AND THEN HE BUILDS THEM UP AGAIN

pen + ink on endpapers
10.5x16.2cm each

AND SOMEHOW THEY BECAME MORE STURDY

pen + ink on endpapers
13x19.5cm each

SOMETIMES THEY LOOK LIKE PALACES

HE'S STILL BUILDING MOUNTAINS

in progress 

HE BUILDS MOUNTAINS

in progress

I've been playing around with drawings for a short narrative about erosion and what happens to mountain rubble. It's all highly scientifically accurate, of course.

THE FIRST GERMINATION...

...SO THERE MUST HAVE BEEN LIGHT, SOMEWHERE, OR SO THE THEORIES GO.

pen + ink on endpapers
each 18x24.5cm

ONE DIMENSIONAL PORTALS

pen + ink on endpaper
10x15.5cm

ONE DIMENSIONAL PORTALS: IN PROGRESS

TISMS

[click image for expansion]

MORE TALES OF COLLECTING MATTER

pen + ink on endpapers

11x18.2cm each

A MINOR CASE OF GEOLOGICAL CONFUSION

pen + ink on paper

17.5x22.5cm

I finished the book illustrations a couple of weeks ago and took a bit of a drawing break (mostly filled in with job applications. I think I prefer drawing). 

I'm finally working on imagery for some wee narratives that've been floating half-formed around my hard drive for some time; bathtubs and button holes and all that sort of stuff.

But for now here's some random mountains.

ARBOREAL DETOUR

The current item on the to-do list involves an elk, and I'm still trying to get to grips with getting an elk to look like an elk (and not a cow, donkey, deer or moose). So I took a wee break and started mapping out a new drawing, and it doesn't involve a mountain...

LITTLE BITS OF ORGANISED

Now that the illustrations are nearing an end, I'm finally getting closer to opening an Etsy shop in an attempt to flog the odd drawing. 

And, in a further incidence of proactivity, I finally drew up some designs to get Moo cards printed up. Organised, I am.

ONE-HUNDRED-AND-TWENTY-SEVEN YEAR OLD PAPER. AND I DREW ON IT.

I found some more mottled endpapers from old books, and since the mountain thing is still going strong this is happening:

pen + ink

13.5x19.5cm

13x18.5cm

The second image is on paper from a book dating back to 1884. There was a pang of guilt, but the endpapers were coming loose anyway and the rest of the book is intact. It’s a wee astronomy book titled Sun Moon and Stars: A Book for Beginners by A. Giberne, with chapter titles like 'Visitors' and 'Little Servants'.

In other news: The book illustrations I’ve been working on are nearly all done (just the cover and a couple of miscellaneous extras to go, I think - more on that later though), which means I now have to stop pretending I have an actual job and up the job hunting mission. They’re still mythical creatures, those job things...

WE LIVE HERE...

[click image for larger]

OUR THREE MOUNTAIN-ISLES

10.5x20.5cm

A kind of plot has been forming over the past couple of weeks - about Universal Matter and ancestors and the origins of their mountains - and I'm slowly starting to pull it together into some sort of visual format. I think this might be part of a small-scale-book-trial-(zine?)-thing.

ANOTHER CASE OF THE TISMS

A reworking of Tisms, begun yesterday when I should have been doing something else. A bit of an experiment in making reproducible narratives and subplots to sneak into public places. Possibly.

MOUNTAINEERING

I'm not entirely sure where this is going yet, but it seems to involve a return to strange, faceless hunchbacked beings. Who carry mountains, naturally.

IT APPEARS THAT SOMETIMES THEY SPAWN...

pen + ink on paper

7x22.5cm

SHIFT

pen + ink on paper

7x23cm

EIGHT: THERE WAS A DISCREPANCY, AND IT UNSETTLED THEM

pen + ink on paper

11x15.5cm

SEVEN: AND SUDDENLY EVERYTHING FELT VERY UNSTABLE

pen + ink on paper

11x15.5cm

SIX: THE LUNARESCENT MOON

pen + ink on paper

11x15.5cm

FIVE: METHODS OF RE-PLANTING

pen + ink on paper

11x15.5

FOUR: THE HOLES SOLIDIFIED INTO MOUNTAINS

pen + ink on paper

11x15.5cm

THREE: THE RE-POSITIONING OF GEOLOGICAL STRUCTURES

pen + ink on paper

11x15.5cm

I found an old – mostly unused – notebook the other day, and a quick scalpel trim down one side left me with a neat stash of uniformly sized paper.

I’ve been filling them in with drawings in between working on the final leg of an illustration commission (thirty-one down, around fourteen to go!), as a bit of a brain-break.

TWO: THEY WERE TOO FAR AWAY...

pen + ink on paper

11x15.5cm

...to determine whether the lifeforms were gargantuan, or the terrain rather small.

ONE: SOMETIMES THE MOUNTAINS WENT MISSING

pen + ink on paper

11x15.cm

...but they never bothered looking for them, as they believed in the theory that things will come home when they want to return.

AND THEN THEY MAKE MOUNTAINS

pen + ink on paper

7x22.5cm

Possibly out of bits of Universal Matter they've collected over time.

TISMS

pen + ink on paper

7x21 cm each

Tisms - a geological ailment: cataclysms on a minor scale, often as slight tremors in a mountain causing an unnoticed avalanche, where the quiet vibrations underground result in an insignigicant shifting of superficial snow.

Generally an affliction of mountains of a nervous disposition.

eg. "What was that?" says one mountaineer to another, after feeling quiverings underfoot.

"Oh, the mountain just has tisms, is all."

OF MOUNTAINS AND ORIGINS

pen + ink on paper

each 7x21cm

Someone once told him that everything in existence began from one tiny sphere suspended in space.

THEY LIKE TO STEAL MOONS AND HOARD THEM UNDERGROUND

pen + ink on paper

each 7x21cm

UNDERGROUND CAVERNS

pen + ink on paper

each 7x20cm

PHOSPHORESCENT [they were]

pen + ink on paper

7x20cm

THEY DON'T ALWAYS KNOW WHY THEY DO THAT, BUT THEY DO IT ANYWAY

pen + ink on paper

13.24.cm

AND THEN THEY MAKE THE ISLANDS

pen + ink on paper

13x24.5cm

BOTTLED [the library]

pen + ink on paper

13x24.5cm

[just a small one today]

pen + ink on paper, glass

8x8cm

THEY DIDN'T, BUT WE DID

pen + ink on paper

13x24.5cm