Dreams

I recently pulled out a pile of old notebooks and photo albums, and amongst them was a dream diary I’d begun when I was eighteen and in first year. I’d wanted something just for me – I didn’t want anyone looking over my shoulder, telling me what to draw and how to draw it. So I used a blue ballpoint pen and kept my sketches quick and rough. The perspectives might be skewed, straight lines are often wobbly, and any mistakes are worked over or shrugged off. 

Stars and snails on the cover.

Peering over the edge of my bed into a pool of water.

Class of 2011

These are some sketches I’ve done for my kind-of-comic – they’re some of the girls from the class of 2011. I taught them for three years when I lived in the Middle East. Full of fun and mischief, they made me laugh – and they made me blush! – and they made me cry – and they made me go a little bananas at times! I watched them grow, and they let me grow as a teacher and make mistakes when I also had a lot to learn. I love them to bits, beautiful girls.

Family sketches

I did these some time ago but since both have birthdays this month I thought I'd put them up here.

My dad reading on holiday - probably the newspaper or one of his magazines.

A quick sketch of my gran, playing cards or Scrabble. She thought I'd made her look too old but this year she'll be 91 and, other than her grey hair, looks just the same!

And an unfinished sketch of my gran...

Heartless creature

This is something else I've been working on – when I’ve had the time between studies...  It’s a first attempt at a graphic short story. It’s a very mixed up kind of thing though – not quite a story, not simply an illustration. So far there’s no narration and no real dialogue. It’s a little like a one-sided conversation and I feel like I’ve drawn in all the shrugs and silences I sometimes get as replies from the teenager who I’m drawing this for.

She’s eighteen and will soon be off to college so I wanted to give her a story to take with her – something that suggests a beginning to the chapters up ahead... But it also draws on some of the stories she’s told me, her memories, her fears and dreams, what we’ve talked about... These are her stories and perhaps that’s why I’m reluctant to put them into words. She tells them far better than I can...

But of course this also isn't her story – it’s only based on her experiences, and thoughts and feelings. And it’s also metaphorical so it’s not meant to be real. But I do want her to recognise something of herself in the character – an expression maybe, a stance, her school uniform – and places, friends... There should be something true to it after all.

This is the first panel. The main character is looking out of the photograph at a paper plane just beyond the panel as it flies away. I’m using paper planes to suggest real planes and flights taking people she loves away from her. This time it’s her mom. But they also represent all their hopes and dreams and aspirations.

I wanted the photograph to suggest that we’re looking back to when she was a clear-eyed child. But, in her black and white stripes, I feel like I’ve almost made her a prisoner of that memory..! Especially as it’s also my hand holding the photograph. It’s a good thing she can see out of the photo...

This is another panel. She doesn’t always look so empty and distant but she can’t feel (or taste) a thing here. 

Any comments and suggestions about my kind-of-comic would really be appreciated as I’m still figuring things out..! Will put up some more panels soon...

Paper kisses

Isabel Greenberg won the Observer/Jonathan Cape/Comica graphic short story prize this year for her story “Love in a Very Cold Climate”. It’s about a man from the North Pole who falls in love with a woman from the South Pole but they can never touch because they’re surrounded by a magnetic force field. It’s a gentle and lovely story, and it’s beautifully written and drawn. I just loved it.

I think this is one of my favourite panels... They marry anyway – two feet apart - but of course they can’t kiss. So they kiss scraps of paper and blow them to each other – the snowy skies are filled with hundreds and hundreds of paper kisses, swept away on the winds...

You can read the full story here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/71465831/LIAVCC

Maybe Mirkwood

I don’t know if it’s true... but maybe Tolkien did visit the forests of Hogsback as a very young child. And maybe, just maybe, Mirkwood did grow out of those long forgotten forests, “like a seed in the dark out of the leaf-mould of mind...” 

"All that is gold does not glitter..."

"Not all those that wander are lost."

"There is nothing like looking, if you want to find something. You certainly usually find something, if you look, but it is not always quite the something you were after."

"The greatest adventure is what lies ahead.

Today and tomorrow are yet to be said.

The chances, the changes are all yours to make.

The mould of your life is in your hands to break."

J.R.R. Tolkien, from "The Hobbit"

Tintin in the Cape

Saw this stencil graffiti on campus. Just made me smile...