The Pelican Chorus

Some illustrations for 'The Pelican Chorus' by Edward Lear: a heartwarming tale of matrimony between wetland Royalty, and the empty-nest syndrome felt by the parents of the pelican bride.

Different Seasons

 "I scrambled up the cinders to the railroad tracks and sat on one of the rails, idly chucking cinders between my feet, in no hurry to wake the others. At that precise moment the new day felt too good to share.

Morning came on apace. The noise of the crickets began to drop, and the shadows under the trees and bushes evaporated like puddles after a shower...

"I don’t know how long I sat there on the rail, watching the purple steal out of the sky as noiselessly as it had stolen in the evening before. I was about to get up when I looked to my right and saw a deer standing in the railroad bed not ten yards from me.

My heart went up into my throat so high that I think I could have put my hand in my mouth and touched it. My stomach and genitals filled with a hot dry excitement. I didn’t move. I couldn’t have moved if I had wanted to. Her eyes weren’t brown, but a dark, dusty black – the kind of velvet you see backgrounding jewelry displays. Her small ears were scuffed suede. She looked serenely at me, head slightly lowered in what I took for curiosity... What I was seeing was some sort of gift, something given with a carelessness that was appalling.

"It was on the tip of my tongue to tell the others about the deer, but I ended up not doing it. That was one thing I kept to myself... I have to tell you that it seems a lesser thing written down, damn near inconsequential. But for me it was the best part of that trip, the cleanest part, and it was a moment I found myself returning to, almost helplessly, when there was trouble in my life... I would find my thoughts turning back to that morning, the scuffed suede of her ears, the white flash of her tail...

 

"The most important things are the hardest to say, because words diminish them - words shrinks things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they're brought out." 

- Stephen King, The Body

The Big Lunch

Year 3, project one: an editorial illustration for a Sunday Times magazine about The Big Lunch.

Below is what it might look like if I was paid to do this, instead of just pretending for my school work.

End of Year Two

To celebrate the end of second year, I made some book covers.

The three books that I chose are not part of a series, but appeal to similar audiences, and handle quite serious themes in a similar way. This time I dropped the watercolours in favour of printing (with woodcut), to try out a more graphic approach. These novels also all deal with polar opposites (life/death, religion/science, faith/doubt, heaven/earth, etc.) so black and white imagery seemed fitting.

In Terry Pratchett's Nation, a boy called Mau returns to his home island (the Nation) to discover that his whole village has been wiped out by a tsunami. As the only surviving member of the island, Mau is tasked with forging a new nation from the broken pieces, with grief for his loved ones and his shaken faith in the gods weighing on his mind.
 

In The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold, 14 year-old Susie Salmon is raped and murdered in the opening chapter. The book deals with the lives and relationships of Susie's family and friends - and her killer - in the days, months and years after her death, with Susie watching over them from her own personal heaven.

 

Early in the book Susie remembers seeing a penguin in a snow globe when she was very young, and being worried for him. Her father reassures her that he is "trapped in a perfect world." Following her death Susie narrates the novel from much the same position - trapped in a world that is superficially perfect (i.e. heaven). She can no longer be harmed by anything in the real world, but can also no longer interact with any of her loved ones on earth. While everyone outside the 'globe' changes and grows, Susie remains an observer.

Ian McEwan's Enduring Love is a "pyschological thriller" about a middle-aged scientific journalist named Joe Rose, whose comfortable life and long-term relationship become threatened when a ballooning accident brings a delusional stranger called Jed into his life. After a passing glance between them Jed instantly falls in love with Joe, and his obsessive stalking tests the limits of Joe's rational mind.

This is the cover I had most trouble with. I was happy with my concept, but found the execution difficult. Turns out it's not that easy making a rose petal turn into a hot air balloon with woodcut printing!

Last Supper at Woodlane

Something fun I did in first year.

From left to right: Bartholomew (Keyrn Roach), James Minor (Linda Scott), Andrew (Gary Long), Judas Iscariot (Nigel Owen), Peter (Mary Mabbutt), John (Sue Clarke), Jesus (Alan Male), Thomas (Mike Venning), James Major (Rachel Dunn), Philip (Mark Foreman), Matthew (yours truly), and Thaddeus and Simon (unnamed canteen ladies).

Cameron Eyes the Prize...

Recently it was that time of the decade again - when people all over the country get very excited and start formulating opinions, because we have a chance to vote for who gets evicted from Number 10, or something like that.

I decided it would be a good time to do an editorial project. It was supposed to be a way of exercising my conceptual thinking skills, although I just ended up drawing politcians' heads on animals as usual. The meat was supposed to be Britain, but I don't know how well that comes across. All in all however, it gave me a good excuse to stay up on Thursday night listening to David Dimbleby.

I also did this (don't ask):

Standing Tall

Not very long ago I wrote and illustrated a children's story. It's about a dog, a goat and a goose, who meet up and are united by a common goal. If I had to shoehorn it into a genre, it'd be a rhyming-comedy-thriller, of sorts.