The one who wrote Coraline, and co-wrote the book of Good Omens and made the TV show, also the Sandman comics writer and co-creator who made the Sandman TV show. Quite nice really.
What better way to take advantage of my insomnia than to work on my art piece submission for “A Calendar of Tales”. I chose the “July” tale because it’s a personal month for me. I like staring up at the sky at night, it always brought a peace of mind to me whenever life got overwhelming. Also, my zodiac and spirituality is tied into the energy of the cosmos, so it’s only suitable to have chosen this one.
The igloo of books is just a visual reference/blueprint for my actual piece. I work best when I can physically see it in front of me to get a sense of dimension and what I want from the piece.
This was my original idea on paper.
I had to figure out how I wanted to put this together :-) I knew what mediums and what materials I wanted to use, it was just a matter of putting it all together.
and the final product…
I’m dedicating this piece to Samantha Mabli, my high school Gothic Fiction teacher, who introduced me to my first Neil Gaiman story :-). I’m also dedicating this to all the teachers and mentors who have influenced my life while I was a student. Without dedicated and caring teachers, I wouldn’t have grown into the individual I am today.
Please note that the images of books used in the submitted piece are actual books that my roommate and I personally own. No image of books were copied and pasted from external sources. All images, with the exception the ones listed below, were taken with the camera on my phone and composed/edited using Photoshop CS 5.1 on a Mac.
BlackBerry has started a series of collaborative art projects called Keep Moving. The most recent installment is a series of quickly written short stories by Neil Gaiman based on people’s responses to questions he tweeted. The (important!) contest/free-spec-work debates aside, I like a good prompt for some practice/experimentation and I love Gaiman’s writing, so here we go.
They’re ink, gouache, and digital finishing—and pretty messy. Basically, I’m still getting the hang of ink (it was really difficult to keep my Lenten promise—wringing out everyone else’s amazing work from my anxious brain—and not just go straight to certain illustrators’ portfolios for reference) and also figuring out how to limit and refine my use of digital.
“I swam upward, letting the pendant pull me home, up into the vastness above, where we wander with the lonely sky whales, and the skies and the seas are one.” -Neil Gaiman, Calendar of Tales (February).
This is my first submission for the Calendar of Tales project, and probably the only one I’ll have time for. The entire process has been brilliant, with gorgeous imagery to pull from with each month, I’m sad I didn’t have more time! I do hope this gets accepted/Neil likes it, but there’s so many fantastic entries (and I mean SO many), I’ll probably get drowned out. Who knows though, right?
Right now, I’m overwhelmed by the volume and quality of pictures that people are making. I am not looking forward to deciding what we can use. There is so much wonderful stuff – I’m reblogging and retweeting some of what crosses my path on Tumblr and Twitter, just so people can see it, and how good it is.
This project is amazing as Neil has written twelve stories inspired by his community via Twitter. He wrote one story for each month and put them up for artists to contribute artwork for the project. It will then be collated together in a digital hub for the Calendar of Tales Project.
I’m still just a beginner as a writer, with only a few years of consistant writing practice under my belt. But even though I am not an artist, I really wanted to contribute in my own way to this project. So, I took one of his stories I loved the most and wrote my own in that universe. I am really pleased with how it turned out. I love that this project exists for anyone who is creative. It’s given me my own push to keep writing and just have fun with it.
If Mr. Gaiman or any of the Keep Moving Project at Blackberry is reading this. Thank you for this. It’s an inspiration for creative people everywhere.
I love that people are writing with the tales too. It’s great to just follow the A Calendar of Tales tag…
When someone leaves the mortal world they leave behind more than just earthly possessions. They leave behind their dreams, hopes, morals, debts, vices.
When a parent leaves you these things stick with you be it good or bad. Sometimes you don’t want them, but other times you cling to them in place of the emptiness your mother/father left behind.
It’s a bittersweet thing, and to me that’s what the lion ring in the September tale represents.
~*~
Whew!! I sat for 6 straight hours finishing this illustration! D: It’s for Neil Gaiman’s A Calender of Tales. The story in question is the September tale, and you can read it here (it’s page 20).
I spent quite a while trying to figure out the colour theme, and I eventually settled for this one. I’ve seen a few people go straight to the earthy red tones of a lion, but for me the lion in the story is an ethereal figure. So I went with a blue green haha.
An illustration for Neil Gaiman’s A Calendar of Tales
October Tale
A release from my lamp on a dark October night. A rescue from one who is content in life, who doesn’t need three wishes granted. Of all the genie lamps, in all the towns, in all the world, she rescues me from mine.
(Made with stop-motion puppets that probably wouldn’t move right, fabrics, clay, old jewelry, and digital paint. Probably a few cat hairs in there, too. And dog hairs.)
I had a distinct image in mind for the father in the story. He knows a thing or two about the universe and the ways of ducks that we’d love to know about—important things, answers to questions we are dying to understand. Problem is, he is unfortunately human and succumbs to his humanity often.
