Happy Easter!

Throwback Thursday: Various book-related things

Since it's World Book Day today, here are a few book-related items...

Grim Lairy Tales (2012)

The Clever Prince (2012)

Happy Chinese New Year!

Epiphany

Happy Epiphany! / Bonne Fête des Rois! / ¡Feliz Día de los Reyes Magos! / Frohes Dreikönigsfest!

Now go and put all your Christmas decorations away or the Spirit of the Christmas tree will haunt you and cause you bad luck for the rest of the year! And have a slice of galette des rois too.

The Fisherman and the Genie

My depiction of the poor fisherman who found an enraged and malefic genie in a bottle, from a story found in the story collection One-Thousand and One Nights (commonly known in English by the name of the Arabian Nights).

Panto time!

As it's Christmas, here's a bit of panto fun!

Puss in Boots

Aladdin

Mother Goose

Terrorist Sympathisers, or Logic à la Westminster

What popped into my mind when I heard Mr Cameron's remarks yesterday evening...

Les Français, nos pensées sont avec vous...

Dedicated to the people of France and to the victims of the terrorist attacks in Paris on November 13th 2015. Our thoughts go out to you all.

Tales from the Brothers Grimm: Another preview of things to come

The reason for no posts lately has been partly laziness, partly busyness. Anyway, here's a very small preview of the book I've been working on and preparing for self-publishing...

Sandwich Bullying

As we all know that triangle-cut sandwiches look better - and somehow magically seem to taste better - than rectangle-cut sandwiches...

Throwback Thursday: Devils

Two distinct takes on the Prince of Darkness I created in 2012. Pure evil is attractive, but to quote Into the Woods: "though scary is exciting, nice is different than good."

Der Teufel (gouache)

Jimmy, or The Façade (pen and ink/watercolour)

Chicken Licken - A Beloved Tale for Election Day

Here's a little thing I cooked up for today's election, based on the old story of Chicken Licken. On Election Day, let's make one thing clear - you make your own decisions, so make sure it's not a stupid one. 

Tales from the Brothers Grimm: The Wolf and the Seven Kids

I don't want to share too many images from my personal project translating and illustrating some of the stories by the Brothers Grimm, but here is another image I'm particularly fond of, which I finished this past weekend. This picture comes from "The Wolf and the Seven Kids", a predator-prey story with clear echoes of "Little Red Riding Hood" and "The Three Little Pigs" in which good eventually triumphs over evil.

The wolf breaks in

I drew the image traditionally and coloured it in Photoshop. The shadow effect, I feel, works particularly well and adds a sense of menace and drama; having seen it without the shadow, it loses some of its impact.

Happy Saint George's Day

Some of the characters gracing the British political scene at the moment (and the folk whom they fool) drove me to this...proud to be English but proud to be open-minded! :)

Throwback Thursday: A Midsummer Night's Dream

Originally posted here, this is something I created this time last year. A Midsummer Night's Dream was the first Shakespeare play I was introduced to. I came to know it through a series called Shakespeare: The Animated Tales - an anthology series of abridged versions of some of the most famous Shakespeare plays, each animated in a different technique. This was a co-production with the great Russian animation house Soyuzmultfilm, renowned for their use of different animation techniques under one building). I saw the adaptation of A Midsummer Night's Dream from the series as a seven year-old after my grandmother borrowed the VHS from the library. What has always stood out to me, both as a child and as an adult, are the fantastic scenes and the enchanted yet somewhat sinister imagery. Indeed, the fairies here aren't the flittering female creatures from a Victorian fairy story but the elves and goblins of old English folklore - dubious nature spirits of pagan origin feared by a superstitious population. Of course, as a child, I wasn't able to completely get the sexual undertones of the play (only the romantic ones); I suppose this picture was my way of visualising the sensual themes.

Throwback Thursday (on a Friday): Corporate Wolves

So I realise Thursday has been and gone already, but I thought I'd run a strand to show some things that I've done in the past and shown on my old blog.

"Capitalism has an intense, rich flavour"
- Wolfgang P. Loupine, 2012

I originally posted this in early 2012 - only chancing upon the post again on my old blog did I find the additional caption and my supposed naming of the main wolf in the foreground. I'm surprised to have found that it's the first picture that actually pops up in Google Images as of March 2015 when one types in the term "corporate wolves" (in the plural at least - not in the singular "corporate wolf"). I'm not a huge political activist, but this picture ultimately summarises my feelings on the types of dubious people who often manage to infiltrate banks, political parties and large corporations.

Tales from the Brothers Grimm: Cinderella

This is part of a small project I'm working on aimed at self-publishing. Although still far from complete (as a non-professional, it's a spare time thing, and will probably not be ready for another few months), I'm currently preparing some tales from the Brothers Grimm along with my own illustrations. I've chosen some well-known stories as well as some more obscure stories. Here are some of my first completed illustrations for "Cinderella", one of the stories that will be included in the collection.

Of course, this version of "Cinderella" is a bit different to the better known French version by Charles Perrault. Instead of a fairy godmother, Cinderella receives help from a hazel tree planted at her mother's grave and the birds who inhabit the tree. On my old blog, I actually shared some pictures I made of the story and are in some ways a blueprint for these pictures.

These are not the only pictures I've made for the story, but they are probably my favourite.