Alexis Deacon's Blog, page 7

having a riot

I decided that I would do a complete dummy for the Mr Punch comic I have been making up.  For the last couple of weeks I have been working hard on the roughs.  I've gotten about half way through so far. 
Usually I would be finding such a big project very hard work but for some reason I am really enjoying it.  Punch in this story is such a nice character to write for.  He makes me laugh out loud sometimes.  That has to be a good sign!  Here is a (hopefully spoiler free) selection of some of the panels that have gone by...

where do stories come from?

I have just been in Ilkley as part of the Children's Bookshow, which is an annual programme of author and illustrator events in schools and theatres around the country.

Each time I am involved I make a new introduction to go with the stories I will be telling that year.  In previous years I have done a montage of my drawings from age three up to the present day and a picture story about a trip I made to America when I was two (the image on the banner above comes from that)...

This year I talked about the moment, about a year into working full time as a story maker, when I realised that all my ideas had dried up.

Here is an abridged version of it:

...What I came to understand was that creativity is a reflex, a response to something outside of ourselves and not an internal process at all.  I wasn't having any more ideas because my life now centered entirely around filling up blank pieces of paper.  Each day I would be confronted with a new blank page. It was gradually sucking all the stuff out of my brain until there was practically nothing left!

So instead of starting with nothing I tried starting with something.  I started with a dot.


Lo and behold, I started thinking of things.  Not terribly exciting things, I'll admit, but things nonetheless.






Now I had some material.  I tried putting them together... out came pictures that told stories!




Now I started looking around to find something else I could test my new powers on.  I discovered that you never have to look very far.  In this case I looked no further than my ass.  There were stories there too!









Now I do this kind of thing all the time.  It is too much fun not to.  For this introduction I set myself the challenge of telling a whole story with just one shape.  Here's what came out.  Click on it to see it big enough to read!

funky carrot

Here is a comic that I did for Nobrow's The Double collection... It's about a man who gets replaced by a funkily shaped carrot.  Something we can all relate to, I'm sure.  Click on it! Read it! It has no words!

fanboy

There are some jobs we will never get... doesn't stop us from wanting them though.  The good news is you can do them anyway!  You won't get paid; they won't get published... but they'll sure be fun to draw!  I found these two in an old sketchbook and thought they were rather good.  I like my Shelob much better than the movie version ^-^

Bottle of Sunshine

Here are some illustrations I did for an American group, Milkshake, who make songs for children.  These are all for their album, Bottle of Sunshine.   They were made about nine years ago, I think.  They were a lot of fun to do at the time.  I got quite attached to the characters...

meanwhile

Look... I don't just draw.  I also make stupid faces and dance lindy hop...
I keep promising people I will post evidence of me dancing.  Well, here it is! 
These are from Swing Patrol's annual performance ball.  I'll post the Youtube links when they appear ^-^

potatoes of power!

It is the last month of Memory Palace at the V&A and I ran a workshop at the Cheltenham Literature Festival yesterday as part of the promotion for it.

It went something like this:


THE SORCERER'S APPRENTICE - a drawing game
round one - POTATOES OF POWER
On a blank card we drew a curve edged shape in pencil, then we swapped it with our neighbours.

We added  contour lines in ink to make our shape into a lumpy potato.



Then we added blemishes and roots to the potato and swapped it again.
 
 On the back of the card we wrote what would happen to you if you ate it.After showing everybody all the different potatoes and their powers we placed the finished cards potato side up in the middle.
 

round two - MAGIC MUSHROOMS

 Next, on another blank card, we drew some of the brilliant logs they had for seats in the workshop space (drew the one below from memory this morning but you can see the cool logs in the photo).  We left the top and bottom of the logs unresolved. When that was done we swapped the card.




Now we added a mushroom top and base from our imaginations.


And wrote down who would be summoned if you burned them in the sorcerer's fire.



As before, after showing, all the cards were placed drawing upwards in the middle.

round three - CHAIRMERAS

Lastly we drew a piece of kitchen furniture in pencil and passed it on



Then we added miscellaneous animal features in ink - our choice of any four. 


We then joined the features to the furniture with ink drawing. 


And wrote the word that would transform them to their normal state on the back.



final round - THE SORCERER'S EXAMINATION
All the players split into two teams (could also do smaller teams or individuals so long as they don't guess their own cards) when I pointed to a card, the first one to call out the power, summoning subject or magic word, won the card for their team.The team with the most cards at the end passed the exam.
Here is a set from the morning session where we did potato-authors, cowboy-consequences-American-states and animal-mash-up-pop-stars.
I think I can still remember them all... that freaky one in the top right corner is definitely Justin Bieber ^-^
  

the pecking order

In writing about picture books, the general rule in the press is, say nothing if you have nothing good to say.  I once noted that a sure sign that I had become famous would be getting bad reviews.  If you are famous enough then people feel compelled to say something even if it isn't good at all.  What I didn't realise is that there is a third category that I seem to have fallen foul of this year.  That is being used as a handy example to show when one thing hasn't worked as well as another in the opinion of the reviewer. 

Here are snippets from two articles, one about Memory Palace and one about interpreting classic texts:

Tinkering with literary classics, whether children’s or adults’, can take many forms and yield mixed results. How to do it with style and in the process create something new, clever and funny may be seen in Julia Donaldson’s The Further Adventures of the Owl and the Pussy-cat (Puffin, £10.99). The couple’s “beautiful ring” has been stolen by a marauding crow, so off they go in search of it in their “beautiful blue balloon”. Adventures and encounters ensue. Donaldson, adhering to Edward Lear’s love of the nonsensical, wonderfully captures the spirit of the original, as does the humour of Charlotte Voake’s watercolour illustrations...Oscar Wilde’s The Selfish Giant, “illustrated and abridged by Alexis Deacon” (Hutchinson, £11.99), raises many questions about what can happen to a classic text when it is reinterpreted for a young readership. Striking as the illustrations are, particularly in their symbolic depiction of seasonal change, the story itself undergoes radical transformation in tone and detail, resulting in the loss of its poignant central themes of redemption and forgiveness. There is a world of difference between Wilde’s closing sentence and the one we are given here.
(article by Robert Dunbar for the Irish Times - read it in full on their website)
Certainly Stefanie Posavec's prints – representing The Booming, The Withering and The Wilding with fine lines and simple forms – are effective and moving. But their careful, subtle development highlights the weaknesses of Nemo Tral’s fussy, overly drawn prints.
Similarly, because Luke Pearson‘s stark, refined black and white graphics depict the prisoner’s interrogations so much more effectively than Alexis Deacon's illustrations, the latter’s resemblance to water-colour cartoons loses its impact.

(review by West Camel foe Culture Compass - read the whole thing on their site )

As far as I can tell this is the worst of both worlds ^-^!   sigh.

when it's right, it's right

Teaching time is here again as I said.  One of the toughest things I've ever had to try and get my head around is the notion of what constitutes a finished artwork.  Is there a certain amount of time you have to spend on a picture before it is finished?  Do you have to do it a certain number of times over? Does it have to be made in one seamless, mistake free go? 
As the post title suggests, I have found only one thing that is common to all finished artwork - when it is right, it is right.  That is to say, when it does the job you want it to do, it is the finished artwork.  It is a more difficult concept grasp than you might imagine!  The problem is that sometimes it is insanely difficult to get a picture to do its job and other times it is infuriatingly easy.  I find both equally tough to accept.  When a picture is finished too fast I don't feel it has earned the right to be called an artwork, even if it does everything I want it to.  When it takes too long I want to give up and settle for something that doesn't work just because I feel I have already put in more than enough effort.  Perversely, it is actually the former of those two problems that most people seem to struggle the hardest with.  I think, in our secret souls we all know when we are giving up on a picture just because it is taking too long to get right.  It seems much trickier to allow oneself to accept that you just drew half a book in an afternoon. 

Here is a case in point.  The most successful book that I have illustrated thus far is Beegu.  On this one sketchbook page is the linework for the entire opening sequence of the book... three double spreads!  It can't have taken more than three hours!  Here is the rabbit picture, the tree picture, the chasing leaves picture and the looking out at the city picture, all exactly as they appear in the finished book.  I just photocopied them, enlarged them, whited out the bits that overlapped and added colour.

I've scanned it with a 10p coin for scale - about the same size as a quarter ^-^

Now why can't I do that every day! Arrrgh!

first day of term

School time has come around again.  It was my first day back yesterday.  All the new students had to give a short presentation on themselves and their work.  I was getting nervous just watching them!
I drew everybody next to my notes to help me remember who said what when I start teaching properly.  I think some are more flattering than others... hmm... they can all get their own back on me when I have to give a talk about my work next week!