I can’t quite seem to get into a habit of posting every day (methinks the book editing is to blame), but so far I’ve managed to keep up with the 28 Drawings Challenge without causing myself undue stress. Over the past few days I’ve been thinking about witches, because like all good fairy stories East of the Sun and West of the Moon incorporates a few of them.
After I requested help with drawing the wind t’other day, Bridget wrote: “You could pick color palettes based on the types of settings those winds would be found in — a gentle breeze might have a tropical, warm blue; harsh winter winds are silver and pale blue; the heavy winds that bring in the often-stagnant spring storms clouds are heavy and purple, charcoal or black, whereas the the sleepy winds that push around those brief summer torrents are heavy but perhaps dappled with the oranges and purples that trail behind them in the skies.”
I decided to muck about with this and had a vague notion of using pastelly watercolours and then inking some blowing stuff (leaves, brollies, general detritus) over the top. Twas then I discovered my tin of watercolour crayons (you draw on the page as you would with a normal crayon then get a paintbrush and some water and turn it into paint) and it all got a bit more multimedia than that.
Day 8 - East of the Sun and West of the Moon
The background was done and the sun and the moon fingerknitted during Masterchef last night, and the white bear finger puppet (who is a bear, not a seal as some detractors would have you believe) was normal knitted during 10 o’clock live. Just to give you a rough idea of how long this took, as some people are posting that sort of information on the Facebook page…
Day 9 - The Journey
This one is the pretty young daughter journeying east of the sun and west of the moon. Although it looks more like the way you used to draw birds as a kid. Anyone..? Oh, never mind. It’s mostly the watercolour crayons again, but the stars and cloud patches are expertly rendered in chalk pastel. LAWL.
Now that I’ve written the bare bones of twelve books, every publisher and their granny have announced their intention to accept manuscript submissions from un-agented newbies. Well, maybe not all of them. But a few.
12 Books in 12 Months 