Happy scary families

Over the last six months my cousin, sister and I have been clearing out my late aunt and uncle’s house.  They were such lovely people but they did keep a lot of Stuff.  And you know what Stuff is… anything from out of date Oxo cubes to broken picture frames to soldering wire.  Seemingly random items share floor, wall and cupboard space, many untouched for decades.  For example, in a room lined with shelves of empty jars kept for jam-making and dozens of boxes of radio components,  an old cat collar and an odd shoe had been placed on a rusty bike.  No sign of the other shoe.  Nor the cat.  But we haven’t given up hope of finding either.

It was a hugely daunting and poignant task at first, but as we clear away numerous cornflake packets recycled into paper hoppers, programmes from 1980s theatre trips and… well just about anything else you can think of… we’ve uncovered more interesting items.  Letters written by my grandfather to my dad and uncle when they were evacuated during WWII tell of his fears and hopes in such uncertain times; they were in the same file as an original newspaper from 1945, its front page dominated by two words:  HITLER DEAD.   There are political books everywhere - it's all Labour Party, Communism and Anarchism.   Other ancient books, sepia photos and documents tease us with snippets of lives we're connected to but know little about.  For now we’re putting these to one side to go through later, when we have the time to be fascinated and educated by them without competing for space.  I may write more about these another day.

In the meantime, I’ve rescued a few little things that were destined for tip or charity shop.  So far, just a giant pencil, a cloth map of Suffolk from 1948 and a sachet of stir fry sauce with a long use by date on it.  It's like a real life version of that memory game you play on long car journeys.

I also brought home a tatty old pack of playing cards to look through, Jaques Original Happy Families.  John Tenniel, best known later for his Alice In Wonderland artwork, was commissioned to do these illustrations in 1851, when he was a cartoonist for Punch magazine.  At the time, Happy Families was a brand new game and became a great success.   Although these Jaques designs have been reproduced since and are still in circulation, I hadn't seen them before.  The Happy Families cards I played with as a kid were all smiley, jolly and child-friendly, not like these at all, which have got to be to be some of the most grotesque and alarming characterisations I’ve ever seen on a pack of cards.  Seeing as it's Hallowe'en, I thought I'd share some of my scariest favourites.

This is still London

I needed a treat.  Thankfully one came in the form of some visual delights, courtesy of this recent purchase.

First published in 1959, this is one of a series of successful books created by Miroslav Sasek about cities of the world.  They may have been designed for younger readers but their charm, wit and contemporaneous detail is universally and timelessly appealing.

I sent myself off on a little search to find up-to-date images of some of the subjects featured in these illustrations.

Have things changed much in nearly 60 years?

It's quite comforting to notice that not everything has.

Perhaps people have changed more...

...or maybe not.

'This Is London' by M Sasek, is available as an updated reprint from Universe Publishing.

Triceratops for toddlers and the man in black

This weekend I'm drawing dinosaurs.  I'm being paid to draw dinosaurs! Sometimes I think I really must have one of the loveliest jobs in the world.

Here's the Man In Black to help inspire...

Look East

One of the lovely and unexpected things that has happened since I signed with an agent a couple of years ago has been the amount of work I've had from overseas publishers. Since then I've worked mostly with American clients, as well as Korean and Australian, and I don't know why they should turn to a UK agent nor wish to source UK illustrators but I'm very happy that they do. So if there's one thing that Britain does appear to be quite good at, it's in the provision of artists!

Today I'm particularly happy as I've just had confirmation of a book deal with a publisher from somewhere I know absolutely nothing about: Slovenia. It's great news in itself and will keep me busy until Spring next year, but the thought of working for Slovenians has really excited me too. Perhaps it's no surprise then that it's piqued my curiosity and I've spent a little time this week reading up about the place and the people.

Slovenia, like so much of Europe it seems, places great importance on the arts and even has a Cultural Holiday named after one of its poets, Prešeren Day. It's home to several hugely talented illustrators.  I love these exquisitely atmospheric paintings by Marlenka Stupica...

and the darker, intricate and quite haunting work by Arlenka Sottler

as well as the simplistic, humorous images by one of the country's most popular children's book illustrators, Lila Prap:

Slovenia is also the land which gave us the band Laibach.

I guess Laibach must be the country's most well-known musical offering, so I delved a bit deeper and found something else, a rapper called N'toko (real name Miha Blažič). This isn't my normal cup of tea at all but I found it oddly quite charming at the same time and I've posted it here for the video as much as anything else - for the Slovenian street scenes and characters.

Plus, if you like spuds, as I do, Slovenia has something special. There is an annual Festival of Roasted Potatoes, organised by the wonderfully named Society For The Recognition Of Roasted Potatoes As A Distinct Dish.  How good is that?

Grée days

'Killing time'. It's a strange concept really, isn't it? - when every second, minute and hour dies of its own accord without our help. Usually it flies, and we take great pains to save it. But anyway, in spite of being a life-long pacifist, I was fortunate to find myself in the fairly unusual position of having a little time to kill the other day. I chose a popular weapon – an internet connection. The minutes soon expired as I searched for something and then happily lost myself in it; I was looking for the work of an illustrator I hadn't thought about in a while and whose name I'd forgotten. All I could recall was that he was French, or was it Belgian? and that his children's book illustrations were popular in the '60s and '70s. It didn't take long for me to find him – Alain Grée. (He is French.)

For me, Alain Grée's illustrations provide a perfect tonic at this time of year. Winter's dragging on and we've hit that point when it's just thoroughly boring now and the hopeful journey towards Spring seems to be taking forever.  Art always gives me a boost. This kind of art may look 'simple' but the ability to pare back so effectively takes a huge amount of skill; the bold colours and shapes are just right and with no need for outlines or overly fussy detail. Distilling the complexities of reality into blocks of colour and naïve form whilst retaining real interest and character is something I'm forever trying to master.  And his compositions are so aesthetically pleasing - gorgeous examples of the graphic style of their era which work for me on a nostalgic level as well as an artistic one.

A number of Alain Grée's educational children's books with their original '60s and '70s illustrations have been reprinted in recent years and their popularity continues. 

I could happily kill time with him any day.

A baby zebra in a tyre swing

I love my job, I'm fortunate. Just lately I think I've turned a corner, finding techniques and ideas a little easier, discovering that I can work more confidently and fluently than before. For some reason I've attracted foreign publishers; it feels exotic, romantic even, sending pictures over the oceans and mountains and across the Equator... to be reborn as pages of books which will be read in languages that sound nothing like my own.

However, at the same time it often feels as if these are the only proof of my existence! Whilst I'm whizzing around the world in one dimension, I'm becoming increasingly rooted to my home turf in every other - more and more confined to base. My contacts are just names, in black lines on a white screen. We type hi and best wishes and thank you... we meet deadlines... but we'll never meet each other. My actual world becomes smaller and my physical meetings fewer, the more my pictorial world widens and the further my communications travel.  Such irony.

There are so many imaginary voyages to take so I spend more and more time inside my head. Outside it I too am just a name in black lines on a white screen to someone somewhere. Real and imagined universes mingle as I paddle out to the farthest reaches of my mind to conjure up scenes I'm never going to witness because they don't exist. I try to catch them as they hover up there in the top right of my brain like distant butterflies, often behind some misty ethereal screen, frequently elusive until they choose to reveal themselves. Once caught I must pin them down, sharpen their blurry edges, fix their constantly metamorphosing forms and seal them on paper, make them tangible, black and white and still.

Well really this is just a fanciful way of telling you that my latest brief is to illustrate a baby zebra, wearing a large floppy hat with a feather in it, giggling whilst sitting in a tyre swing being pushed by Grandma. The zebra, that is. There are legs and haunches and hooves and ears to consider... how could a baby zebra sit in a tyre swing?!  How does Grandma Zebra push it? How will baby wear the hat?  Would illegal substances help?

Soberly, I'm still searching up there (brain, top right, behind the misty screen) for the answers. Then I'll have to trap them in black lines on white paper.  Obviously in this case lots of black lines.  In due course paints will flesh them out further and one day, hopefully, they'll be reincarnated in the mind of a child across the Atlantic who will look at the pages and see what I saw, then take their own imaginary voyage...

Phantasmagoria / A B Frost

Wonderful illustrations by American artist A B Frost, who was commissioned by Lewis Carroll during a visit to London in the 1870s.  These images from the poem 'Phantasmagoria' were first published in the illustrated version of  'Rhyme? and Reason?' in 1883.

Yes, I should have posted these last night really... but I was too busy reminiscing whilst watching 'Goth At The BBC'!

Well all you've got to do is do it

I've just set myself a new challenge... one picture every day.

Not for others, just for me.  I spend most days making pictures for others, and it's usually all very lovely and frequently challenging plus I like being paid, but when I'm not working I often just stop drawing.  Then I thought: that's mad, I used to draw just for fun when I wasn't doing it for a living, and now I'm not?  So I took a huge piece of paper, cut it into a zillion rectangles about the size of a small business card and I'm going to make one picture every day just for fun (whether working or not).  Anything, in any style, it's only small, and if I have no more than five minutes spare then that's how long it'll take.

Today I had no more than five minutes spare.

A good friend used to be a sea Captain and tomorrow he celebrates fifty years since his first voyage as a young merchant navy cadet, his first day of many at sea.  So that was today's inspiration.

Don't know ahout tomorrow's but must do it.  Probably no surprise that this song's going through my head right now (well, the main bit, not the one-minute intro which frankly I prefer to skip!)

Nice legs 

Go, Gogo Penguin, go!

Inspiration comes from the most unexpected places sometimes.  Here is Gogo Penguin and her little sidekick Mammal Hands.  With thanks to The Swede at Unthought Of Though Somehow for his post here (where you can hear the real bands).

ABC

I've just wrapped these chaps up in stiff card and sent them on their way to Australia, along with 40 others, including such exotic creatures as a numbat, a quetzel and an ibis, painted with what I can only describe as love (erm, and paint...).  They're going to form part of some Antipodean alphabet puzzle books.  Working on this thoroughly enjoyable project reminded me of learning the alphabet too. I vaguely remember a long frieze on the primary school wall with the letters and relevant pictures, A for Apple, etc. Can't remember what we had for X, though...  for this commission it was an Xray fish, but I'd never heard of it before.  Thinking about it, it's quite stunning really, isn't it, how young brains are able to learn a sequence of 26 letters when there's no pattern to latch onto, no rhyme, tune, story or logic, just a list of discrete components that have to be learned in order?  I'd struggle with an equivalent now....