I'm going to be introducing a 'hard nuts and bolts' section to Thank You For Your Fist, where I hope to reveal a little more background to my work as an illustrator, the projects I undertake and some behind-the-scenes shenanigans.Here's the first one, focusing on a  project I worked on for a couple of months, now complete.

 My favourite undertakings are ones that are a little off-kilter. I'm product-oriented when it comes to artistic creation and like to keep the eventual function of a piece in mind while I'm creating it, in a way for illustration this is the way to do it but I also think in such terms when I create personal works intended to be sold as prints in my store. How can I make it standard proportioned so it's easier for people to frame, and such, are questions that cross my mind. I'm afraid this may seem frightfully unromantic but it's the truth about the business side of selling your artwork, and I am too fond of both drawing all the time as well as eating nice things to give either up in the name of unbridled self expression.Besides, boundaries are good. I feel I learn the most when I set boundaries, that my brain works hardest and most focused when I'm given rules. I become a little bit like Eve from Wall-E with her directive. I think there's a lot of BS out there about jobs in the creatibe world. I want to debunk some myths and I won't lie to you.

Onwards

For a bit I'd been hankering to create home decor with a bit of deviation from the prints-and-stationery option so when the opportunity came up to work with one of my stationery and home decor publishers La La Land on their line of bunting it just hit the spot. La La Land are awesome to work with, have awesome ideas and ultimately - and this is a cincher - they have a top notch product I'm proud to be affiliated with. Their cards are really high quality and their brand just up my street.

I'd been wanting to create something that little bit softer and cuter and it resonated with the whimsy look of the publishing house, who'd already printed several of my works onto cards in the vein of the Moth and the Moon and such. And I'd never done bunting before so I was delighted.

With a personal penchant for storybooks and with a theme that would fit the La La Land aesthetic, we settled on having me create 10 fairytale scenes to go on heart-shaped bunting.

 

Process, idea and technique
 I felt repetitive compositions would work best  since the ultimate product was bunting, so I honed in on central figure-based compositions instead of a series of scenes as was initially suggested. (I wish I'd kept my initial sketches of the process to share but I didn't figure out I'd be reporting this in great detail, I'll know to keep them next time to share.I like to have aims when I set out on a project, that are my own personal aims aside from the frameworks specified to me by the commission guidelines. Usually it's a mix of subject and themes as well as some artistic self-challenge. Let's call it a personal agenda.I've been going through a big women-rock phase (for the past thirty years or so to be honest :P) so I wanted the pictures to focus on female protagonists from fairytale  and have them looking confident and happy, more masters-of-their-destiny than is portrayed in the standard fare.

I wanted to do away with their male counterparts. It always seemed to me their roles in their stories were always extremely minor but supremely important.. they get as much 'screen time' in their tales as Sauron, only to have ultimately the same extreme crucial importance. I think this is a really messed up message to send to children about gender roles. Some fairytales do a bit of a better job of it (Like Beauty and the Beast) but they still class women heroines as self-suffering saints.

I wanted sassier heroines. It was likely that this bunting would end up in a little girl's room, so I wanted them to be cute, sure... but also witty, confident, unpanicky, artistically-attired, I've-actually-got-a-plan-and-I-may-or-may-not-need-you types.  In fact I was glad Alice got snuck in there as one of the ten finalists even though she's a more modern protagonist than any because she gets to be a lot of that in the actual text of the books.

It's also why I chose to feature Tinker Bell rather than Wendy when it came to picking a lady from Peter Pan. Actually I'll take this moment to say Wendy's been a thorn in my side all my life. As a child I never understood why she pined for home, she made me angry, I felt her to be ungrateful of her extreme luck to go to Neverland. She was so looking a gift horse in the mouth.

She also seemed to embody all I disliked about girls but I couldn't put my finger on why it was so, not back then. I rooted for Tink and Tiger Lily. Then older, away from home myself and understanding the kind of empathy you feel for parents who are missing you, I understood Wendy a little better and cut her some slack.

As a grown-up I also figured out why I disliked what she stood for. It was because I notice more and more how women are brought up to put up with a hell of a lot of douchebaggery from men in particular and forgive their misbehaviour as something men can't help, in a 'boys will be boys' kind of way. I'm generalising and naturally there's a lot of badassery going on, but I have two eyes and I see it, and often. This is how Wendy behaved at any rate. And although this is a disservice to both sexes really, I feel Wendy was worse off because all she did was worry about all the boys in the story and never have any fun.

Alright that was a major digression but you see now why I settled for Tink :P

I wanted this series to burst with colour but both because of my publishers' 'look' as well as personal preference did not want to go down the rainbow brite route. I pushed myself to not just settle for my beloved tried-and-tested colour schemes and instead researched some old Disney concept art for colour combo inspiration - in the process developed a fierce love and admiration for Mary Bair and Eyvind Earle. (Those are wikipedia links but I suggest you open up a new tab google image these artists, their work is superb.)

The first completed piece for this series was my cheeky, snappily-attired Snow White and when it got okayed by the publishers, I sped on to produce the other nine ladies in the same vein. 

I had to re-work a couple of them over and over for them to be just right. Tweaking things is part of the illustration process - publishers have audiences and branding in mind and they spot things the artist wouldn't. 

I learned early on you kind of have to be really pragmatic as an illustrator and adopt a very 'disposable' attitude to all the work produced. Gallery artists get to be as precious as they like, not so with illustrators. As such you are always working to spec, to rules, within a framework - I think this is a great thing, I love the challenge the same way I love the challenge of micro-fiction adherence to word-numbers.

I think my favourite colour scheme turned out to be Gretel's, and I was surprised by how much I liked the Princess and the Pea.


I was recently sent photos of the bunting from the publishers and it is available in their retail store as well as shortly, in boutiques around Australia. You can get this bunting from the online store, it's double-sided and a DIY kit.