I am about to have a brief hiatus with my School Magazine illustration work while I hop into my new picture book so I thought I'd post a couple of random illustrations I did recently for them for a Emma Heyde story called Fair's Fair about two brothers in Bangladesh a long time ago. Had fun with this one.
As usual, click to embiggen.
See you soon.
GG x
Hey peoples - 20 now, I see! Been a while I know but I just wanted to touch base with the blogging world and post up some stuff that I have been working on. Had my head down in my studio lately and haven't spent much time on the interweb - especially since I let Facebook go. Abandoned Twitter some time ago too. Thought I would miss it all but... nah. I am quite prone (horribly so) to a distraction (pointless lists are are problem) so it feels good not to have another thing feeding off my poor defenceless brain. Anyway, ah yes... I've been fairly busy. In between books I have my regular School Magazine work. Above is a School Magazine illustration for a story that involves, amongst other things, a giant sparrow. I don't get to draw giant sparrows that regularly (never) so it was a fun one.
Below are a couple of other School mag illos. It's a great magazine and I really enjoy the opportunity to try some different approaches, mediums and ideas that may transfer nicely to my book illustration work.
As I mentioned previously, I have been working on
Tristan Bancks' fantastic new book '
My Life & Other Stuff I Made Up' published by Random House. Here's the cover I designed.
It's a very funny read about a boy called Tom Weekly. I spent a good deal of time in Tom's head, drawing (and list writing - good at those!) the odd things that sprout from his over-imaginative brain. Basically I channeled my 12 year old self. The one that spent days looking out classroom windows, writing lists about girls and doodling on pretty much anything that was in front of me. Good awkward memories. Here's a sample.
Had a lot of fun illustrating these two poems in the past week for
School Magazine. Both are quite clever in different ways. 'The Quarrel' by
Eleanor Farjeon is a poem about two stubborn brothers who have a really good argument over something that is long forgotten. The line that stood out for me was, 'the afternoon turned black' and I used this as the central idea for the illustration.
The other poem was very different. So many nonsensical elements which is generally the case in a
Spike Milligan poem. I'm a huge fan of his brand of wackiness so illustrating 'On The Ning Nang Nong' was a nice challenge for me. I did my best to be as equally silly but it's a tough act to follow. Spike's just too damn crazy. At the very least I captured some of the poem's pervading madness. Hopefully.
Both illustrations were done primarily with collage. It's such a fantastically diverse medium. Over the years I have amassed a large collection of painted tissue papers, pattered art papers, interesting washes, old books, postcards & ads that I can use. It's a lot of fun working out what should go where.
Anyhoo, better get back to it I guess. Stay well peoples.
I enjoy drawing little people. Especially running about the place, little legs moving rapidly like wind up toys until they can't move any more. One of the stories I illustrated recently in School Magazine was about a year four schoolboy called Barry who coached a Soccer (Football in the rest of the world) team of kindergarten kids. This illustration is for the cover of one of the magazines. You can imagine how hard it would be training a bunch of small people who for the best part know nothing about organised sport, are barely bigger than the ball and have weeny little attention spans. There's hardly anything funnier than watching a group of small children in a park chasing one ball around all bunched up together like a school of fish.
BTW, if the uniforms look like pyjamas it's because they are (at least I hope they look like pyjamas.) One of the mothers made them for the team out of pyjama material. They have little rockets on them. Cute!
I enjoy drawing little people. Especially running about the place, little legs moving rapidly like wind up toys until they can't move any more. One of the stories I illustrated recently in School Magazine was about a year four schoolboy called Barry who coached a Soccer (Football in the rest of the world) team of kindergarten kids. This illustration is for the cover of one of the magazines. You can imagine how hard it would be training a bunch of small people who for the best part know nothing about organised sport, are barely bigger than the ball and have weeny little attention spans. There's hardly anything funnier than watching a group of small children in a park chasing one ball around all bunched up together like a school of fish.
0 Comments on Irregular Needless Randomness as of 3/6/2011 2:33:00 AM
They both look great Gus.I love the poem 'On The Ning Nang Nong'. That must have been fun.
PS The twitterverse misses you.
Hi there Katrina! Thank you, they were fun, especially 'On The Ning Nang Nong.' I've always loved that poem - delightfully silly.
You know, I missed twitter for a little while then....it went away. It was surprising. Wired to embrace distraction, I really don't need another excuse to float merrily around the internet. Nice to be missed tho! x