Originally uploaded by .marmushka.
I just this minute accidentally landed on this photo in flickr and instantly wanted to cry, leading to me feeling very impressed and a little bit envious of this person's talent! I don't know why this picture works so well. Do you? Or is it actually just indefinable magic? I have written and illustrated two books (not published!) and it used to be my great ambition to be a children's author and illustrator. I don't think I quite have what it takes, like the ability to draw characters from any other angle than straight on, for a start! Oh well, maybe some day...
After struggling with my shopify for another two days, I have reverted back to how it was before and am just reconciling myself with the tiny (honestly, TINY) two things I can't seem to change. I can live with them. I think... Today I am adding the last few products and making one or two more teeny tweaks. I will be back later today with an announcement of a concrete opening! Yay!
Made in the Shade sent an email out this morning, not telling me that I was going to be getting a stall at their weekend long festive extravaganza, but telling everybody that the event has had to be cancelled. This time the Lighthouse really is shutting down, it seems. It is such a shame :( Not that I was guaranteed to even get a stall at it, but this event was my big Christmas plan. I don't really know what to do with myself now and am wondering if it is really worth my while making all the decorations, cards and stocking fillers I had been about to embark on... Boo. But in happier news, I am doing a market next weekend which I'm hoping will be great (more details soon) and I went along to the new Made in the Shade shop yesterday and saw my Dot and Pat notecards looking spiffing on their sideboard. Hooray! Even better than that, as I walked through the door, I heard someone saying how fab they were. Good timing, or what? After that, I got to experience the great feeling of turning down the offer of a job interview by saying, "I'm sorry but I have a job now and am no longer available." What can I say? I am in demand! And after that, I went to see a great film called Tales From The Golden Age. It's made up of five short films telling urban legends about things that supposedly happened in Romania in the 1980s. They were all really good stories and some of them were just so funny. There weren't many people in the cinema but the laughter was pretty uproarious at points. Some of the stories were also a bit sad. If you notice it showing near you, you should most definitely go and see it. So you could say it was a pretty good day, all in all, even though I was a grump for most of it.
When I came home from the cinema, I saw my mum had phoned so I phoned her back. Here is the conversation.
Me: How are you?
Mum: Well, I was fine when I phoned you earlier.
Me: But not anymore?
Mum: No. Eeeeeeeeuch! Something horrible happened. Have you had your tea yet?
Me: No...?
Mum: Then I'd better not tell you. What are you going to have?
Me: Risotto.
Mum: Oh! Then I had better tell you!
It turned out my mum had been having risotto too (we quite often cook the same meals on the same days, it is a bit spooky) and had taken an unopened bag of risotto rice from her cupboard. It had been in there for a few months. She opened the bag and poured out the rice to discover it was full of weevils! Many of them were dead and many were alive and crawling about. Eugh! I checked my rice very carefully. It was a weevil free zone :)
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i think the trick to excellent illustration may be conveying the maximum amount of movement and emotion with the minimum of lines. not that the illustration itself needs to be simple, but rather that the simplest lines must do the most work. does that make sense? in your example above it is, for me, the lines under the cat's eyes that tell the story. if the cat looked happy, he might just be a surprise for the girl, if the cat looked mean, the girl might be scared. but the lines under the cat's eyes convey worry to me, and that lets me translate the girl covering her eyes as sadness rather than fear or something else.
ReplyDeletewow, sorry. that's a lot of words to say something not that deep. it's a working theory.