Journal Pictures and Degree Show madness

I finally got round to scanning some more of the pictures from my journal, so mooch on over to flickr to take a look at strange scenes from my life.

In other news, my degree show is going well so far.  It all looks really good up on the walls and I think we've got a lot of good work in our class this year.  Sammy's put up some nice photos of work by the Inspired crew, which includes me, or you can find out more on the university website.

It's weird to think that we're almost done after three years of work, work, work.  It seems to have gone really quickly, but at the same time 1st year feels like a lifetime ago.  I've enjoyed the course a lot and I finally feel like I wouldn't be ripping people off if I charge them for my work, which is a big milestone.  I can't quite believe how much my work has improved since we started.  (Of course then I look at other people's work from my class like Sammy, Jamie, Nathan and Rob and think 'Waargh they're all so much better than me! Panic panic flail flail' but I'm told that's normal and healthy in a creative field.)

I hope some of you can make it down to the show!

Degree Show and a Fairy

Hey peeps, my degree show is on this week and I forgot to say anything!  Here, have a fairy to quell your terrible rage at my thoughtlessness.

The private view is today, but the show is open to the public from 10am-4pm for the next week, closing on the 9th.  Hopefully at least one person who isn't on my course reads this blog and will trundle down to Pittville campus (that's in Cheltenham) to see our lovely pictures, not to mention the work from all the other courses.

If you need previews, you can see a collection of the illustration class's work HERE.

do you ever think about toes?

I think about toes.  I love the bony parts of people's bodies, including hands and feet.  The knobblier the better.  This lovely pair belong to my friend Lily's boyfriend, who was kind enough to sit still so I could draw them.  I'm completely in love with how long his toes are, it's like an extra set of fingers!

Tragically, this one is mine.  Those are blisters.  If shoes are designed to be worn with socks you really should wear them with socks, as it turns out.

(Yes, I sketched my blisters.  What else am I supposed to do after 3 years of art school?)

Gorse and Skullgirl

Until I get round to scanning some of my work for my final projects at university, I thought you'd like to see some more children's work.  These are Gorse and Hephzibah, who've appeared before, and Skullgirl who you should recognise from the header.  She has a name now, Lamentation Obedience, as in 'people lament your existence and it's your place to be unquestioningly obedient.'

Journal Pictures

Since I realised the other day that I update my personal blog even more infrequently than this one whenever I'm busy (which kind of defeats the point since people who worry about me, like my mum, start bugging me for news) I thought I'd start uploading my journal illustrations on flickr instead.  I might even get really wild and put some of the better ones on here, but for now you can find all the ones I've put up so far in handy little sets over there.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sarahfogg/

yet more postcards

 These are some more postcards I made for promotional work, since I realised I had no black and white work in my children's style that wasn't incredibly old.  I discovered, to my delight, that the sort of hatching I used for Patience is a Virtue comes out really well with this line art, so I'm very pleased with them.

Incidentally, the foxes are from a story I very vaguely remember from my childhood, about a fox whose husband dies.  Her suitors all have more and more tails, but she eventually marries one with just one tail. It had beautiful illustrations, but we got the book from the library and none of us (me, my sisters, my parents) can remember what it was called or who wrote it.  If any of you know anything about it I'll love you forever if you can help me find it.

Skullgirl

This will look a bit weird under the new header, but I thought you might like to see the whole image.  I actually painted it specially to crop a header out of or use as a background, like a GEEK.

This is a new-ish character affectionately nicknamed Skullgirl until I manage to choose her a proper name.  I'm leaning towards a really depressing puritan name, I quite like Tribulation, Lamentation or Obedience.  (Sorry-for-Sin was vetoed by my sister.)

What do you all think of the new layout?

More Postcards

These are the other 5 new pictures I took to the London Book Fair as postcards.  They were meant to be in my normal illustration style, but still appropriate to give to children's book publishers.  I'm pretty pleased with how they turned out, the colours came out very well on the cards.

Postcards

These are some postcards I made to take to the London Book Fair this year.  There's actually 15 of them, but 5 are pictures from Alaizabel so you've all seen them already.  These 5 are in a style I developed for children's work, although they're still a bit dingy in terms of colour palette because that's what I liked as a child.  I'll upload the other 5 in a little while.

Carver

Tada!  The last picture from Alaizabel.  It's supposed to echo the picture of Marey Woolbury from the start of the set.  I think it came out better than the other one, to be honest, the hatching is a bit tidier.

Also the cover, if you're interested.  It's an oil painting, which is a medium I have a lot of experience with, but not much skill (in my opinion).  It's supposed to be a bit indistinct, but I might have taken it a bit too far.  What do you think?

Also, singing to your plants.  Is this adorable, or a sign that you're a bit of a nutter?

Rawhead and the Wight

I saved these two for (almost) last because I'm very pleased with how they came out, despite some misgivings during the drawing process.  I'm particularly pleased with Rawhead, because I had to design him from scratch rather than relying on the mental image I had when I read the book as a teenager.  I originally confused him with another monster, Bloodybones, so I had to look up the description and follow it very carefully.

I used these for two of the postcards I made to take to the London Book Fair.

The Cradlejack and The Door

Two more Alaizabel illustrations.  The Cradlejack is one of the extra ones I did to improve the page multiple.  The door looks like a massive cop-out, right?  It's honestly not, when you've read the whole chapter that it's meant to fit in then it should be creepy.

There's only 3 more of these to go!

The Rooftop and The Wych-Dog

Two more illustrations for Alaizabel, both actually featuring the title character for once!  The wych-dog wasn't originally in my planned set, but I included to extra ones because I wanted a better multiple for printing.

The Hallow-Ghoul and The Gathering

I occurred to me that it might be a good idea to post more than one of these at once.  I like having a buffer of images so updates don't tail off if I'm too busy to scan things, but I'm making postcards and building a portfolio for the London Book Fair, so I don't think I'll be running out of scanned pictures soon.

Anyway, these are obviously still from Alaizabel.  The Hallow-Ghoul protects an old church and believes itself to still be alive.  The Gathering shows some members of the secret society that serves as the book's collective antagonist.

The church the Hallow-Ghoul is wandering is heavily based on my own church at home, if you're curious.

The Ceremony

This is from the penultimate chapter, and shows Thatch possessing the unfortunate Chastity Blaine, rather than Alaizabel.