Violet Skeleton

She always wanted to be someone like that. The girl who wore stillettos to bed and who's eyelashes were as long as spider legs.

She bought some lilac hairdye and a box of bleach and some black shiny lace up boots.

 

Hello Violet Skeleton.

Belated Happy Easter

This was supposed to be my Happy Easter post but it's a bit belated as you can see!  Anyway I hope everyone had a wonderful day and ate too many chocolate eggs! Wouldn't it be amazing if chicks came in all the pastel shades of the rainbow?  I'd have a baby pink one or a pale lilac one.  And they would lay rainbow eggs too.

Alice in Wonderland

I still haven't been to see Alice in Wonderland.  I will get round to it at some point but I was actually more excited about Camille Rose Garcia's illustrated version of the book coming out a couple of weeks ago.  It arrived the other day and did not disappoint! This book is well worth having a look at.  The technicolor mixed together with the gothic style of drawings gives a completely different visual take on any other illustrated copy of the story I have seen before!

While we are on the subject of Alice in Wonderland I thought I would post up some Alice in Wonderland inspired photos that I did a couple of years ago:
(I'm sure they look very amateurish now but it was such a fun shoot to do!)

I am juggling third year work with everything else at the moment and working on my childrens book which is why I haven't posted anything new lately.  Also it was my birthday, and obviously I had to take time out for that! Covered the floor in sequins and made cupcakes with edible glitter.  We went dancing.

The Cupcake Palace

Here's my character again, inside her Cupcake Palace.  This is one of the pages from my book and there's writing to go on it too.  

I got totally inspired over the summer by Scott Hoves Cake Land.  I especially like these shoes:

 

I think my character would have probably have worn shoes like these in her younger days.

Princess Terribelle and the Wellington Boot

I got this in the post yesterday, found it on amazon for 1p or something.  I used to read it a lot when I was little but don't know where my copy of the book went.

It made me so happy to read it again!  (It used to be one of my favourite books.)

The story is about Princess Terribelle who was mostly very good but sometimes she was bad.  She lives in a Palace and sleeps every night on fourteen mattresses and five pillows.  One day she gets taken for tea with the Duchess and her daughter Arabel. 

Arabel has lots of dolls and Princess Terribelle becomes obsessed with this tiny pair wellington boots that she finds among the doll clothes.  She loves them so much that she slips one of them into her pocket and takes it home.

But Princess Terribelle feels a little bit guilty and she also discovers that it's not so much fun playing with just one boot.

 

  

Anyway then one day Arabel come round for tea and Princess Terribelle hides the little wellington boot, hoping that Arabel has forgotten about it.  At the end of the evening Arabel slips a package to Terribelle and inside it is the other boot.  Then they become best of friends and all is happy and wonderful and Terribelle never bosses Arabel about again. The end.

I think I used to love it so much because I was also obsessed with tiny things.  I think I liked the way Princess Terribelle imagined that the boots were fairy boots. I remember writing tiny letters and putting them in the garden for the fairies when I was small. And totally believing a fairy would find them!

Right now my life is tartan royalty, glitterlashes, drinking raspberry tea, wearing tiaras round the house, drawing chandeliers and red nail varnish.

I'm working on the pages of my kids book at the moment and it's HARD. Hard to wake up with motivation for it every day, especially as we had a crit the other day and the tutors just pulled it all apart.  But just gotta keep going! I might post some images from it soon though. I'd post one now but it's all pink and would clash with this red-orientated post.  

Til next time! x

Dripping Glitter

 

This is my favourite illustration I did of this character (looks a lot better if you click on it).  She has black line around her this time,  I was experimenting with black line/no black line as usual.  

I would so dearly love to be able to make my hair do that but I don't have enough of it yet.  I think I would need to be at least waist length to make that work.   I have always wanted hair down to my feet actually.  I'm growing it at the moment.  Heres hoping!

Now she's angry.  ^  She can be quite fierce when she's cross. In fact she can get quite... murderous.  I wouldn't want to cross her in this mood!

This by the way is what I am coveting at the moment.  This sparkling, rainbow dripping with gems necklace.  I detour by the shop it's in every day so that I can look at it in the window.  It makes my mouth water.

It's designed by Butler and Wilson who make the best jewellery ever!  I have a tiara by them and its my favourite thing to wear!  Are you a fan of this?  My housemate would say "it looks like Barbie's been sick on it," because that is what she said about my tiara. But I think the glitterier the better!

Character Design

This character lives in a house of cake with pale pink walls and silver balls round the windows.  She bakes lots of cakes for her bakery but likes to abstain from eating too many cupcakes herself, which is why she is so skinny.  She just likes the look of the things. Especially the mountains of pastel coloured icing.

This couple- Duke Cornelius Crumpet and Duchess Cornelius Crumpet like to attend the tea parties in the cake house though the Duke is a grump who does not like socializing.  He just goes for the food.

These two are party animals.  They attend at least five social events per week.  They live in a black castle of which half is closed up and in ruins. They have three pet bats called Cuthbertina, Benjamina and Thomasina who live in the dark red curtains of their massive four poster bed.  They also have a black cat called Ginkgo Jellyboots who has a white star on his nose and who is afraid of mice.

Pookie the Rabbit with Wings

 

'Pookie' by Ivy Wallace was one of my favourite favourite ever books when I was little. I just thought that a rabbit with wings was such a great idea!  Or such a nice idea at least.  Probably not very practical!  I love the way Pookie is drawn though, so that the bottom half of his body is kind of ball-like.  I think he is one of the best stylized rabbits in kids books ever!

 Pookie lives in Bluebell wood where there are lots of fairies and elves and other animals and one day (before his wings grow big and are just tiny flimsy things) he sets out to seek his fortune.  Eventually he meets a girl who takes him in and looks after him and his wings blossom and he is happy.  And then he continues to go on adventures!

This picture ^ is from 'Pookie Puts the World Right,' where he tells Winter to go away because he is mean and destructive.  Then he has to go on a mission to find Winter and apologize because he realises that nature can't function properly without one of the seasons.

Among his adventures Pookie takes a trip to the seaside in one book...

Goes to Wonderland...

And gets captured by the circus. (I think this one was my very favourite)

Does anyone else remember these books? I found them totally entrancing!

Magic Cats

 

I saw these cats in someones front garden as I was walking home in a snowglobe last night, snowflakes, eyelashes.  They were drinking peppermint tea and eating stripy cakes. I think they were magic cats.

Crayon Portraits

 

The other night me and my boyfriend drew pictures of each other because we like to do fun things like that, and other fun things such as making jigsaw puzzles and playing backgammon and taking romantic walks in the graveyard and cross stitching and saute cooking and jumping on bouncy castles. Well maybe not the cross stitching.

I like his crayon pink rabbit best.

Its been so long since I used colouring pencils.

I especially like it when they are in rainbow order.

Tea Time

 

  

  

  

 

This menu was one of my project final pieces.  I used the research I did on cakes ect and put it all together to make this. It was a concertina book.  My favourite pages are the third and fourth.  What do you think?  Looking at it makes me hungry though, I could do with a frog king cupcake right now.

Lipstick Monster

 This is Marselina the Make-up Monster.  She's very small, lives inside a lipstick tube, leaves pink footprints wherever she goes...

A spot of fairy dust

Tomorrow is the hand in date for our Dissertation.  I did mine on Tinker Bell.  It was interesting to explore how her personality and image has been influenced by things such as feminism over the ages.

 

I think Disney definitely did it best in the original Peter Pan film.  Not really a fan of the new CGI Tink, or of the one played by Julia Roberts in 'Hook.'

 

I reckon the best live action Tink is the one from the 2003 version of 'Peter Pan.'

Still... none of them beat the Disney version:

 

What do you think? Are you a fan? I Can not wait to get this essay handed in!

Glitter

She had a commitment to magic, Tim thought, as he watched Gemma brush her hair; a commitment to glitter and sparkle, to pretty clothes, and looking pretty, and to the manufacture of pretty pictures. In his own way, he too was committed to fantasy and fabrication. They had little else in common, but that suited them. “We’re not going to be boyfriend and girlfriend, you know,” she had said several weeks before. “I know,” he replied. “I haven’t got time for a boyfriend; it just complicates things.” Instead they had sex, animal and meaningless, regularly, at weekends usually.

It was Saturday morning. Her hair had recently been the colour of candy floss, and before that, shocking pink, but had since faded to the bleached milky hue of evening clouds. Several strands of it clung to the brush. She turned.

“Are you still here?”

It was a joke.

She plucked a tangle of hair from the brush’s plastic spines and nonchalantly let it fall from outstretched fingers into the bin. The previous night’s nail-varnish, chipped in places, still clung to her nails. She was beautiful; he was her audience.“What shall you do today?” he asked.

Her reflection began to apply eye-liner, its eye very wide open, lashes fluttering slightly.

“I suppose I’ll meet friends in town, or I’ll do some drawing.”

The mirror was set into a dressing table that must be old, but he did not know whether it had come with the room or she had brought it from home.

“How about you?”

She put the eye-pencil down on the untreated pine, where it rolled against a pot of lime-green nail-varnish. She picked up a tube of mascara. The dressing table was integral to her, symbolic of her. It often appeared in her candy-gothic illustrations like a signature. In the drawings it was less cluttered.

“Write, or play videogames.”

He shrugged. Beneath his bare elbow the sheets were still warm, but he could not tell whether from only from his own body-heat, or from hers as well. They smelled of her, and when he moved, the scent was disturbed. Above the bed’s head was draped a line of unlit fairy-lights.

She looked at him, smiled. When he left they did not kiss goodbye. They only kissed when they fucked.

(To read the rest of this short story please go here)

Story by H. Benjamin Petrie (www.hbenjaminpetrie.com) 
Illustrations by Yours Truly

living inside a cake

There was once an old woman who lived in a shoe,

she had so many children she didn't know what to do,

so she packed up her clothes and her bath and her bed,

and went to live in a cake-house instead.

I've always wanted to do a cut-through drawing of a house. I made the stars and chandeliers all sparkly but you can't tell from this scan.

Black Cat Kitty Kat

I've been sorting out all my work because we have assessment on Monday and I found these cats that I drew way back in summer.

I like drawing cats a lot. These remind me of a book I used to read when I was little called 'It's Raining Cats and Dogs,' about well cats and dog falling from the sky. But they were all spotty and stripy and patterned and multicoloured. How cool would it be if animals really looked like this! I want a smarties cat!