We had decided from the beginning that we wanted a book that felt tactile and lovely and that the printing must be the best quality. Gerry Cinamon emphasised the importance of a WOW cover and we had a self-pattern embossed on Colorplan and the design was done in silver foiling. I chose to put my name on the back for the sake of a more effective design. Our printers, Mayfield Press in Oxford were superb and showed us lovely papers. We chose an ivory paper: Mohawk which was the the colour of 100% … [Read more...]
Rope of Words in 2014
The book Rope of Words has really dominated my creative output this year.I decided to do it (more or less) as an open studio blog project and it has gone through some interesting stages. This is quite a scary way to work because if you blow it as an artist, you are exposed! Megan Kerr (my daughter) wrote this fantasy short story exploring her love of words. In it a woman loses the words she and her lover collected and spends the rest of the story looking for the words and the lover. She vows … [Read more...]
The asteroid – Rope of Words 29
You may remember the woman on a cloud from my illustration for the book Rope of Words by Megan Kerr - well it was incorrect but luckily it was easy to paint an asteroid separately and photoshop it in! In yesterday's blog you can see the Woman who Waited. Here is the life-drawing which I did for this piece. I exaggerated the length of her legs making her taller and also made her more curvy. I chnaged her (lovely) face to the stylised Picasso style face (profile with frontal eye). Nevertheless in … [Read more...]
Rope of Words 27 – watercolour study
I am illustrating a book Rope of Words by Megan Kerr for an artists book (edition of 10) and have just begun a watercolour series for an e-book. I'll be running the two projects alongside one another. In this illustration I have taken the imagery from the following passage: ...in that ship she saw a word, bright and smooth as a sheet of lightning: Elohim. No words on earth could express her love; then she would be The Woman Who Stole the Words of Angels. She plaited the skeins of her … [Read more...]
Rope of Words 26 – trying to get a more edgy image
This is what I changed from the first colour trial to the second: 1) I resolved the tangly hair on the left.2) I made the sail a robust olive green and the body sky blue.3) I used Picasso's multi-viewpoint technique in her face incorprating a profile and frontal face.4) I had some loose strands of hair which she is plaiting. I feel much more positive about her now. I know that she looks rather flat but this is a trial and the finished piece will always be more exciting, whether screen printed … [Read more...]
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