Men are pretty cool. They do things and make stuff and sometimes say things that make you think.
Some men are really awesome and make you appreciate things just by telling you what they think, and you stare and wish you had their knowledge in your head so you could think like that.
And, by the same token, some men are pretty lame. They destroy things or lie or do both and then pretend they haven’t. They get power hungry and selfish and manipulate a whole lot of people who don’t understand how small they are in comparison.
And there’s a whole load of women who are just as lame and just as corrupt and make choices that nobody else really likes, if they knew they had been made.
And then, by the same token, there are some really rad women. Women who also think differently and make you say things like “wow!”.
Women from the past like this lady:
Women from, the slightly more recent past like these ladies:
Women from all over time, like these ladies:
And Women who make totally rad things that look totally bad ass and help progress understandings, like this thing.
And some women do drawings of things for other women who really like cool women that have done stuff.
Did you know I was actually studying a Graphics course?
I ask, only because you would, under no uncertain terms, be forgiven for thinking I was an illustration student. I think it’s something to do with the total lack of organisation, adoration for comics and drawing…”things” and my total inability to draw straight lines.
And The fact that I’m not sure I’ve mentioned the word “grid” once since setting this site up over a year ago.
Well I am. It’s a mixed course admittedly, and there is certainly a heavy emphasis on image making and illustration too, but I wanted to, very quickly, dispel any myths that I am no good for anything but the world of the wibbly.
The current project is all about layout. And I’m finding it a challenge and a half. Here is the, incredibly ugly, induction timetable for first years to my University.
Yes we are actually an arts and design school. The irony is not lost on me.
See, this what happens when you leave all the admin to the Humanities Campus.
But I digress, we’re currently taking part in a series of short exercises in redesigning the above ugly thing, into something considerably less ugly using a set of strict restrictions and rules (One typeface only, one colour only 3 type size only etc). Just to clarify, this is by no means a practice of making something “beautiful” in the traditional sense. This is about creating order, making structure and making use of positive and negative space, type weight, type size and a hell of a lot of Swiss inspired graphical magic.
So, so far these are how I’ve gone about getting my Bauhaus on. Don’t worry about the text. This is about the overall effect of the page, the information itself is borderline irrelevant.
Mmmmm…delicious, gridded neatness.
I have a whole bunch of these, with tweaks here and changes there. Things most people wouldn’t notice in the slightest. It’s got to the stage of adjusting it pixel by pixel in a worrying display of Design Induced OCD.
I wanted to chat about these, I suppose just to remind everyone that us people-creatures don’t have to be pigeon holed as much as we often are. Yes I know it’s all in the same sort of area of design and creativity, but I am just one little person who happens to define herself as an illustrator of sorts. That it what I love, how I make a little moolah, and what I devote a lot of time to. But there is always room in my little noggin for different things. Things that require me to think differently and consider how I see things differently, and I think it’s pretty cool that we have the capacity to do these different things at the same time. I think that I, like so many others, can lose sight of that when life gets busy and sink back into the comfort of what I know I can do.
But I’m really starting to get into these little layout majigs. They’re challenging for a messy art bug like me, and I’ve definitely not cracked it yet, but with every new design I make, I see new promise and get joy from the structure of it all. The Organisation is SO pleasing.
I’ve literally gone from a fanatic of this:
Dave Mckean; Wolves in the Walls. A STUNNING book.
Anterograde amnesia is a form of amnestic disorder.
According to the mental health professional’s handbook, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders , fourth edition, text revision (2000), also known as DSM-IV-TR, it is characterised by the sufferer’s inability to retain new memories or learn new information based on experience. This would make it very difficult to use any information gained through personal experience to alter the sufferer’s actions in their future endeavours. They are, essentially, unable to learn from their past mistakes.
I’m informing you of this, very interesting and clever sounding information (that I have, just now, stolen from the internet), because I think I must have this condition. Why else would I be so, totally one hundred percent incapable? Other than the fact I am just, literally a twat.
Unlike most people of sound minds, I seem to be completely and utterly incapable of learning from my mistakes, specifically with regards to the time management of personal projects, (illustrated best by this time, this time or, indeed, this time) and taking the necessary steps in ensuring that I DON’T DO THAT AGAIN.
Case and point: I have just this week recovered after five consecutive days of sleep deprivation and manic photoshopping induced finger strain, in an attempt to knock together the four page comic I have been thinking about making for about two months. The operative word here being thinking. I have known about a competition for a four page comic for the full length of this time and for the entirety of it, have had the well-meaning intention to enter. I started of pretty well, I wrote it. Then I did the first storyboard for the first page…about a month later. Then I put it off like an absolute champ until the week before deadline.
Oh yeah, and it was postal entry so completion time was pretty crucial in order to get it there in time. Brilliant.
And thus began the next installment in the, worryingly frequent, let’s-not-sleep-for-a-few-bajillion-hours-so-we-can-finish-this-work-that-really-should-have-been-done-at-least-three-days-ago saga.
And this is what I bring you today. The fruits of my most recent labour, made much harder by my own idiocies and disregard for my poor, suffering body’s basic need for sleep.
I don’t know if it’s a form of unassuming arrogance or simply a branch of unquestionable stupidity, but it’s getting seriously ridiculous the extent of which I will leave the things I want to do in favour of doing, just about, anything else.
I managed it yes. I finished four pages of narrative and I submitted it, within the time restraints of the competition. And it’s not the worst comic ever made. But it could, and more to the point SHOULD have been better. Much better. I should have had the time to redo the first storyboard as a storyboard and not had to rework it on the final page. I should have had the time to find a font that suited the tale better than the, pretty sorry, collection I work from currently, downloaded it and implemented it. I should have had the time to rework the text so that the first page wasn’t so unbalanced in terms of the relationship between text and image (you know, kinda the most important aspect of a graphic novel.) Shoulda. Woulda. Coulda. Because I DID actually have that time. And I frittered it away baking cakes and complaining about my summer project.
And now it is done. And that means it cannot be undone, at least until Marty Mcfly realises that he definitely is wasting his time with Jennifer and is willing to spring forward to 2012 and marry me, whisking me away in our badass time machine (this will happen after he realises he’s fed up of being a fictional character and ready to take the steps into the realms of reality), at which point I can find past me and give me a good slap, shouting “DO SOME WORK NOW” in my own face.
Until that moment, I’m going to have to settle with LEARNING from what has gone before and NOT leaving everything that is not of immediate importance until it is, at which point it’s too late for it to reach it’s full potential.
Well I can dream. There’s a definite possibility here, that I am actually just doomed.
It was terrible but I did it. The Intended-for-Summer-but-Actually-only-Done-in-the-Early-Autumn-the-Night-Before-Hand-in-Project is officially handed in. It is done. Complete. Finito.
So now let’s all move on to happier times and embrace the start of a new year, banishing thoughts of irritatingly time consuming prior projects, and subsequently the guilt of not having done them, to the wind and beginning afresh.
I have a shiny, new project with lots of lovely potential and handfuls of doodles I intend to screen print, now that I, once again, have access to all the glorious facilities of institutionalised education. And boy, am I intending to make use of those. Not so much for school work obviously, that’s just not how I roll.
My desk is currently decorated with new time tables and other scraps of paper with various, scribbled information for the new year, as well as the usual half a rainforest that seems to materialise every September/October in the form of sheets and sheets of administrative information I either already know, or will never look at.
Yes, it is officially back to school time.
Let’s all celebrate with a completely unrelated drawing of a fox.
Bring on the new year! And with it, nice early bedtimes.
And thus begins my second year as a West Country bumpkin.
So far it’s been going well, with a small but successful day selling zines at the Bristol Zine Fair, as organised by the folks from The Bearpit Zines collective, and I’ve had a good few weeks of very successfully avoiding doing my summer project by getting unhealthily obsessed with cooking.
So here’s some recent doodles to direct my mind away from the ludicrous thought of beginning said “summer” project…in October…the night before I hand it in…
…okay I will get on it soon. Under the watchful eyes of the judgemental ostrich.I suspect this guy may have been behind the mysterious disappearance of the cheesecake brownies I made this week…
And finally, I was also asked recently to design a simple, cartoon plane design to go on Tshirts for the organisation “The Epiphany Project”. This simple line drawing is what I came up with.
See? It might not be for uni, but I have been doing some kind of work esque things! It’s not all been fun, games and ostriches!
Alrighty, enough internet based procrastination. I am now, really and truly, going to go and do my *ahem* early autumn project. As it shall now be known.
Sometimes really shitty things happen to really wonderful people.
And sometimes these wonderful people are incredibly close to your heart, and you cannot help but become overwhelmed with a mixture of incomprehensible hatred for the injustice they’re suffering, through absolutely no fault of their own, and utter loss for the helplessness you feel.
It’s times like these, when it’s almost laughable how little you can do, that you turn to the littlest things you can do in the hope that it may put a smile on the face of the people you love, even in their darkest hour.
And it is laughable how small this gesture is, but when you remember how much they used to light up when they spoke about their dog, you hope perhaps a little hand drawn token, to remind them of those times of giggling on the grass in the park while they spluttered with laughter through their anecdote, may bring them something. Just enough to help them forget the pain and perhaps even for a little curve of a smile to appear for a split second. Just enough to remind them of the things they love and how loved they are in the hope it will help them to stay as strong as they have been.
We are all so, so proud of you. Get well soon man, Chester’s waiting for you and those stories aren’t going to tell themselves.
I haven’t really talked about it too much, or in fact at all,but I’ve been working, this summer, on a job for a man.
Yes, that’s right. A job for a man. And if that’s not an award winning feat of description there, then I just don’t know what is.
It’s been a really nice project actually, he wrote thirteen short stories for his great grand daughter to be presented to her, one a year, as she grows up. I think the idea is that as he won’t be around for all of her growing life, he wanted her to have an artefact from him that would remind her how loved she was.
Sweet isn’t it? A little gift from beyond the grave.
…
No, okay that made it sound creepy. Sorry, I might have ruined that.
But commission me he did for the project, to do one colour painting per story. And that’s what I’ve been up to these past few summer months.
I have since handed them over and, I’m pleased to say, he seemed really chuffed with the results, but I thought I’d shove a few up on here, to remind myself if nothing else, that I have actually done SOME work this summer and not just spent the whole think baking pies.
I did thirteen for him, but I’ll just whack up a few examples. Just so you get the gist.
An illustration for the opening poem.A tale about the power of little girls’ tears. It’s not actually as morose as I just made that sound. I’m not doing well today.He devised and detailed this character to me. I wan’t just being racially assuming.A tale within a tale about a pie and an orange. Amongst other things.The sorrowful tale of a missing, beloved family pet. (The dog, not the child HA!)A humerous story of magical mishaps.A light, carefree painting to go with the summery tale.
Like I said, a nice project to work on. A much more traditional style of illustration than my usual bag, hence my cracking out the watercolours , but it’s nice to have a change every now and then. And he seemed pretty happy with them so I think I made the right choice in doing so.
I enjoy writing my own work, but it’s definitely a nice change to collaborate with someone else’s words sometimes. Yes, there is less control but that’s almost part of the fun, bringing in your own creativity within the constraints of someone else’s vision.
Not the case with my current project though, speaking of which, I’d better get back to it.
I often find that the smallest, most insignificant occurrence in an ordinary day has the potential to spark whole waves of pulsing creativity inside these little human skulls, that can evolve into ideas, narratives or images that have the potential to turn into something quite special. It’s kind of the beauty of creativity; it’s incredible, organic growth from the midst of drab normality.
And then sometimes, it simply comes from seeing super cool, ultra talented people do super cool, ultra talented stuff and appealing to that most disagreeable, competitive part of you that wants to, if not beat them, at least be one of them. The Cool Kid Conundrum.
This is totally what happened to me yesterday.
I went to a talk in London’s St Albans Centre for a Comica organised event where the legendary Quentin Blake (if you don’t know his name you should be shot. And then be shown an image of his so you can go “OOOOoooh. THAT guy, yeah of course I’ve seen THAT guy!” And then, and only then, will I call you a paramedic. For the gunshot wound.) and the phenomenal Shaun Tan, a personal hero of mine and creator of beautiful graphic books like The Arrival and The Red Tree, were having a wee discussion about illustration and things.
It was a pretty awesome way to spend an evening to be honest. It’s wasn’t the most organised event in history, but was a lovely insight into the minds of two truly incredible (albeit very stylistically different) illustrators and their methods and philosophies regarding their work. They took us through a brief history of their careers, bouncing off each other in a mutual interview, before taking questions from the floor, and finally rounding up with a quick, live draw-a-thon and book signing (and Me-Oh-My did I have books so sign.)
I’m proud to say my copy is freshly signed!
And as I sat there, absorbed in the works of both of them as they scrolled through their, deservedly impressive, careers before producing some entirely new and original, flawlessly wonderful, off-the-cuff imagery, I thought to myself:
An example of Shaun Tan’s jaw dropping talent. From The Arrival, his wordless graphic novel about the loneliness and disorientation of immigration.
“Dude, you need to do more drawing.”
And I do. It may not have escaped your notice that there has been a severe lack of it recently. Now, that is, partially due to my broken scanner (BOOOO) and the fact I’ve been tied up in commission work for other people and writing etc, but really, there is no excuse not to bash out a doodle every now and then is there? I mean, it’s not exactly time-consuming. Plus it provides an excellent distraction from things I don’t want to do, like this god-forsaken summer project of mine.
So today I did The Book Look; a phrase I tend to coin whenever I’m feeling a little dry on the creative juices front and need to whack out my rather large collection of graphic novels, fanzines, children’s books and general collection of amazing talent to kick-start my own creative flow.
The result was drawings! Nothing special, nothing truly inspirational, and actually, nothing even remotely good, but drawings nonetheless! And, with my lack of scanner, I even photographed them for you JUST TO PROVE I actually did something. I do apologise for the poor quality, it’s in these times of need you truly appreciate the genius of scanning freedom, but alas. It’s dark times this end, I’m practically medieval.
(Though using photos taken in crappy light does kind of make everything look like it’s from a silent movie, which I kind of like.)
I can draw really, honest I can! But I needed to get back into the swing of things, loosen up you know? That’s what I tell myself anyway, “it’s okay, it’s just a practice…”
I did consider spending more time photoshopping these into better shape, but to be honest, I feel it would have taken away from the wholly organic, slightly shitty and very honest state of my sketchbooks. And what’s the point of even sharing rubbish doodles if I’ve cleaned them all up? Plus it’s pretty late right now and I’m sleepy.
What a gentleman. You can tell from his moustache.A Raven in a suit. At some point I’ll give him a hat.This guy is an old hash. When I was working on the research for Tick, I started drawing a lot of these diving helmets and he grew from there, to emerge now, a few years later, with a pet.A quick fantasy doodle. I find every now and then it’s essential for the soul to draw good looking ladies in obscure situations. What’s she reaching for? You’ll have to wait and see (because I’m not sure yet.)I’m quite embarrassed to have this on the internet, but this is, unfortunately, how my work begins. This is the first draft of the storyboard for my new comic I’ve been writing. I know it’s shoddy, please have faith. Somebody needs to…
Hopefully this will be the start of something beautiful. Hopefully this will get me back into the swing of things, of doodling for me and not just working on projects in sequence. I’d like to expand on a few of these, and maybe I will, but if they do just fade away, into the oblivion of forgotten sketchbook pages and nonsense spontaneity, I think that’s okay too.
But for now, in the very wise words of Mister Quentin Blake on the last page of Mister Magnolia:
I’ve actually been sitting on this one for a while, but thought, as I desperately do NOT want to get involved with my summer project, I’d go ahead and load it up for your viewing pleasure.
It’s not procrastination okay? I’m providing a service.
…
yeah, alright.
But those of you who have been with me for a while, will remember when I actually DID my university work and didn’t simply ignore it in favour of baked goods and birthday presents. One such example of this was one of my last illustration projects in which I produced a set of sequential linocut prints (to be found hiding here).
In the end, they were presented on a board in a simple layout. I had wanted the images themselves to do the work in terms of communicating the story without the distraction of any further, novel presentation.
But you know me, why make one set of prints when you can do TWO?
And since this project, the duplicate prints had just been sitting about in tissue, getting a little bored and generally feeling a little abandoned (I don’t know that they did feel this way. I never asked them, but it seems like a plausible emotion for an inanimate object to have.)
And that was how they stayed, sad and forgotten.
BUT THEN I had to move out! And suddenly there was a whole wealth of jobs and thing that I really, really, desperately did NOT want to do. And suddenly I couldn’t take the fact they were so, very forgotten. They didn’t deserve such a fate, it was really, really important that I get out all my book binding equipment and allow the little prints the glory they were owed!
And that decision DEFINITELY wasn’t procrastination. The Prints were in NEED! It HAD to be taken care of immediately, and all those silly, little things on the to do list, things like packing and locating various vital documents and repairing any damage in the room I may, conceivably be charged for, could all just wait while I took care of the really important stuff.
I take the welfare of my work very seriously.
So I did a wee bit of book binding. A concertina book, so when you stretch the whole thing out, you can still view the images in sequence, and the story is not lost or interrupted by the physical act of page turning.
The Prints travel down, like a hanging.
I wanted the book as a product to communicate all the research I’d done for the project and adhere to the thematic choices I’d made when designing the prints. It had centred around this wooden mask and I wanted the element of natural to come across, hence my decision to use earthy tones and loosely knotted rope for the belly band.
The choice of title had been a factor I laboured over, probably more than I should. In the end, I had decided on Knots for three reasons. Firstly, as the theme of wood had been such a strong factor in the creation of the project, it refers to the knots you get in the bark of a tree. A lot of my supporting sketchbook had been drawings of these and woodgrains, so it seemed very appropriate. Secondly, the story had to convey an element of home, something I had dealt with by showing our little character flying off to find home in an airship very reminiscent of an old galleon, the captains of which would measure a distance in knots. And thirdly, the object I had been asked to base my story around had been a mask, two images of which show the creature untying the string knots of, in order to remove it and fashion it into the figurehead for his journey.
It’s a one off, firstly as I only had one more copy of the prints to use, and secondly because it took me so frickin’ long . But it’s got quite a nice, handmade feel to it. Quite different from the heavily photoshopped stuff I usually crack out.
It was a cruel trick to play I know, to leave you on such a adrenaline pumping cliffhanger yesterday. How very dare I weave the beginnings of such an intricate retelling of the Alice Tea Party, only to snatch away from you the sweet satisfaction of conclusion. To tempt you with tales of the present, only to deny you of the details of the gastronomic literary spread. For shame!
Yes, I am a cruel storyteller and, more to the point, a lazy blogger. And yesterday I had things to do.
But, for those of you who were a little intrigued by The Doormouse’s Hints and Tips for Life that I had made for my little sister’s birthday, I bring you a few snippets of the rest of her birthday tea.
Having discovered the Doormouse’s Hints and Tips for Life in the sugar pot!
As I said, I had decided to theme it like an Alice in Wonderland tea party (if I’m quite honest, the real reason for this is that I, myself, have always, ALWAYS wanted to have an Alice birthday party due to an uncontrollable adoration for the books and original Tenniel illustrations. Only it’s never materialised, so I thought doing it for my kid sister, getting to organise it and put it together, was probably the next best thing!)
The presents were arranged behind.Strawberry and Apricots suspended in Jelly!
Like with any handmade party, there were several limiting factors. The first being that I was, more or less doing it on my own due to work commitments of the ‘rents so how much could be achieved had to be realistic, and the second being that I wanted to keep it a complete surprise, no mean feat when Rhianna was milling about in the house doing lazy, birthday things. Luckily, a friend of mine had a birthday around the same time, so I’d managed to convince lil’ Sis’ that the extraordinary amount of baking that was taking place was in her honour.
Earlier that week I’d bought a coffee set for the occasion, so the night before my Mum and I had set about making black and red berries in jelly to set in the little espresso cups. We’d also made the layers of the cake, however it had not been constructed or decorated. And nothing else had been baked or made, so I began at 8am, baking, wrapping, decorating more or less without stopping, to have it all set up for when my Mum returned from work at 5.00.
And we did eat them. We ate them a whole lot.More Alice naughtiness! The jelly set wonderfully, so while the cups said “drink me”, as my Dad found out, you couldn’t!The oatmeal cookie recipe I used originally called for coconut and chocolate ganache in between the layers. However, Rhianna isn’t a chocolate kinda gal but LOVES jam. So Jam cookie sandwiches it was. And, of course, a bit of Alice icing.Edible Buttons! Made with a whole lotta food colouring!
THE CAKE
Although you can’t see brilliantly well, once I’d constructed the layers of the cake, I carved it into a wonk. So it not only leans like Piza, but the top is on a gradient. It looked pretty cool before I covered it in so much stuff you couldn’t really tell!The figures were my Mum’s genius contribution!I made strawberry roses using wooden skewers, black tissue and strawberries in keeping with the colour theme. It also helped the cake stay upright and wonky!
The cake layers were red, white and black like everything else, so when you cut in it was more Alice Madness! The Bottom was chocolate chip, the middle was red with summer berries in it and the top was black with black forest berries. I made buttercream icing and sandwiched that, strawberry and blackberry jam between the cake, then covered the whole thing in a layer of butter icing before I sealed it with rolled icing. A whole lot of work, but a hell of a fun cake!As it was late afternoon, the sun was feeling problematic for photographers. Especially photographers as rubbish as me.
All things considered, I don’t think I did too bad a job. It was certainly worth all the work to see Rhianna’s face when she followed the string into the kitchen. And she later announced, I hope in earnest, that it was the best birthday she’d had thus far. Which is gratitude enough for me, and really lovely to hear when you’ve been working so hard on, what turned out to be, the hottest day of 2012.
I mean it when I say she deserves it though. She’s not been well for the past 5 years and hasn’t been able to go out and do normal teenagery, growing up things so if I can bring a little fun and silliness to her, that’s a job well done as far as I’m concerned.
We’ve been munching on button biscuits, multicoloured cake and Eat Me Jam Sandwich cookies ever since. But, Like it says on one of the pages of The Doormouse’s Hints and Tips for Life: “When in doubt, Use Jam.”
So really, we’ve just got into the spirit of it all!
And yeah, okay so it won’t be the best attempt at an Alice party ever. I’m sure it’s been done a thousand times to a much greater effect than that of little old me. But it was all one hundred percent handmade with such love, and received with just as much that I don’t think it could be considered too shabby an attempt. And it certainly got the reaction from my little sister that I’d hoped for.
I’d love to know what Carroll would make of it.
Actually, scrap that, he would probably be so off his face on various narcotics he wouldn’t have noticed anything was odd.
Rebecca Bagley Illustration 