what happened, I found Nick collapsed in his flat on September 2nd, and thanks to the wonderful ambulance crew and The Homerton Accident and Emergency department, Nick discovered that he was in urgent need of an operation to relieve bleeding and fluid on his brain which were the internal consequences of that bang to his head. Following successful surgery at the excellent  The National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, Nick is thankfully recovering well.

In the meantime,  along with Nick's other friends, I am helping him with practical matters, hence my lack of posts and drawing.

I decided to post here about what happened because I now know how very important it is to get bangs to the head checked out - especially when sypmtoms like head ache, vomitting, confusion, co-ordination problems, etc become apparent: Headway has some excellent information on head injuries.

Cranford knit-a-long September 2011

Last year I took part in a Cranford knit-a-long for P/Hop (Pence per hour of pleasure) to help raise funds for Medecins Sans Frontiere on Ravelry. It was so much fun, and is such a fab pattern (kindly donated to P/hop by Jane Lithgow), that fellow p/hoppers have decided to do another knit-a-long this September!
 I am looking forward to casting on another pair on Thursday, 1st which has a double significance for me as it was my mum's birthday,  and I  like to do something special in her memory that she would have enjoyed, too. Watch this space!

Journey

The healing of my broken finger continues slowly: the actual bone is mended now, and healing the damaged tendon will be take longer it seems: the joint still swells up when I do something ordinary like the vacuuming, and there are still everyday tasks I simply cannot do!  I notice tiny improvements everyday, though, and I have been so fortunate in having excellent treatment at The Whittington, right from my first visit to the Accident and Emergency department, to the current physiotherapy.  Knitting is proving to be a valuable therapeutic exercise, as well as the tendon glides and playing with the lovely green Theraputty.

This illustration, originally inspired by an Illustration Friday on the topic of "journey"way back in April, seems to fit my life at the moment: slow progress towards my goal of full hand recovery, and interesting discoveries along the way! When the topic was posted, I  came up with the idea, and then did not have sufficient time to carry it out and post it. However, I liked the idea so much I decided to make the illustration anyway.

Fortunately, I drew up the framework for the painting just before the accident, and have found I can do the water colour a very tiny amount at a time.

I'm looking forward to being able to draw again properly soon: it has been a real surprise to discover how much of a two-handed process drawing is for me.

Motivation to work my fingers

Just before I broke my finger, I thought of the idea of knitting Patrick Moore for the Stitch London "Stitched Science" event with the wonderful Science Museum: I love the way Sir Patrick Moore  has made astronomy accessible and understandable through his enthusiastic presentations on The Sky At Night.

Then I broke my finger, and seriously doubted that I could participate in the Stitched Science project in any form, but it was very good motivation to persist with tendon glides, hand rehab, etc.  Making plarn for planet earth, and knitting a strip for venus proved to be excellent hand therapy. The a couple of weeks ago, I tentatively cast on to make the pieces I had sketched out for Patrick Moore.
Hooray,  I succeeded:

I had a little help from Lauren O'Farrell aka Deadly Knitshade with the stretching and stapling of the night sky,  and loads of encouragement from fellow Stitch Londoners. Thanks, guys.

Stitched Science was a fantastic weekend altogether: Sarah MacIntyre's review of her visit captures the excitement of it all: http://jabberworks.livejournal.com/411443.html

Broken finger and learning curves

On Monday 2nd May I broke the little finger on my left hand, so I am currently facing some very interesting challenges in getting on with life.

It is amazing to discover quite how left-handed I am: usually I think of myself as ambidextrous, though favouring my left hand for many tasks right-handers would use their right hand to do.  Fortunately, I do mostly draw with my right hand. For painting and drawing for the next month or so the challenge will be about size of paper because of the weight of the drawing board, and being unable to stretch paper for painting. So I shall be investigating much heavier weight paper which may not require stretching!

The way forward with knitting is for me to learn the english style - something I had been planning to do anyway to help with two colour work. So, Linda kindly cast on for me at Stitch London on Wednesday, and a green sock is very slowly growing: I've knitted about 3" in the past week.

I've also been given very helpful tips by lovely friends who have experienced similar injuries, and am accepting lots of help from friends and strangers, so am getting by.

Here is a pen and ink drawing I made recently called "Creepy", which somehow seems to fit with this post because of the little girl's  movement towards the unknown:

Royal Wedding Gerty

Here is the Gertrude Woolsworthy illustration made for the Royal Wedding edition of the  Stitch London newsletter (If you scroll down the page you will see Gerty alongside her fabulous advice!).

The inspiration for this particular painting came from the Union Jack cupcake, which is visible here . Then, naturally thoughts of battenburg-style knitted bunting followed, together with a tiara based on Stitch London's logo. Great fun to dream up.

Work In Progress

Time really does fly! I've had such a busy month, mainly with preparing my children's illustration portfolio, etc for the London Book Fair, and my blog has been on the "important but not urgent list".

Today it is great to look at my painting desk with the immediate pressure to complete work off for the first time in months. Here is what is on my desk this morning: the union jack cup cake is a prop for something I will be working on this week, not yet started. In the meantime, I am taking a breather this morning.