Book illustration - Aliens Ghosts and Vanishings

 

Aliens Ghosts and Vanishings Strange and Possibly True Australian Stories Written by Stella Tarakson illustrated by Richard Morden Penguin Random House Australia

In store November 2016!!

http://pen.gy/2eHiWnI

A year ago I was approached to illustrate Aliens Ghosts and Vanishings a book examining the most bizarre stories from Australia’s culture and history. It is a joyride of Australian gothic weirdness written for 10 to 15 year olds, however I enjoyed reading it and I’m quite a bit older than that.

Did a UFO drag a family’s car off the road in the middle of the outback? How did rocks rain from the sky in WA? And what became of the prime minister who went into the surf and was never seen again?

Explore the strangest tales, most incredible encounters and creepiest urban legends in Australia’s history. Read about the investigations and weigh up the facts – do you believe the official explanations for these weird and wonderful events?

Here's a few examples of the strange tales it examines...

Mythical creatures! This particular beastie is the Hawkesbury River monster, illustrated with the appearance of a plesiosaur. Next time you’re dabbling your toes in a river look carefully to be sure there is not one of these lurking in the deep. Chomp chomp!

Haunted places! Some ghost hunters believe haunting spirits can be located with an electromagnetic field detector. Well I'm not so sure about that, but you can decide for yourself.

Mysterious locations! Have you heard of the falling stones of Mayanup, Western Australia? This is Audrey of Mayanup in the 1950s, around whom things would move strangely and rocks would appear, slowly falling to the ground. I'm not sure if she could actually levitate, but it felt appropriately telekinetic and spooky, so thats how I illustrated her. 

UFO Sightings! In 1966 in the Melbourne suburb of Westall more than 200 students and teachers from two schools saw a mysterious object land in a nearby grassy field. I was delighted when I learned I was to be illustrating a scene form the Westal UFO sighting. I had heard some of the witnesses speak at a convention and personally asked them to describe what they remember seeing and feeling when they approached the object. Best illustration reference ever.

Bizarre disappearances! What was behind the disappearance of Australian Prime Minister Harold Holt? The conspiracy theories speak of a shark attack, CIA intervention, eloping with a love interest, UFO abduction, and even a Chinese submarine waiting to take him away! 

This was the first illustration completed for Aliens Ghosts and Vanishings, setting the style for the rest of the images. The plan was to create dark, mysterious illustrations with simple line work and lots of texture. I was also keen not to patronise the teenage readers with twee illustrations, instead aiming high and assuming an audience of sophistication.

Strange happenings! Does the existence of the Gosford Glyphs prove ancient Egyptians travelled to Australia, or are the markings simply a prank by some cheeky school children? Hmmm, what would be more likely... let me think. Ancient Egyptians, obviously!

So many wonderfully strange tales. A book I thoroughly enjoyed illustrating. 

Aliens Ghosts and Vanishings is available in stores and on-line November 2016.

painting a Troodon for Dinosaur Hamlet

Dinosaur Hamlet is my entry to the 2015 Illustrators Australia 9x5 art show. 

It took much longer to paint than anticipated, and being no expert with acrylic paints I battled with the medium throughout the entire process. Oh well, the battle is over, the painting is completed and has been delivered to the gallery in time to be part of the show.

The theme this year is 'Playtime', so I painted a Troodon, which is small relatively intelligent bird-like dinosaur from the Cretaceous period. It poses with a dinosaur skull as if performing the famous 'Alas poor Yorick' monologue from Shakespear's Hamlet. An obvious response to the theme, don't you think? 

This Illustrators Australia 9x5 art show will be up until 5 Dec 2015. More than 60 illustrators have each done an artwork in response to the theme 'playtime' on a 9x5 inch ply board. So if you are in Melbourne get along to the Abbotsford Convent and have a look. You will be glad you did!  

Oh, and I illustrated and designed this year's invite featuring a playtime kitten. Inspired by Miso the wonder cat attacking my toes in the middle of the night. 

And finally, here is an animated gif of the Dinosaur Hamlet in progress, so you can see how I went about painting it. It took a lot longer than this gif does!

found in local shop

Today while checking out the local second hand shops I was surprised to spot a couple of familiar faces.  Designed these little toys years ago as characters for collectable ranges.
I immediately bought them of course, but what am I going to do with them now? Dunno. Cool to find them all the same.

Dinosaurs asleep - poster illustration

Dinosaurs Asleep is available as poster art via my Redbubble shop

The Illustrators Australia A3 print show is over and I have picked up my prints.

And a big surprise, I recieved the A3 Show Peoples Choice Award with my print 'Dinosaurs Asleep' :)

There was a little box people could drop their People's Choice votes into and somehow an image of sleeping dinosaurs under a city caught enough peoples attention.

So thank you to Illustrators Australia for organising the fine event, and thank you to fine art printers Image Science for sponsoring the award - the print voucher and monitor calibrator will both be very handy. I had Image Science print my A3 artwork for the show - they did a high quality, fast and friendly job, as always.

My Peoples Choice vote actually went towards Gregory Roberts' piece Life in the paddock. A clever beautiful image and totally right-now.

At the opening I found an abundance of excellent work to admire and loads of friendly, talented illustrators to talk to and be quietly in awe of. In particular I had a great time chatting to fellow illustrators Tali Gal-on and Nicole Onslow.

So if you did not catch the fun this year then make sure you drop in for a wine and a squiz next year!

R :)

map of the supercontinent Pangaea

"Our world long ago, all the lands joined together

When first appeared beasties of fur and of feather"

This is a map of the world as it may have looked around 240 million years ago in the middle of the Triassic period. Drawn with pen and ink, coloured and textured digitally.

Two massive lands Gondwana and Laurasia had just bumped into each other, creating the Appelation Mountains and forming the supercontinent Pangaea.

Although there are other maps of Pangaea around, I could not find any illustrated in an old world style with monsters roaming the land and seas. So I just had to have a go at making one myself. Yep... nerd. I know.

Please note, I am an artist not a scientist. Although I did a fair bit of research to get it as right as I could, there is still plenty of artistic license. For instance, I made up all the rivers - sorry, I just couldn't find reference which told me where the real ones were. A few of the mountains could well be wrong too. And that volcano in between South America and Africa, well it just looked good there. So to any time travellers out there, this map is not to be used for navigation, it is decoration only!

This artwork is available to buy as poster art via Redbubble.

Meet the beasties...

The animals featured are all carefully based on life that would have been kicking around within ten million years or so of that time. I intentionally didn't label them on the map, as I think leaving the creatures a little vague and generic aids imagination. Further more, when these creatures actually existed they didn't have titles such as Saurisichisan or Amonite, instead they would have thought of each other as 'the scaley thing with big teeth it is better not to go near' or 'the tasty little furred critter' or maybe 'the giant winged one who poos from the sky'.

But for the curious, and for a closer look at all the detail going on, here is a list of what the beasties are meant to represent. (You are allowed to scroll quickly through this bit. I am being a little self indulgent)

Cynodont

Eoraptor

Nothosaur

Stagonolepis

Coelophysis

Placodont

Pterorynchus

Thalattosaur

Rutiodon

Panphagia

Cynognathian

Ichtheosaur

Eudimorphodon

Amonite

Eoraptor

Rauisuchus

Dicynodont

Helicoprion - alas I drew its mouth
swirl upside down. Whoops!

Temnospondyl

The Triassic plants featured are fern trees, ferns, conifers, giant club mosses, quillworts and cycads.

As you can see this artwork has an extraordinary amount of texture and detail. It is designed to look its best when printed at poster sizes. It would be ideal educational artwork for a classroom or decoration for a kids room.

R :)

velocirapture

I drew this for the Illustrators Australia 9x5 exhibition 'rapture', opening this Friday.

Velocirapture was done with 6B pencil and shellac on 9x5 inch plywood. 

She's based on the well known dinosaur 'velociraptor', which would have actually looked a bit like this, with the obvious exceptions of the bunch of flowers and ludicrous expression. 
'What's with all those crazy feathers?' you cry. 'The velociraptors on Jurassic Park didn't have those!'.
Well actually these dinosaurs had bird-like feathers. They would have looked a lot like large birds with sharp teeth and four fast running limbs ending in huge claws. Just imagine Big Bird with pointy teeth. Kinda scary, if you think about it. 

If you can't make it to the exhibition you can see all the other pieces on line here 

dinosaurs asleep

Dinosaurs asleep!

The dinosaurs in this picture are kind of based on ones that roamed Australia and Antarctica.

Created in response to Illustration Friday theme 'asleep'.