Just a quickie as things have been rather hectic, hence the absence –
the page with my illustrated book is up on the V&A website!
More soon, promise.
Author Archives: Becky
Inspired By
I won the Museum of Childhood Prize for Mrs Bryant’s Pleasure in the Inspired By… 2010 competition! Most exciting is my book being displayed at the Bethnal Green Museum along with the dolls’ house, and is part of the Inspired By… Trail in the galleries. Am very pleased, all the effort was most definitely worth it. There was some fantastic stuff in the main show at the V&A so stop in and see it if you’re going there…
A great afternoon, some really nice people there, so thanks V&A 🙂
Noo stoodio
Went to see my almost new studio today at Guild House in Bermondsey, it had just been cleared and painted so I could properly see the space. Very excited! Little plan is in the making. The light is really good, I was so pleased to find it, especially as it is self-contained, can get me bike inside too, and it has a couple of what look like serving hatches in the walls. Don’t think there will be any Fanny Craddock coloured Smash getting passed through, but who knows?!
There will be a photographic studio and a cabinet maker next to me, D will be in his element. Just got to work out what to get in there now, and when…
Cover
Been concentrating on some of the less exciting aspects of preparing and beginning a career out of this, planning, financials…so felt like I’d lost my mojo a bit these last few weeks despite seemingly feeding myself with a fair slice of ‘inspiration’. Maybe I over-egged it (a bad bake). Anyway…
Giving myself a new project with some focus – to create a series of covers for Daphne Du Maurier, as my favourite author, and having read the majority of her books I feel like there is an atmosphere I understand. Hopefully! Some of the illustrations for ‘The Blue Lenses’ are on my portfolio website and I think her short stories are especially brilliant. Not an revolutionary view there.
The Scapegoat is a great and rather terrifying story (if you suspend your disbelief, it’s like watching particular films in that way) about doppelgangers. I was looking through my book of Piero della Francesca and there was a fresco he had done quickly using two angels holding open curtains to reveal the Madonna. He had used the same cartoon for each figure, but switched the colours so one angel had red shoes and a green gown, the other in reverse. Love it!
So I used a tracing for both figures and flipped it but doing it quickly in my sketchbook they don’t look perfectly alike which I kind of was looking for, but I’m not sure whether I mind. As I was doing it I remembered one of the main characters runs a glassworks, so the whole segmented stained-glass thing works.
Finding it interesting doing this, and considering what it was I took from the stories, as some I haven’t read for a while. And whether I need to re-read them? I remember reading that Hitchcock read The Birds once, then practically threw it away to reinvent it in his own inimitable way. Although lets face it that’s not really an accurate comparision!!!
I’m no graphic designer so the text placement probably isn’t the most imaginative but there’s something I like about the simplicity of it and the fact it looks slightly dated. It’s a lovely font (despite the name) called CaligulaA. Need to think about how a series would work.
Happy for a couple of hours work….!
Latest creation mmmmm
London International Animation Festival
Last night I went to the Renoir for a chunk of LIAF – never been before but courtesy of the Curzon Film Quiz and some beer-driven drawing with my friend a Mini Pass was mine…!
I haven’t seen any animation shorts like this for a long while but it was fantastic – in my voted top-3 were The Man in the Blue Gordini, a 70s orange world where no one wears any trousers, A Family Portrait, and a beautiful and lyrical Latvian film called Wings and Oars. I loved the limited colour palette of these, it was a really inspiring night.
Gonna get some more in this Friday. Off to do some drawing.
I should use this chair (in a picture)
Barbe Bleue
Last week I saw the new film by Catherine Breillat, Barbe Bleue, based on the Perrault fairy tale. There was a lot of mention in the reviews about it being ‘Angela Carter-esque’ which really appealed, as I love her short story The Bloody Chamber (thanks Anne :)) and the fairy tale reworkings. There was certainly the menace and stillness, some truly beautiful vignettes and a lot of humour especially from the two little sisters reading and commenting on the story in an attic.
Perhaps because I had the AC story so firmly visualised I felt a bit cheated at certain points of drama. But this was compensated by an ambiguous and unexpected shock. And the painterly image of the young heroine tenderly stroking the severed head – no spoilers here, you can see that on the Guardian website – really stuck with me, at least for the bus-ride home:
Next week…
Inception at the IMAX!
My Granny Lorna
I shamefully forgot to mention another occasion – my Granny Lorna Sing recently turned 90 which was a very special occasion. Although our family is small we are slightly spread (making us sound like a low-fat butter subsitute) so we commemorated by international Vistaprint:
So Happy Birthday to you Lo-Lo.