During the cavernous time-sink-hole of the past two weeks (and the rest…), I have missed a couple of Illustration Friday topics, have completed an unexpected-but-wonderfully-fun  (and international!) commission, and have tiptoed gingerly across the curious territory that is ‘Married Valentine’s Day’. The latter chiefly involved skirting the issue of my failure to buy some thoughtful (and/or lavish) gift as expression of my undying love for Marvellous Dave by, instead, fashioning a slightly odd (I’ll concede, in retrospect…) Valentine’s card-come-painted-gift in the shape of a mildly perturbed looking bear. Don’t get me wrong: it was crafted with loving intent – and under the requisite furtive, closed-door conditions, to arouse maximum suspicion – but the visual message is, perhaps, a little, er, oblique. I just really rather liked the little bear sketch I’d come up with while doodling idly (is there any other way…?) the previous week, and was looking for an excuse to render him as a proper, watercolour illustration:

As usually seems to be the case, though, in grafting him from dirty scrap of back-of-the-paper-drawer sheet onto a page of pristine Bockingford, he lost some of his spontaneity and, ergo, personality – and I’m still struggling with resisting the fineliner pen to make him spring from the page, trying instead to keep the lines softer and ‘cuddlier’ – but I am still rather fond of him:

The deeply romantic Valentine’s (or, rather, token cap-doffing to) caption on the reverse referenced the rather unimaginative ursine love of honey (nothing too weird there), but then went on to draw attention to the relationship depicted in the scene above, i.e. irate honey bee, from whom honey has been shamelessly pilfered by blissfully-oblivious young bear, pursuing said bear with a determination bordering on the demented. The idea centred, vaguely, around the concept of devotion and an intensity of feeling (bee towards bear), although on closer scrutiny – and, let’s face it, it doesn’t take much – the feeling I seem to have showcased is vengeful anger… You can, doubtless, see how that doesn’t quite work on an occasion (however the integrity of which is perceived as fatally compromised by the dubious, mercenary tactics of the greetings card & gift industries) in which love and romanticism is famously enshrined :/ As I’ve said, though, the motivating sentiment was one of wifely love (I think I got away with it…).

-o0o-

Although I fear I have missed rather more than two Illustration Friday topics (…), I did have every intention of whittling something out of a stray half hour for last week’s cue word, popularity, and – as I had spent a not-inconsiderable proportion of my time during the previous week drawing rabbits (and, curiously, Staffordshire Bull Terriers – but that’s a, probably unnecessarily long and wordily-curlicued, story for another time…) – drew this as a desperate, grasping attempt to try and bridge the gap, Indie-style, between IF topics I could mark down as ‘successfully (i.e. submitted before the deadline) tackled’:

Geez... You win yourself a few (Euro)carrots, and suddenly everyone's your friend...

As per the rules of Illustration Friday, I shall have to tack up this week’s illustration – inspired by the cue word fluid – under a separate posting, so as not to muddy the illustrative waters with the above, rambling sediment (yep, OK – herewith abandoning tedious and ineffectual metaphor). However, I hope you’ll have time to pay it a visit also, however fleeting, and, meanwhile, wish you all a very happy 20th February

AP x.

Being still somewhat embroiled in first draft drawings for an exciting new commission – more of which anon – and mulling over possible reifications of this week’s Illustration Friday topic, forward, (rather late in the day, granted, but a consequence of the mysterious cessation of email alerts to the unveiling of weekly word-inspirations), I commend the following pieces to you, lately completed for a friend in celebration of her niece’s outrageous cuteness, and with her very kind permission:

‘CHLOE’

The butterflies were a special request - apparently they flit across her bedroom walls, too (sweet!)

As a conciliatory gesture, I also offer the following by way of compensation for the dearth of new material served up so far this year, and for the rather content-light nature of today’s offering:

FREE graze box for UK blog-followers (or even just casual readers/happen-across-ers…) – with sincerest apologies to my dear and much-valued international readers: unless and until graze start despatching their delicious boxes of creativity-fuelling nibbles across the pond, I’m afraid I can’t offer you the same :/  http://www.graze.com/p/3WGT9JP

‘Til next time, folks!

AP x.

I am, by no means, a serious athlete, and have rapidly shed any remaining cells of competitiveness in the aftermath of the Tadworth 10 run event on 2 January, but can still appreciate (arguably far more so after that *ahem* memorable day…) the importance of appropriate and thorough preparation before a race. The illustration below is less about the months of critical stamina and endurance (etc., etc.) training beforehand, and more about the curious pre-race rituals runners may be observed performing immediately prior to the starter gun firing. There are usually all manner of weird and improbable-looking limbering and stretching exercises going on, but also a dash of (ill-timed, it transpires) ‘fuelling’ – as demonstrated on the right – which is really far more my approach…

Contrary to the mischievous intentions I was tempted to imbue this little girl with, I thought I’d render her offering assistance to her substantially shorter, ursine companion by thudding a well-placed, stockinged foot down on the string of his escaping helium balloon. Said balloon is thus temporarily grounded (although his opportunity to grasp that string may be brief – perhaps she is fiendishly mischievous after all…).

However, it is now emphatically The New Year, and I am positively fizzing with excitement about the next 12 months! The two (and [quite] a [substantial] bit)-week hiatus over Christmas was veritably stuffed – in the manner of a (topical) turkey – with seasonal shindigs, evenings with old friends and days with relatives (ancient – pardon the hyperbole, grandad – and brand new), chilly morning runs and thrilling news from friends in far-flung climes. The unscheduled 10-week-early arrival of my sister-in-law’s twin boys on 6 December swelled the ranks of our baby-sized nieces and nephews to four, and doubled my ‘Baby Christmas presents’ project overnight – but it provided the precocious Ted (with whom followers of my mainly pencil-drawn, occasionally a bit crumby Advent App 2011 will be [exhaustedly] familiar) the opportunity for two further outings:

After plundering the local Hobbycraft for some picture frames (having trailed Marvellous Dave and poor father-in-law around sundry purveyors of picture frames, mirrors and the like and found them all sadly wanting in the decent solid-wood frames department – especially in duplicates of 4…), these were despatched, enveloped in Christmassy tissue, to the parents of the above-featured infants for hanging at their leisure. There should, really, have been a fifth for my exuberant niece, Annie, although – at 10 (and a half – it’s critical, y’know…) – I think she’s rather outgrown cute teddies/a name badge for her bedroom door and seemed satisfied (i.e. falling over herself with excitement, in a deeply gratifying child-at-Christmas manner) with a TV for her room instead…

I’m considering adding the ‘plaques’ to my Etsy-stored repertoire as a ‘custom’ product, but wonder whether I should perhaps offer them as ready-framed – Theo’s plaque had a slightly larger frame, allowing me to mount the watercolour on a powder-blue paper which I felt really complemented the pine frame and colourings of the piece quite pleasingly.

In other news, (Travel Edition) Steve and his gorgeous girlfriend, Eliza, pinged a message through the ether from South America – mid-journey-of-a-lifetime – to share the news that they’re now engaged (hurray!). This will, clearly, call for  some concerted celebration on their return in March, but has also spurred me on afresh to the subject of greetings cards and revisiting my current collection in order to refresh and replenish designs ready for sending out to prospective agents and printing houses over the next few weeks. Watch this proverbial space…

I’m also marshalling my wits (and resources) for this year’s visit to the epic Bologna Children’s Book Fair, which – now the Fraught Fortnight of November 2011 (when the [UK & Italian, combined] mercurial international postal services thwarted my every attempt to discover whether my submission to the Illustrators Exhibition had been received) is but a distant memory – I can embrace with the excitement and anticipation it should be rightly accorded. I shan’t make the mistake of preparing an original piece as business-card dispenser this year, and am tinkering with a few different options re. promotional materials for posting on the ‘wailing wall’ (although definitely draw the line at the ridiculous industrial-sized polythene banner some wit had procured to advertise themselves last year – prohibitively expensive, aside from the rather selfish space-hogging issue…). Flights are now booked, as is accommodation – I shall be ‘rooming’ with the delightful clutch of fantastically talented Italian illustratori I had the very great pleasure of meeting last year – and I have, in a fit of linguistic acquisitiveness, subscribed to the BBC’s free Italian language beginners’ (online) course http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/italian/ in the hope that I might better be able to convey the fact that I am entirely lost/yes, am still unpublished/need ice-cream as a matter of urgency, etc.

In the meantime, however, I shall mainly be eating Refreshers, to reflect my fizzing-with-excitement mood, and working on some mischievous characters to accompany me between the pages of my portfolio in a couple of months’ time

’til next time… AP x