Domestic Bliss (and hard-bound gift editions over the Christmas period), now available at The Courtauld Gallery shop.

Here I am below, binding my books under the watchful gaze of my cat Snuggrand!

Fall (and professional Illustrators now)

Trees are now stripped bare of their leaves, all has fallen away. My drawing board calls me...a welcoming recreation for hibernation this year, but...procrastinations..."Procrastination across de' Nation"!!!

There isn't even an exciting swell in winter, hence the need for festivities, you have to summon it up from various withering resources...those hopeless trees do not inspire, I shall look away...toward...a blank page! I have to stoke up that fire inside, yes Camus... "that invincible summer within".

Some lovely encouraging sales going on though, I love it that commerce ignores the seasons at times like these....I am now back at my studio at home and no longer hiring the space I had been working in and sharing the warmth and good company of professional illustrator comrades through the winter hours, with many a cup of hot tea. ((Some of these Illustrators have been working freelance in Clerkenwell at the hired studios (The Drawing Room and The Courtyard) for over 25 years; when, I add, the humble post was still the major method of correspondence. The Mount Pleasant central postal sorting offices reside just round the corner. I was introduced to the place by a colleague (Clayton Junior) who I had met during the first year of my M.A. studies and whom also hires a space there. My time there was a period to complete a challenging stage of work where momentum could easily just drop; and a very steep learning curve, (insert: 31st Dec 2012)). May the forces be with me in getting through a possible back-draft in the next few months as I try to find my own balance at my home studios.

Italy

I have just returned from a two week trip to Italy with my partner Andrew. We were very fortunate to be able to stay at a friend's flat in Arona, a town situated by Lake Maggiore in the north. On the first morning we awoke to tolling bells (...very loud as the church was literally next door!)...and were soothed at the heavenly beauty of the Lake, and surrounding mountain vistas of the Alps and could feel the timeless sense that drew (and still does) artists to paint the landscapes, the light was sharp and low being late October. Stresa; one of the lake's elegant resorts, was where Hemingway stayed at The Grand Hotel and eventually escaped in a rowing boat with his lady across the lake to Switzerland, running from the Italian authorities and from the war.

Urban experience was brief and we took a trip into Milan for one of the days. A change really is as good as a holiday, and visa versa...nothing is familiar, everything is new, although there exists in me an affectionate acquaintance for a country that I have visited as a child and also used to live for a year or so, when I was a baby. 

Italy, the place where the capital game all started. Here are a couple of shots...

Photo by Gwen Turner


Photo by Andrew Bridgmont

Once back in England I created this illustration as a gift for our friends out there...

Caption: "Move over Carlos!"

Saint Carlo was a respected saint in Milan (1538-1610), there is a vast statue of him by Lake Maggiore up the mountain side, and below are some of my reference photos to give an idea of the scale of this thing...

We climbed up inside him ascending to the top and looked out from the guy's nostrils, we came out feeling as though we had travelled through his whole digestive system......(we were like a little team of purging irrigators)...quite a spiritual experience!


To see all pictures at their larger original size, click on the image once for the light-box viewer.

Last M.A. ponderings before galloping off into the sunset...

One of our information sheets (hand-outs) stated the meaning of: "to illustrate"...several meanings followed, two of which: to shed light upon and to illuminate...this inspired me.

winding down...

I am ruffling my feathers for work on the next episode. I find I have to go in wide and I have other projects in toe. I feel stifled at a tiresome need in me that could become addictive, to tap into the world (perhaps more regularly than things naturally evolve or bubble to the surface) via the web and state progress (as I do now). I am probably still shedding the last remains of (my perceived) institutional expectation since the M.A. which I appreciate very much as there is a degree of urgency when establishing something like this.

Now, I find the idea of pioneering days-on-end in the wilderness of existence and focusing on my work an attractive homecoming, but to life's university. I have broken this blog in and chartered progress on Bliss as she cut her first teeth. I now take the reigns off, and lay the saddle aside...

With respect to a long established and published illustrator (a children's book illustrator), I have been intermittently reading one of Jackie Morris' enchanting web-journals...her blog called: Drawing a Line in Time.
I like her cat blog too. She lives in nature, which very much shapes her work. I feel revived after a dose of Jackie...(me being in the London smoke's borough of Hackney). She lives in Pembrokeshire where my mother also lives and works as a painter.

rough sketch rummaging...

Mr and Mrs Hobnob on their only day off from location shoots...

Mrs Hobnob suffering from either a chronic bad hair day or an alien identity crisis...

Bliss just looking a little moody...

Next!

Already, come the pleasant utterances from various customers who have bought my book..."so when is the next episode"? I am going to make some headway on pages quite slowly to start with, and this will rev up.

Sweet labours rewards, at the Hypercomics fair

A gorgeous venue in a lovely park, and a very interesting exhibition. A total of fifteen copies sold on her first launch day...I would say I'm feeling pretty chuffed to say the least!

I am grateful to those who could make it, and who bought a copy... what a great launch.

Photos taken by Andrew Bridgmont

A satisfactory moment is being relished as I type this, sitting with a nice cold beer after a good day at the market....a harvest...sheer Bliss.

...Great to get the chance to look around at the world now I have surfaced from underneath my artists mossy rock, I just saved myself from metamorphosing into a complete mole! I by chance, found a wonderful comic which I bought immediately (SOLD point blank to the lady called Gwen!): Toilet paper Life...

The cover, with a hopeless little mouse sitting on a toilet in the middle of a field of roses, somehow sums up life's tragedy. It is debatable as to whether I feel the same way as the artist who explains in the opening page: that "life is like a roll of toilet paper...in the beginning, it is all pure and white...time passes and stains appear...call it memory"...arguably, a somehow effective analogy of sorts. Throughout, the artist philosophises on how tricky justice is, and touches on some insightful (although too brief) ponderings about desire, also how it is in fact... (as I interpret it) extraordinarily difficult not to be a hypocrite...and the only real problem is in the condemnation of it. At one point, are also some possibly over affectionate co-operations between various species (perhaps over egging the point), suggesting, that if we are unable to extend compassion to one another, that we extend it to all sentient beings.

True blue anthropomorphic reversal style makes the pill, as ever easier to swallow, and about half way through there is a televised news flash by a dark eyed rabbit about the growing phenomenon of abused onions.

There is a devotion to the drawings which I admire, they are charming and sometimes hilarious/ if a little sick, and quite clear on the dark side of cute. The cover swung it for me!

Artist (from Taiwan) goes by the name of 'tpcat'...

To see all pictures at their larger original size, click on the image once for the light-box viewer.

Note:
Thanks tpcat, I am sure you are happy for me to share your wonderful front cover illustration.

Launch Pads: Domestic Bliss

Here are links to exclusive preview pages and a web-shop where it is available for purchase from August.

Dan Berry, who runs a graphic novel programme at The North Wales School of Art and

Design, has recently posted about Bliss on their blog: The Comics Bureau.

There's also mention of her on Bugpowder.

I posted a bit about the launch on the University of the arts Alumni Bulletin.