Bonus content!
a show-and-tell of the things on my desk and in my head right now
Deadlines are funny things. We think of them as these solid objects, unmovable dates on the calendar. But really, they’re kind of gooey and soft, and are often moved here and there. Big projects can seem to never get finished. A few tweaks to the illustrations here on page 30; oh, some backmatter needs to be done; and don’t forget the title page! And these deadlines really only account for the projects that have them. When I returned from London three weeks ago, I made a list of the stuff I needed to get done. There are ten things on the list, and only three are actually real. Manuscripts need to be written, proposals need to be sketched out, ideas need to be fleshed out, and portfolio pieces need to be drawn. None of these things has anyone on the other end waiting to see them.1
And that’s a pity. I’m not an artist who is very happy doing work that won’t be seen. I like showing it, I like talking about it, and I like feedback. To that end, I thought I’d have a little show-and-tell here this Friday morning. The “real” work I am making right now, things that will actually be in books, can’t be shown and won’t be seen for a year or more, when the book is published. So much of this is either stuff I’m making for myself or preliminary work for projects as I figure out what’s what.
I stay busy. Sometimes, “busy” is just a misspelling of “procrastination,” and it seems like I’m just not getting anything done. Other times, I’m setting up foundations that will be built upon sooner or later. I use my Instagram account to show some of these foundations, and much of this stuff has appeared there in the last three weeks. But I thought I’d use the newsletter here to collect it. To show off some sketches and work that has been made this month of June.
I feel like I’ve seen this already
Yes, you have. Right here, a few weeks ago. I’m showing off the frame now, which was the first thing I did in the studio when I returned. The panel I used for the collage substrate was trash-picked along a canal in Hackney Wick, and the wood for the frame, old bedboards, was also trash-picked from a neighbor’s house here in Philadelphia last year. I usually like my frames to be made of hardwood rather than pine, but this pine is better than what you’ll find at the hardware store, and for this, it works nicely.
This collage is leaning against a wall in the living room right now, along with the giant skull and robot from my show this past winter.
A Elbereth Gilthoniel!
I’ve been reading The Lord of the Rings this summer for the first time in 25 years, which is a delight. I first read them as a teenager. In 1980, the characters and locations in my head all looked like the Brothers Hildebrandt painted them. The last time I read these books was just before the movies came out, around the time my first kid was born and I’d moved to Philadelphia, so I don’t even remember that. Since the ubiquity of the films, it’s been difficult to read the trilogy without having Viggo Mortensen and Ian McKellen speaking the lines of Aragorn and Gandalf, and the images of Peter Jackson and Alan Lee in my head.
To that end, I’ve been looking at a lot of other Middle Earth artwork, mostly for The Hobbit rather than LotR, by other artists, including the Hildebrandt Brothers,2 Cor Blok, and, my favorite, the Czech illustrator Jiří Šalamoun.
I also found this artist named Peter Klucik, whose Tolkien work was made in the early 1990s and was never published, but is absolutely insane. As my friend Jason said, it looks more like it would have been made in 1890 than 1990.
Did you know that there was almost a Sendak version of The Hobbit?
And, I’ve been filling pages with my own drawings as well. Not with any hope of illustrating some published version of these stories, but just to build this unspecific Middle Earth of my imagination.
I like drawing forests and trees, and hills, walls, various structures. I did this a lot during the pandemic, for example. But me being me, I won’t be surprised if engines, fixtures, and dead technology begin appearing in these drawings soon.
an actual book project
I’ve been drawing these running buildings for months now, for a picture book I’m illustrating. I hope it’s okay to post these — they’re sketches and process drawings, not final art, as I’m trying to figure out how things will look. The mechanics of the book itself, the how things work part, was a huge challenge throughout the Spring, which I believe was mostly solved in May. Getting the first book dummy completed allowed me to move on to the how things look part. I think I’m getting there, and I want to show these off.
All of these drawings are either pen and ink or just graphite pencil on paper. The black and white drawings are then scanned and colored in Procreate.3
Hang out, hobnob, rub elbows, have a beer
The annual ALA Summer Conference began today here in Philadelphia. I’ll be in the hall on Saturday signing copies of Hard Hat Hank at the Disney booth. A lot of illustrators are coming into town for the conference, and I thought it would be a good time to see if we could get together and say hello, have a beer, etc. I teamed up with my friend (and former art director of the Tinyville Town series) Alyssa Nassner, and we made a thing for Friday night at Love City Brewing. (If you’re an illustrator and you’re in Philly, whether part of ALA or not, come hang out with us. The QR code goes to an RSVP page.)
I’ll write about this and more ALA stuff here next week.
Cat content.
Basil was slowly waking up yesterday morning, and it was the cutest thing I’ve ever seen.
Thanks for reading. And looking.
Nor do they have payments pending. At least, not this year and probably not next. If you’re someone who wants to be a freelance illustrator, get used to this. Things I’m spending hours and hours on now won’t see a payment possibly for years. And may never escape the sketchbook save Instagram and this Substack.
Say what you will about the Hildebrandts, at least it’s different. The men of Gondor are more Gondorian, the elves wear elf stuff, and the Orcs don’t look like they walked out of a Marvel Comics horror film.
I was a little scattered on how to handle this, and then ran across this piece by
one morning last week while scrolling Instagram. Has nothing to do with what I’m doing, but I stood up and shouted, “That’s it!”
Oh I LOVE that skull! :) And those houses have so much personality, I'm very curious on how it will develop into a book.
Freaking love this, Brian, my former assistant. Love your insightful and hilarious writing and your art.