Sorry it has been so long between posts.

I have been working flat out on a number of jobs. But hopefully the 14 hour work days are over for the moment.

Over the next few weeks I will be letting people know about a super secret squirrel project I have been working on.

But in the meantime here is a picture of the army of hand made business cards I am taking to the SCBWI conference this weekend.

Finally I have an army to do my bidding. Maaahahahahahahahhaha.

Happy Halloween everyone.   Have a truly spooky time.

Hello everyone,

 

For the past few months I have been working on a collaborative project between a poet, a musician and an artist.

 

BIRDS IN THREE DIMENSIONS is a project created by Writer and Lecturer

Susan Sandercock.  Her vision was to create a collaborative project that brings together poetry, art and music as one. Each of these artistic media is a ‘dimension’ and together the ‘three dimensions’ – as in life –form a complete piece of art with

ambiguous messages and both euphoric and unsettling connotations.

 

Susan originally contacted me to produce a series of illustrations based on the poetry and to accompany the music by Michael Harding.  As we discussed the project further I came up with the idea of incorporating the images into Flash animations to expand the experience.  

 

The original illustrations I created using ink and collage.  The project being aimed at adults the style is slightly different from my work in children’s publishing.  Once I had scanned the images I took them into Flash and created animations that time with the poetry reading and the music. 

 

Above are some examples of the static images. 

 

 

The performance will be touring the country in late 2009/early 2010 with the first performance on Thursday 19^th November at 7.30pm in The Pod at South East Essex College, Luker Road, Southend-on-Sea, Essex, SS1 1ND. Tickets are £5 each in advance or £4 each for groups of eight or more. Tickets on the door will be £6.

 

Contact Susan by email susan.sandercock@southend.ac.uk or phone 01268 456287 for more information or to book tickets.

DVDs of BIRDS IN THREE DIMENSIONS will be available for purchase for the first time at the Southend performance.

 

You can also join the BIRDS IN THREE DIMENSIONS Facebook group and follow the project on www.twitter.com/BIRDSIN3D

 

 

 

Hope you all enjoy it.  

Living in Mono Culture Cambridge I had forgotten what it was like being amongst a gloriously multicultural community.

Yesterday I went to Laydeez Do Comics in hackney.

To find the location of the meeting I ended up wandering the streets of downtown Hackney. It must have been that particular time of night before the curry shops opened and all the staff were out socialising in the streets.  While I no way felt threatened I was the odd one out and had all eyes on me.  It has been a long time since I have been in the minority.  I must make a better effort to get to London more.

Anyway the Laydeez Do Comics is a group of people discussing comics/graphic novels.  While I am relatively new to the subject it is something I want to get more into.   Unfortunetly at the moment (cough cough last TWO years)  Cambridge has had no public library and buying all the books, while tempting is a bit out of my range.

Last night we discussed DragonSlippers by Rosalind B Pendfold.  It  looked great and I am looking forward to finding it.  

I really enjoyed the group even though I didn't have a lot to say and shall be pottering along next month.  Hopefully with some reading done this time.

On the way home I was stuck on the train with Cambridge Uni uber nerds snorting over their oh so clever knowledge of overlapping university laws.

Sigh.

He is going to kill me when he grows up.

Well I guess that summer is well and truly over.  This weather has been horrible.  Autumn seems to have passed by and gone straight into winter. 

I have realised this week that I have only one jumper.   Might need to remedy this situation very soon. 


Whenever the weather turns cold Mick starts baking. I think it is some sort of bulking up for winter instinct. 

Last night he made pancakes as we couldn't handle another trip to the dreaded ASDA and those were the ingredients we had to work with. 

I did a quick drawing while he was cooking.   It started out OK but then turned into this really creepy 1960's looking image.   I think that there was some ad's in Australia that looked a bit like this too. 

The other week I bought a basic watercolour set to play with but the colours are spectacularly awful.  And I really don't like working with dry palattes.  Having only one art shop in Cambridge is quite annoying.   Sigh.....big city calling. 

But moving on.  I found the work of this great illustrator today.  Jessica Fortner from Toronto.   She makes things in 3D then photographs them.

I love this bear picture. 

I just discovered the joy of Linked In.  It is a great way to network and find contacts in the publishing industry. 

I found that most US publishers are on there and have contact names for the art directors. Fabulous!  No more trawling the net or buying expensive contact books. 

Not so many of the UK publishers are on there yet.  It must have been a bit slow on the take up here. 

You can find me on linked in at
www.linkedin.com/in/fuzzillustration

Yesterday I also met the most awesome of dogs. Hattie the Irish Terrier.  Ahhh she was wonderful.  We played lots of games and had lots of cuddles.   I am smitten.    Can't wait to see her again.  

well that totally didn't work.

How does one embed YouTube vids here I wonder? 

Thanks tojabberworks for making me aware of these fabulous characters. 


I am totally in love with them and wish they had a full length album.  U900 rock!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9V5ubAOeOBk&feature=related

This week we had the joy of becoming future godparents to our brand spanking new nephew Tom.  

The running joke is that we are only going to reject satan if he doesn't have cookies.  " I want a bucket of Mint Slices or the kid gets christened"  Hehehhehe.  I can just imagine satan running off to the supermarket to get mounds of cookies. 

The little blighter (Tom) was born with long legs and looks like being a future cricketing star. Well that's if his dad and god dad have anything to do with it.

Oh the pressure from such a young age! 

Is it OK to give a cricket bat as a christening present?   Actually we also saw a diamond encrusted cricket ball which would be quite nice too.   Better not hit that one into the neighbours window. 


I have done up a little picture of Tom taking a swing.   I have been experimenting a bit more with watercolours and quite like this result.  Those blue and oranges make him look very 70's.   Skin tone is awful but I am working with a limited palette.  Will have to buy a specific tube of skin tone me thinks. 


I went looking for a Mr.Men book at the weekend.  I have plans to write some stories based on my WEDNESDAY  MONSTERS and wanted some reference material.  I found the books to be pretty dated.    I wonder if kids these days actually like them or if it is just the parents who keep buying them. But I did buy a new Leigh Hodgkinson book "SMILE!"  It's awesome.  I think Leigh is one of my favourite author illustrators.  The writing style is not condescending and I love the energy in the illustrations. 

Oh Ms. Hodgkinson won't you please let me in on your secret? 

On Sunday night I was so excited to find a Hedgehog in the garden.  He was so cute but got a little scared at my exuberance. 

On Monday night Mick came home at 10.30pm to find me sitting in the garden waiting for the hedgehog.  I had laid a little trail of food through the open gate to try and entice him in.  Some of the food disappeared but no sign of hedgie.  Boo. 

Last night I left food out again but none was gone this morning. Double boo.  Come back Mr. Hedgie!

I did a drawing of our back gate as I thought it looked quite nice as I was waiting . 

Also have decided that rats have taken to wearing hedgehog disguises to get people to like them.

Seeing as Mick is off at cricket all days saturdays I have been doing a lot of shopping. Maa hahahahhahha.

This saturday I am going to buy some lovely new kids books that have won various awards. 

A Couple of boys have the best week ever. by Maria Frazee ( cool name, no?)   It looks like a lot of fun and has that nice cross over between comic and picture book.

A River of Words by Jen Bryant and Melissa Sweet.  Love the illos. Looks like a great book with lots of nice collagey illustrations.

And of course can't wait for Morris the Mankiest Monster to come out!

Waterstones beware. 

Just sent off my first ever submission to New Sugar magazine!  Hope they like them.


Along their theme of "what we have learned"  I did three images of things that I have learnt about myself.

1. Cupcakes Are A Necessity Of Life: This seems pretty obvious to me and I will fight anyone for the last cupcake.

2. I Smell Bad Without Deoderant:  I am not a flowery smelling princess. I need the aluminium plus toxic weapon deoderant to stop my stink killing small animals.

3. Hairdressers Are Evil; I have very curly hair and spent a torturous youth getting puffed up and teased at hairdressers who always seemed to want to make my hair bigger and generally make me look like a poodle.  You don't brush curly hair people!


It was a bit of a torturous journey getting them done due to creative crisis mid-way but I am happy with the results.

Click on the pic for a bigger version.

Arggggggg.  Having a creative crisis!

I have been thinking about what I want to do with my illustration as it has been floating around not being very well defined for a while.

I want to make my work be a sort of a crossover between kids and adult illustration but can't seem to quite get there. 

And now I am thinking maybe I should go into character work or some sort of crossover between the two. Arrrggggg, Confusion REIGNS!

If anyone has any advice or examples of others work that might be what I am after it will be greatly appreciated.

Below is what I have been working on which is a modern take on "Henny-Penny"  but again, not sure it is working at that crossover level. (click on pic to make it bigger)

When we moved to the the UK we sadly had to leave our doggie behind in Aus.  Mick's cousin is doing a stellar job of looking after him but we miss him a lot.

So now we have to latch onto other peoples pets.  And every once in a while we spend a night just trawling You Tube watching pet videos.

Very sad isn't it?

Last night while we were doing such I did a few quick sketches. 

Sigh, we miss our dog.

This is an awesome poster with the 101 muppets of sesame street.

It is and interactive poster with each muppets story.  I loooooovvveeeee the muppets so this is just majorly cool.


www.nationalpost.com/muppets/index.html

My uber talented Mother in-law is turning her hand to the homemade goodies business. 

She already runs the massively popular Kimono website  www.kimoyes.com/  selling vintage Kimono fabric, now she is turning her capable hand to making products from the gorgeous materials. 

She has recently been named in this interesting blog about Canberra designers. canberrasgotstyle.blogspot.com/

Also my sister in law has gotten in on the act making products as well for her website www.chinchillacreations.com/

For those of you who don't know Canberra is the capital of Australia and has a reputation as being the boringest place of earth.  Which I thought was pretty accurate when growing up there.   But it is nice to see a blog about crafty and arty things going on to liven the place up. 

Cambridge is severly lacking in the arts scene and while I am super happy for Jill and Jane it is majorly depressing that CANBERRA seems more interesting than here. 

At least we are close to London is all I can say. 

For your monsterrific delight this week we have LANCE

He LIKES- Condiments

He HATES- Not being the leader


OK this week I have been watching the Tour de France.  Lance is back in the saddle trying to win his 8th Tour and his team mate and supposed leader Alberto Contidor is none too happy.   I guess if they are trying to out do each other then the racing will get interesting.

This is the last Wednesday Monster for a while.  I have to be getting some other work done and I want to get these guys their own website and book happening. 

Hope you have enjoyed them and feel to leave comments.

All the best.

Last night I went to life drawing for the first time in a long while. I went to the Posers group run through Anglia Ruskin but being held in an old church for the summer.


It was great to force myself to concentrate on drawing.  It is too easy when wokring from home to have a million things going at once and not really focusing enough on the drawing.

Anyway here are some picture I drew. I quite like the line quality and I think something that has changed a lot in my work is a move from shading to line.  Maybe that is something that happens when you have been drawing a lot.

The model is Eva who is the most mournful looking person.  I hope it is just in the looks.