Fox & Comet

Snapshots: EDINBURGH

2012-01-29T14:12:00.002Z

My film A Game of String will be screened as part of Snapshots: EDINBURGH, an evening of puppetry and moving image curated by the Manipulate Festival, on the 3rd of February. More info here.

Hot Off the Press: TOASTYCATS 6

2012-01-27T19:38:00.001Z

The new Toastycats is out! This is the wordless issue. And maybe the death issue too. We visit some familiar creatures, and a fox sees something special in the sky.

What you won't find in this issue is The Seed. I have decided to continue that story separately as its own thing. Don't worry.

Toastycats 6 is available to buy here.

And a little taste:

What Am I Holding?

2012-01-24T17:16:00.000Z

Is it the almost finished new issue of Toastycats? Yes. I just received the proofs from the printer today. All systems are GO.

Owls

2012-01-21T14:14:00.003Z

3 brand new owl plates. Medium sized china with gilded edges. They are available at The Red Door Gallery in Edinburgh and cost £100 each.

Fierce Dragon Pony

2012-01-03T20:12:00.001Z

First drawing of the year.

Interview

2011-12-14T23:00:00.002Z

An interview with yours truly on the Edinburgh League of Comics blog.

Best of the Year

2011-12-12T16:35:00.000Z

I get a nice mention from comic artist Nick Abadzis in his 2011 round-up on the Forbidden Planet Blog.

Lynda Barry

2011-10-31T04:16:00.002Z

A recent NY Times profile of the great comic artist Lynda Barry. And I mean Great.

On the Ferry

2011-10-24T20:12:00.001+01:00

Mr Holdstock and the very expressive top of his head. We were on the Stranraer - Belfast ferry. It's all felt tips, one of the few times those have worked for me. From a few years ago.

Liquid Telvision

2011-10-22T17:45:00.000+01:00

In the 90s, MTV aired a brilliant animation showcase called Liquid Television. People like Charles Burns, Mark Mothersbaugh and The Residents were involved. It was the first to feature Beavis and Butthead and Aeon Flux. Now MTV has made it all (and more) available for free viewing online.

Dan Clowes

2011-10-19T18:41:00.000+01:00

Interview with Dan Clowes at the A.V. Club.

The Voice of the City

2011-10-16T00:40:00.002+01:00

A recent illustration job for Paravion Press. This is a short story called The Voice of the City, by O. Henry. Like all Paravion Press publications, it comes in the form of a small, exquisitely designed chapbook, and it's part of a series of 3 books about New York City, the other 2 being works by Maxim Gorky and Walt Whitman.

Paravion gave me free rein with this project, and I conceived the illustrations as a series of snapshots of ordinary life in the city. The images do not reference the text explicitly. Instead, they address the question which the story poses: What is the essence of the City?

The story was written in the early 20th century, but you will notice that the clothing and objects in the images are contemporary. I made that jump because it underscores the universal quality of city life. Almost a hundered years later, New York is still New York.

You can find The Voice of the City and other books by Paravion Press here.

NYC Cartoon Club

2011-10-10T17:04:00.000+01:00

2 collaborative cartoons made with Dan Meth. In the left one, we each drew every other panel, whereas the right hand page is more of a mishmash. The idea is that you don't plan the cartoon at all. You just riff off of what the other person has drawn and add whatever comes to mind. And you have to work fast.

Joanna Hellgren

2011-10-07T18:23:00.002+01:00

From Fixa Cashen (2008)

... is a Swedish comic artist and illustrator. Her penmanship is delicate and expressive, and her characters have the most haunting eyes. Here's her website.

From Frances 2 (2010)

Cover of Mon Frere Nocturne (2006)

Fun at the Museum of the Moving Image

2011-10-05T18:08:00.000+01:00

The Museum of the Moving image is located in Astoria, New York City. This is not it. This is the Tyrell Building from Blade Runner. It's about the size of a piano and it's only one of many objects from film history exhibited here:

Prosthetics from the prologue in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Almost all of the apes were played by actors. The face pieces were especially developed for the movie, to allow the actors maximum expression.

John Hurt's prosthetic from The Elephant Man.

Hair pieces worn by Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver.

Al Pacino and Christopher Walken life masks. Life masks are used by make-up artists to create facial prosthetics.

The single movie that has the most space devoted to it is Silence of the Lambs. There is an extensive exhibit of production design from this one. Above is a detailed scale model of Jame Gumb's house, complete with the well in which he kept his victims.

A beautiful sketch of the same house.

Detail.

A sketch for the scene with the crucified guard. It's based on a method of torture/execution called the Blood Eagle. Only click on the link if you're not squeamish. Here is an interesting analysis of the film.

The museum also has a large collection of filming equipment from different eras, television sets, pre-film era machines such as the zoetrope and film franchise toys. There are some rather interesting choices in terms of what movies and shows are represented. For example: one of Elizabeth Taylor's dresses from Cleopatra is placed next to a Robin Williams costume from Mrs Doubtfire.

A few random snapshots:

Screening of Boxing Cats, a short film from the earliest days of cinema where films were simply a few minutes of people or animals doing something quaint.

Authentic Cosby Sweater.

Star Trek Barbie and Ken dolls. Observe that Barbie is a Redshirt.

Crockett and Tubbs suits from Miami Vice.

Museum interior. Like something from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Ok, but the museum is not all about movies. Example: an exhibit of arcade and video games, which you can play. What got me most excited?

I used to have one of these! You can sit down and play Super Mario Bros 1 on it. It's a funny feeling when you find something you used to own in a museum.

The End
(Music swells)

Badges for Friends

2011-10-03T22:18:00.000+01:00

A couple of portrait badges made for friends.

Toastycats in Texas

2011-09-16T15:36:00.002+01:00

The Austin Chronicle has an article on Toastycats that made me blush.

Laika in Litro

2011-09-08T20:18:00.000+01:00

My comic Laika is featured in the latest issue of Litro, a free magazine available around London. The whole issue is dedicated to comics and graphic fiction and includes interviews with Adrian Tomine and Shaun Tan.

At the Post-Apocalyptic Diner

2011-09-07T15:42:00.000+01:00

She will be your waitress tonight, at the Post-Apocalyptic Diner. This is for the next issue of Minerva's Wreck, a very interesting zine based in Austin, Texas.

OK Go + The Muppets

2011-09-05T21:17:00.003+01:00

Creature Feature

2011-08-01T10:46:00.000+01:00

Preview for an upcoming comic. Meanwhile, all five issues of Toastycats are still available in the shop.

Fox & Comet Facelift

2011-07-30T21:58:00.002+01:00

Yes, it's true. The fur is brushed and shiny. The colourful ribbon has been placed just so. The teeth are sharp. Welcome.

5 Muses

2011-07-26T09:16:00.003+01:00

I recenctly did a job for The Jerwood Charitable Foundation, who asked me to make 2 images for their promotional material - a postcard and a business card. They wanted something that expressed creativity, energy and diversity. I immediately started thinking about heraldry, and those wonderful spear-clutching bears, roaring gryphons, flag-waving unicorns and other imaginary animals that seem to rule that world. My idea was to create a kind of muse, but instead of the greek muses, who looked like lovely young women, these would be fierce animal hybrids with flaming wings. I played around with a lot of different animal-part combinations, trying to keep them unusual and even outrageous, but still have them make aesthetic sense. Jerwood picked 2 of these images, and I'll post scans of the finished work later. These 5 are my personal favourites.

Lucian Freud

2011-07-22T10:16:00.001+01:00

Girl with Kitten

... is dead. Here's an awesome picture. More of his work on my tumblr.

I'm on Tumblr

2011-07-13T13:34:00.000+01:00

You can look at my ever growing collection of interesting pictures here.

LGBT Youth Scotland Illustration Project

2011-06-01T10:18:00.000+01:00

A recent series of illustrations I did for informational material commissioned by LGBT Youth Scotland and designed by Heehaw Digital. The brief was to develop images of happy, nice-looking, ethnically diverse young people. These are a few of them. As much as I love to make really weird and intricate drawings, it's also great to work on a very simple, straightforward thing like this from time to time. Some good faces, and there you go.

Chester Brown on The AV Club

2011-05-18T12:24:00.000+01:00

Chester Brown is one of my absolutely favourite comic artists. You can read a recent interview with him here. I wish that it had focused a little bit more on the work itself rather than politics, but it's still nice to see what he's up to. The image above is from the extraordinary series of strips based on the Gospels, which appeared in his titles Yummy Fur and Underwater 1987-97.

Creatures!

2011-05-07T00:20:00.002+01:00

From time to time I make creatures out of fabric and buttons. These two are brand new and looking for homes. For more details, have a look at my web shop.

Hello! Nice to meet you.

2011-04-25T21:16:00.000+01:00

Two new friends in my sketchbook. They eat bread crumbs and enjoy listening to records. Can they crash on your sofa?

The Muppets Cover Bohemian Rhapsody

2011-02-05T15:37:00.002Z

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My two favourite things rolled into one.

No Comment Necessary

2011-01-20T11:41:00.002Z

Why am I posting this? See the last category.

source: http://www.murraythenut.com/

a

2011-01-19T17:36:00.001Z

Here are details for 'a', the exhibition for which I recently made hare, squirrel and magpie plates. Worth a visit, if you're in town:

Saturday 22nd January Private View 11.00-13.00 Symposium 13.00-16.

23rd January - 27th February 12.00-15.00

The Demarco European Art Foundation, Craigcrook Castle, Craigcrook Road, Edinburgh, EH4 3PE

Ailsa Lochhead/Alice Bo-Wen Chang/Augustus Veinoglou/Becky Campbell/David Cass/Dickie Webb/Eric Schumacher/Faith Limbrick/Grazyna Dobrzelecka/Kathryn Wiggins/Kim W Wilson/Konomi Kaneya/Kirsty Sumerling/Laura Sutherland/Lorna Louise Reid/Magda Boreysza/Margaret McCormick/Nika Kupyrova/Peter Amoore/Rachael Thomas/Rachel Charter/Sacha Imrie/Sarah MacIntyre/Sara Sinclair/Sarah MacIntyre/Sigrun Gudmundsdottir/Thorunn Bara/Tobias Houlton

An extended version of the group exhibition recently presented at The WOT Gallery, with new works made in response to The Demarco European Art Foundation

Explaining Art to Animals

2011-01-15T15:14:00.002Z

Here are 3 fresh new pieces I've made for an exhibition at the Richard Demarco Archive. It's a foray into fine art, which is a new thing for me.

Richard Demarco is a Scottish artist famous for his collaborations with, and championing of other artists, especially European artists, and perhaps most notably Joseph Beuys. He has an impressive archive of modern and contemporary art at Craigcrook Castle in Edinburgh.

The exhibition is called 'a' and will consist of work by 26 artists, all of us current or former Edinburgh College of Art students. (I'll post more info when I have it) The idea is that our pieces will somehow engage with the art collection.

I latched onto the image of a hare in the Beuys section. Beuys famously attempted to explain art to a dead hare (How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare, 1965); the hare being a sacred animal which runs free, unencumbered by borders.

Here's Beuys, his face smeared with gold and honey, guiding the hare around an art gallery:

So the first piece I did was the hare. For its companions, I chose two animals which I had seen in the garden surrounding the castle, a magpie and a squirrel.

Both are animals that compulsively gather things, and I thought that if any animal would appreciate the archive it would be them. So they've all been invited inside and their gazes will fall across abstract paintings and photographs of performance art. And we'll never know what they think.

Dead Pets' Society

2010-12-26T14:35:00.000Z

I made two plates for Christmas gifts this year, both portraits of deceased pets: our little rabbit for my mother and our neighbour's cat for our neighbour. Here are some pictures:

Want!

2010-12-23T10:57:00.000Z

I know it's a bit late, but I really want this for Christmas. It's another insanely beautiful book by Nobrow Press, featuring work by Yeji Yun, Andrew Rae, Luke Best, Katia Fouquet and a bunch of other people of whom I am deeply envious. So, you know, if you're really annoyed by all the money you've still got lying around after your Christmas shopping, and you'd like nothing more than to make a skint and wretched artist tremendously happy, send one of these my way. Just saying.

An Old Friend

2010-12-20T10:45:00.003Z

This one was an experiment. We reconnected while I was digging through old work stashed at my mother's house. The face has character, though perhaps not much intelligence. Below, the same individual contemplates our wintry garden.

You

2010-12-13T19:01:00.000Z

Watch out!

A Recent Portrait Commission

2010-12-12T23:49:00.000Z

This was a birthday present for the subject. I had several photos of her to work from, but I didn't want to just copy one of them. Instead, I used them for reference to get her appearance right but then made up the rest: the background, the dress, the pose - based on info I got from the client. The size of the original is A2. Materials: Posca pen and Cretacolor's Aqua Monolith pencils. A very enjoyable experience and hopefully something I'll get to do again.

If anyone wants to order a portrait, email me: hello@magdaboreysza.com . I do animals too!

Lovely Animation by Alice Cohen

2010-12-02T20:13:00.001Z

Calling All Indy Comic Creators in Edinburgh

2010-11-11T10:19:00.000Z

My fellow comic creator Tom Hunt asked me to post this. I think it's a good idea, so here it goes:

Dear All,

If you're reading this then not only do you like comics, but hopefully you enjoy creating them as well! I recently met a fellow Edinburgh resident and creator of comics Edward Ross (http://edwardmaross.blogspot.com/) at the MCM Expo down in London. After talking at the convention and going out for a drink this weekend, we formulated a plan. We would like to form a loose collective of indy-comic creators here in Edinburgh, with a view to creating an inspiring and supportive community north of the border, as well as holding talks, exhibitions, “drink and draw” evenings and eventually our own mini-con in April. Plans are still...well, in the planning stage at this moment, but if this sounds like something you'd like to be involved with, let us know! Send me an email and we'll create some sort of mailing list. We're canvassing interest right now, so if you know anyone else in Edinburgh who creates comics, feel free to forward this to them. Ideally, we'll all meet up in early December to say hello, draw stuff, and discuss how to move forward. And while I'm sounding so corporate, we'll be promoting synergy as well.

Regards,

Tom Hunt

email: tom@misprintcomics.com

P.S. Edward has already got the ball rolling! Here's a good opportunity for self-promotion if you're interested, taking place on the 28th this month: "The Screen Banditas (http://www.screenbandita.org/) have organised a 'birthday party' to celebrate their 2 years and 3 months of existence, and will be using the gallery space of Rhubaba for the event (http://www.rhubaba.org/). They will be putting on the event on Sunday the 28th of November. The Banditas are an Edinburgh Arts collective, themselves focused on found footage and 16mm film, but generally interested in DIY arts and alternative arts culture. They've arranged to use some of the space to have a mini fair: there'll be a record stall, a sort of crafts stall (http://www.elenikalorkoti.com/) and I've been offered space for a zine/comics stall. I want to showcase some top quality small press stuff, especially local zines, but will also be looking to get work from people I know in England. I'd like to hear from anyone who would like to have a few copies of their work put on sale at the stall.

Please get in touch with me at edward.m.a.ross@btinternet.com to arrange for this."

P.P.S. Also, we need a kick-ass name group name. Suggestions?

Let's Save the Forest

2010-11-08T13:01:00.003Z

Dear friends of my blog,

some of you are already familiar with The Forest, some aren't. The Forest is a volunteer run arts and events space which has been a hub for alternative culture in Edinburgh for the past 10 years. There's not enough room here to tell you about all the incredible things that have happened in this place, but let me give you a few examples: Paper Cinema, paint parties, a man climbing into space in 30 days, a baptismal font converted into a communal hot tub, the first UK staging of Boxwars, Monster Bike workshops, Bad Food Day in the Forest Cafe, gigs by Aberfeldy, Amanda Palmer, Patti Plinko & Her Boy, Terrafolk and Sxip Shirey, art exhibitions and happenings . The thing is, all events in the Forest are free, and people work here for free, because we believe that culture should be accessible to everyone.

Now the Forest faces a problem: its landlords have declared bankruptcy and will have to sell the building that houses us. The Forest needs to raise £500 000 to buy it, and thereby ensure its own continued existence. We're asking for contributions, even if it's just a few pounds.

I cannot stress enough how essential the Forest is. Not just to the city of Edinburgh, but as a presence in the world. The Forest is all the best human traits - creativity, cooperation, generosity - put into practice and flourishing. If you have been to The Forest, think of the things it gave you and give something back. If you haven't been there yet, give something so that you one day will be able to.

Click here to find out more.

The Forest Cafe.

Paint party.

Uke Boogie night. Hosted by Alex.

Me painting a mural in the Forest-run Total Kunst gallery in 2005.

The band Silk performing during the Forest's 10th birhday party.

Me with poet Ryan Van Winkle outside The Forest.

My Hero

2010-11-06T12:30:00.001Z

Tove Jansson. Looking super-cool.

Girl in a Bottle

2010-10-17T01:54:00.000+01:00

Animal Crockery

2010-10-06T14:48:00.003+01:00

Some fun new work that I've made. This is all vintage english and scottish china, decorated by hand with my animal designs. If you want to buy anything, get in touch: hello@magdaboreysza.com. Generally, small plates cost £25-£30 and large plates £50. The plates can be put on the wall with hooks, or used for keeping fruit or biscuits on, but not for eating off of. They are dishwasher safe. Click on the images to see larger versions.
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Fuck Yeah Crows

2010-09-22T20:34:00.001+01:00

There's a whole website dedicated to pictures of crows. It's called Fuck Yeah Crows. How great is that? Crows are my second favourite bird. Number one is still seagulls. Crazy, vicious seagulls. Yes.

We Have a Shop

2010-08-20T11:33:00.000+01:00

... in the Spiegel Garden, a venue in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. If you're in town in August, drop by and say hello, have some tea and browse our wares. It's all handmade by us and there are both cheap and expensive things on offer. We also make things to order.

I have recently been decorating vintage tea cups and plates with my animal designs. These are painted by hand:

Joanne Richardson sells quirky, glamorous jewellery of her own design as well as vintage broches and necklaces and various accessories. Her label is called Joannarock.

And Jenny Sweetnam makes very playful and cool jewellery as well as these great jackets, which come in various fabrics. Each jacket is unique.

We all hang out in our little shop and work on our things. You should come too.

From the Big Bang...

2010-08-19T20:30:00.000+01:00

... to Tuesday Morning, is the title of this wonderful animation by Canadian artist Claude Cloutier. (Thanks, Ericka!)

Jewish Super Heroes. Felt Giraffes. Dwindling Hope.

2010-07-28T22:55:00.001+01:00

"Creativity can be the most horrible thing in the world. It's a piece of yourself that breaks off and wanders out into the world, where everyone else can see, on some level, who you really are."

That's a quote from an insightful (and melancholy) article about indpendent comic creators at the San Diego Comic-Con. It's by Todd VanDerWerff, at the AV Club. Go read it.

This Bear

2010-06-27T12:02:00.003+01:00

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... is a bit angry, but mostly just confused.

Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys: A Favourite

2010-06-16T11:02:00.003+01:00

This novel made a strong impression on me when I read it as a teenager. It works as a prequel to Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, supplying the back story of one of the characters from that book, namely Mr Rochester's mad wife Bertha. Here, her name is Antoinette and she's a creole girl, displaced from her home in Jamaica to England. The story is defined by her memories of the lush, beautiful island of her childhood, but also a kind of feverishness, and I think that this wonderful cover captures that perfectly. Sadly, I haven't been able find out who the illustrator is, but this is one of my all-time favourite book covers.

How to Succeed as an Artist: Step One

2010-06-12T00:21:00.004+01:00

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I drew this spread for The Wee Red Herring, which is the student paper at Edinburgh College of Art. Click on the image to see details.

A Game of String: the Film Is Finished (kind of)

2010-05-15T16:57:00.005+01:00

At around 15.30 yesterday I handed a dvd of A Game of String, the animated film that I've been working on for the past two years, over to my tutors.

It had been an intense couple of weeks, not just for me but for the whole Edinburgh College of Art; as assessments were closing in people were working 24 hour days in their studios, sometimes catching a nap in the corner surrounded by art materials, take-away food and energy drink cans. Thursday at noon I started the final edit and kept working until the next day, when I had to deal with a final hurdle in the shape of a computer clusterfuck - the animator's curse. In any case, I burnt the dvd and stuck around a little longer just soaking up the atmosphere of hundreds of talented people doing their very best all at once, as graduating students were putting the finishing touches to their degree show exhibits, before they would inevitably be kicked out at five o'clock. This is what I will miss the most about art college.

Then I went home and slept for 14 hours.

Now, just to clarify, while the film is finished for marking, it's not quite ready to be seen by anyone else, which is why I'm not posting it just yet. However, to satisfy the curious, here are a few stills:

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If you're in Edinburgh, be sure to visit the ECA Degree Show which will be open to the public (and free) 12-20 June. More details here.

Hughes

2010-03-17T13:38:00.004Z

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"And I don't think we are ever again obliged to look at a plywood box or a row of bricks on the floor or a video tape of some twit from the University of Central Paranoia sticking pins in himself and think 'This is the real thing. This is the necessary art of our time. This needs respect.' Because it isn't and it doesn't. And nobody cares.

The fact is that anyone except a child can make such things because children have the kind of direct, sensuous and complex relationship with the world around them that modernism, in its declining years, was trying to deny. That relationship is the lost paradise that art wants to give back to us. Not as children but as adults. It's also what the modern and the old have in common: Pollock with Turner, Matisse with Rubens or Braque with Poussin. And the basic project of art is always to make the world whole and comprehensible, to restore it to us in all its glory and its occasional nastiness, not through argument but through feeling. And then to close the gap between everything that is you and not you... and in this way to pass from feeling to meaning."

Robert Hughes (The Shock of the New, 1980)

...and something Salty.

2010-03-14T13:40:00.002Z

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This is a poster I made recently, for the wonderful band The Sea is Salt. The above image is the actual poster and the one here below is something I toyed around with. I like this big weird moon in the picture but with the band name it became too cluttered. So here it is, as a bonus:

Tom Chambers

2010-03-14T13:11:00.004Z

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Tom Chambers's photographs describe a fairy tale populated with semi-feral children, wild dogs and horses. I like the sense of danger and ritual and ferocity. See more of his work here.
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Look, With All Your Eyes, Look!

2010-01-19T22:56:00.002Z

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I just reorganized my website and added lots of new stuff. Be sure to have a look.

The above illustration shows a future utopia powered by bicycles. I hope it happens soon.

Long live the bicycle!

The image was featured in Amelia's Anthology of Illustration.

Hello Again

2010-01-15T21:28:00.005Z

Yes, I've been away for a while, but now is the time for new drawings, new words, new things.

I had a hectic time towards the end of the year, largely due to a dissertation that needed to be finished. Christmas was good though, and I've had a proper rest and feel quite fresh. I spent last week in Amsterdam and got myself a little Moleskine, the Japanese album style, which folds out like an accordion. I'm going to try and do something special with that format eventually, but for now I'll show you guys some drawings I did. It's mostly stuff from the Rijks Museum. Here we go:

This is drawn from a 17th century painting. The man is Jan Valckenburgh, director general of the dutch West India Company, which traded in in gold and slaves. The portrait was painted by Daniel Vertangen. The other figure was a doll in a dollhouse.

This lady's name was Maria Van Strijp. My friend Georgina and couldn't quite read her facial expression. Is she stifling a laugh or about to cry? I was trying to capture this ambiguous quality in her face. The artist was Johannes Cornelisz Verspronck (17th century)

The front of a giant model of a ship. More precisely, an english man-of-war called The Prince Charles. (17th Century)

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This double portrait of my friend Shannon is not from the Rijks. (21st century)

Amelia's Anthology of Illustration

2009-11-23T20:08:00.004Z

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I'm very pleased to finally post this link to a lovely anthology which includes some of my best illustration work + an interview (!) This book is not only full of great images but also has an environmental theme - it's a kind of guide to renewable energy sources. Each illustrator has tackled a different technology in his/her unique way. Amelia's Anthology of Illustration is a available in a limited, hard-back edition. Have a look here for more details.

Flyer

2009-11-04T21:03:00.003Z

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A promotional flyer, made recently for Dirk Markham (WSS) and Francesca Lago.

Colouring Book

2009-10-18T14:46:00.003+01:00

I was recently asked to colour in this spread from my sketchbook for a publication and also to remove all parts of the sketchbook (ie the gutter and edges). Unfortunately, I didn't have access to the sketchbook in question but I have been getting more confident with Photoshop lately, so I did some cutting and pasting, using pieces from other sketchbooks and there you have it:

I always prefer to work with my hands, a pen and paper if I can help it, but I am discovering too, that Photoshop can be a fantastic tool if you know how to use it. The number of things it can do is so vast that even though I've been using it for years, I feel like I've only skimmed the surface.

Japanese Puppet

2009-10-18T14:36:00.001+01:00

Raum kommt von Räumen

2009-10-11T18:20:00.004+01:00

Here is another very fine little piece of work I found in Berlin; Rita Fürstenau's booklet Raum kommt von Räumen is perhaps best described as fine art illustration. It is A6 sized and folded in on itself in a slightly labyrinthine way. Here is the cover, front and back:

You continue to unfold the pages, at different angles, until you realise that they are part of one big drawing, populated by strange animals and plants, cities and people. It's very Garden of Earthly Delights. Here is a section:

As you can see, it's very charming. I like the little jokes and references to space and folding that the artist makes throughout this landscape. Some parts remind me of Escher's prints of impossible architecture and objects.

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I have a feeling that the title is a pun (?) of some sort, but my german isn't good enough to decode it fully. 'Raum' means space and 'Räumen' means to vacate or to clear away. So a direct translation would be: 'Space comes from evacuation' (or simply, 'space comes from making space'). Obviously, there's also a similarity between the two german words. If anyone can do a better translation, please feel free to comment.
The one thing I found disappointing was that only one side of the paper is printed on. It would have been cooler if there were images on both sides, referencing each other, but I can see how that might have been too expensive to produce.

Be sure to have a look at Rita Fürstenau's website too.

Treasures of the Blog World

2009-10-04T15:34:00.005+01:00

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I found this blog, A Journey Around My Skull, a cornucopia of images and ephemera. Then I followed the links to other amazing blogs and now I'm lost in the woods.

Pure Gold

2009-09-26T13:53:00.002+01:00

The second Golden Hour book is out. For those who don't know, the Golden Hour is a monthly evening of poetry, prose, music, video and general niceness at the Forest Café. The book features some excellent work by people who have read at the Golden Hour and comes with a compilation cd of music. It's so perfectly sized and chunky you just want to hold it in your hand forever, and the cover was illustrated by you know who. The Golden Hour 2 costs £7.99. Support local talent and buy it from the Forest Shop, Blackwells in Edinburgh or Amazon UK (where it will be available soon).

The Arrival

2009-09-16T13:38:00.005+01:00

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I was deeply impressed with Shaun Tan's graphic novel, The Arrival. Tan is interested in the concept of belonging - and this book is about the way we come to belong to a new culture. The Arrival is a classic immigrant's tale - a man leaves his family to make a home in a new country, but the way that Tan chose to tell the story makes it unique. This new country is a strange and wonderful place, as foreign to the reader as it is to the protagonist. Its architecture, animals and food are outlandish and this lets you feel the wonder and puzzlement of a newly arrived foreigner. In addition to this, the story is completely wordless, which furthers the estrangement.

Without the help of words, Tan must concentrate on detailed and consistent storytelling through images. Here is the Man, our protagonist, on his first arrival, trying to explain himself to a customs official:

Tan focuses on the minuscule, deconstructing the smallest actions into whole sequences. Each tiny gesture counts. Here is how the passage of the seasons is illustrated in a whole spread:

But then, Tan will, from these detailed observations, open up a vast, breathtaking full-spread panel:

One of my favourite things about the book is the abundance of fantastical creatures. Everyone has their own, crazy little pet.

The Arrival demonstrates that you can take the most simple story and turn it into something rich and moving and, well, great, if you know how to tell it well.

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You can read what Shaun Tan has to say about this book on his own website, which also features more of his work.

Return of the Creatures

2009-09-13T13:05:00.003+01:00

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Well, it's been a while but I'm back in Edinburgh and back in business. I spent a few August days in Berlin, which was very good and interesting - not least artwise. I've got some newly discovered stuff to blog about and some new drawings too. Like this shy and melancholy monkey-cat. So this is just a quick hello. More to come!

Amelia's Magazine Anthology of Illustration

2009-07-13T15:27:00.002+01:00

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This is a great chance to be in an anthology, which is guaranteed to be very good. It's a really nice brief too. Check out the details here.

Winsor McCay = Genius

2009-07-08T12:44:00.005+01:00

I've been doing a bit of research on Mr. McCay and I might as well post some of the stuff. McCay was a pioneering cartoonist and animator and it's safe to say he was one of the greats. Gertie The Dinosaur is from 1914 and was performed as a vaudeville act. McCay would stand on stage and talk to Gertie, telling her to perform tricks for the audience. I would love to have seen it live but unfortunately that ship has sailed. So here's a video clip:

It's so charming!

And here are pages from McCay's comic strip, Little Nemo in Slumberland. I love the endlessly inventive layouts and beautiful colours. You can tell that both Moebius and Chris Ware are into it too.

Everything Connected

2009-07-01T10:07:00.004+01:00

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I made this illustration a while ago, for Amelia's Magazine. The brief was to make an image on the theme 'Everything is Connected', with an environmental angle.

Because I love fractal patterns, they usually just grow on their own once I start drawing. They were especially suitable for this picture. I had done a similar mural in the past, with foetuses and animals enclosed in cocoons within a large pattern, so I just took that idea and refined it a little and shrunk it down. I only recently started doing colour illustrations, so here I was quite careful with the colours; a little too careful, perhaps. The piece didn't make it into the magazine on account of not being colourful enough.

As always, you can click on the image to have a closer look at it.

I cannot recommend Amelia's Magazine enough. Apart from being a good read and a showcase of wonderful illustration, it's also a good place to submit work to, for illustrators and graphic designers. They have open submissions regularly and the briefs are really interesting.

Laika

2009-06-25T10:37:00.005+01:00

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One of my first comics, Laika was included in Toastycats #1. I thought I'd post it here too:
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Laika, the little dog who was launched into orbit as part of the Soviet space programme, was only the first of many different animals to be put through this kind of experiment. Some have survived, many haven't. Laika died of stress and overheating a few hours in, but her vessel, Sputnik 2, was never meant to return to Earth anyway. Of course, most scientific research involving animals is less dramatic and less famous than this. Millions of animals, from fish to chimpanzees are used as test subjects every year. In this story, Laika stands as a symbol for the horrific things people do to animals in the name of science.

Might be worth checking out BUAV, one of the major organizations campaigning for alternatives to vivisection: http://www.buav.org/home

Southern Girl

2009-06-25T10:22:00.003+01:00

Southern Girl is a really excellent blog featuring photography from the American South. Beautiful stuff. This particular picture is by John Bridges. Thanks to Mr Nick Holdstock for the tip.

The Codex Seraphinianus

2009-06-22T10:39:00.006+01:00

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The Codex Seraphinianus is a book I have never held in my hands. It is very rare and very cultish. Luigi Seraphini, an italian arthitect and industrial designer, wrote and drew the book in the seventies. It has been republished a few times in small print runs and is very expensive, factors that have contributed to its obsurity. The main factor, though, is that it is a strange and mysterious book. The Codex appears to be an encyclopaedia of an invented world, originated from that world. Meticulously illustrated and written in an invented alphabet/language, it describes the flora, fauna, architecture, culture and other features of this absurd, imaginary world. It has a feel similar to the writings of Jorge Luís Borges and the Voynich Manuscript, which seems like it could have been a direct inspiration for Serafini. I first became aware of the book through an article in The Believer and subsequently downloaded the whole book as a pdf. It's not quite the same as having the physical book, of course. I'll buy it some day.

Douglas R. Hofstadter writes "Some people with whom I have shared this book find it frightening or disturbing in some way. It seems to them to glorify entropy, chaos, and incomprehensibility." I think this is one of the reasons I like the Codex. Its elusiveness is as important as its beauty. It's a riddle that can't be solved.

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Conserving

2009-06-18T14:57:00.004+01:00

These are drawings I made while looking through a book called Conserving (by Daniel and Geo Fuchs). The book features photographs of animals and humans preserved in formaldehyde.

I worked with Aquacolour Monolith pens, which are really starting to grow on me. They are quite hard and don't blend very much unless you use water, which I usually don't, and don't erase well. But as I grow more and more used to them I'm starting to appreciate their qualities. The colours are great and when you work out how to combine them they work really well together. The trick is lay down subtle layers over and over, until they mesh.

What's This Now?

2009-06-14T13:54:00.001+01:00

Francesca Woodman

2009-06-07T13:50:00.009+01:00

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Last week I went to an exhibition of photographs by Francesca Woodman at the Ingleby Gallery in Edinburgh. I'm really glad I did because the work is wonderful.

The pictures are from between 1972 and 1981. Woodman only lived to be 22 and most of the images are the kind that a lot of teenage girls take, a kind of self-exploration through photography, but Woodman does it exceptionally well. Her photographs are meticulously arranged and often feature herself or her female friends posing in dreamlike scenarios. It's a narrative suffused with the language of death: faces are turned away, obscured or blurred, bodies disappear into their surroundings, literally merging with walls, like in this one:
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...or here, identities displaced:

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You can tell that Woodman loved surrealist and Victorian photography and I think probably Alice's Adventures in Wonderland too. This picture could be an illustration for it:
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But this is my favourite:

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My first thought on seeing this photograph, was that it presents an inversion of reality. Obviously, the animals are stuffed while Woodman is only posing. But in the frozen moment, it is the animals who appear to be alive, while Woodman seems to be dead. In this respect, photography is a remarkable equalizer.
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A Friend...

2009-06-05T16:28:00.000+01:00

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...in my notebook.

Herzog

2009-06-03T14:44:00.004+01:00

I enclose a link to an insightful conversation between Jason Bellamy and Ed Howard, over at The House Next Door, about Werner Herzog and his films. Well worth reading;

http://www.thehousenextdooronline.com/2009/05/conversations-werner-herzog.html

Bubble Chamber Experiments

2009-06-02T12:54:00.002+01:00

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I came across this art project while doing research for my film. A program generates the trajectories of imaginary particles - kind of like in a bubble chamber, which is an instrument used to track electrically charged particles moving through liquid. The result is a series of extraordinarily beutiful patterns. Have a look here.

Scientific Animatic

2009-05-20T19:31:00.008+01:00

So, it's been a while since I posted anything substantial and that's mostly due to my spending less time on the internet and more time fretting about college work (David Foster Wallace said in an interview something to the effect of "I spend 10% of my time writing and 90% worrying about not writing", which rings so true.). I'm at a stage where I'm redrawing my pencilled frames in ink and adding detail, which is very slow going. But when I shoot the days work it feels wonderful to see the finished shots.

Soon, I'll be posting some stills from what I've been doing, but, for now, I thought I'd show some frames from my animatic. For those unfamiliar with the animation process, an animatic is basically a filmed storyboard - a kind of mock-up of the film, which allows you to get a sense of its pacing and to edit it before you start drawing. Initially, this was going to be almost the whole film; a lot of patterns depicting quarks, atoms, dna molecules and so forth. I had a lot of input from my friend Andy Eschbacher, who is a quantum physicist. The thing is, it's impossible to draw atoms and sub-atomic particles because they're like nothing we can imagine. So these drawings are only symbolical.

Since the beginning of the project, the film has changed quite a lot. It now centers on two characters (I posted a character sheet a while back). Anyways, here it is:

Elisabeth Hobbs

2009-05-15T13:12:00.006+01:00

...is an award-winning, London-based animator. She works with watercolours and her films have a delicate, ethereal quality. The above image is, I believe, from her film The Witches. Elisabeth is going to be my mentor, thanks to a Screen Academy Scotland scheme. I'm very pleased because I love her work. You should check out her website.

Toastycats #4

2009-05-09T15:02:00.010+01:00

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Hooray! The 4th issue is now officially out. It features lots of nice creatures and the next part of The Seed. Here are some sneak peeks:
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You can order it through the Fox & Comet Shop. The Creatures are waiting.

Zines!

2009-05-09T14:08:00.002+01:00

In the photo you can see me (to the left) with Dai Jones and the empty chair of Jonathan Prior. The three of us shared a table at the London Zine Symposium last week. It was a very good event: packed with people and nice zines. I didn't find the time to participate in any of the workshops offered, which was a bit of a shame, but I really enjoyed just sitting at the table and chatting to people. I sold quite a few Toastycats too, and some screenprinted patches. Dai and Jonathan were selling their own zine, 12 Gates to the City.

Unlike last year's Symposium, which was quite heavy on radical zines, this time most of what was on offer was pretty art-school. The former are mostly black and white, text-based and not so ambitious formally. The latter are usually in colour, and often experiment with techniques, fomats and materials. There seems to be a gap between these two kinds of zines and I would have liked to see more stuff that tries to bridge that gap. Personally, I'm more interested in the colourful, nicely printed zines but they are often just eye candy. It would be interesting to see some of these engage more with narrative and to exhibit the kind of urgency and energy that you find in a lot of radical zines. Of course, fancy zines mean fancy prices; I'm not feeling very rich at the moment so I didn't buy anything. But there were some things I really liked and would like to recommend:

http://artisproof.bigcartel.com/

http://www.bracketpress.co.uk/

http://www.illustratorselbow.com/

I Don't Know What This Means But It Means Something

2009-04-26T13:19:00.004+01:00

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This is also a product of my recent intense sketchbooking phase. I went back to a lot of old pages and filled them in with pretty random images. I'd use photos from books and off the internet and just draw whatever appealed to me. It feels like a kind of collaging. Once a few different characters/objects have been added, meanings and narratives begin to form and then I just go on fleshing out and enhancing whatever story is in there. Sometimes it's more a feeling than an obvious story but that's ok. Here, for example, I began with an old sketch from a photo of Patricia Highsmith smoking. Then I added the rest, improvising some patterns and colours. I like to imagine that this picture is a story. But what is it about?

Nice Animation

2009-04-26T13:00:00.004+01:00

I love this showreel by animator Thomas Hicks. He's got a lovely, lovely style. There's a link below to more of his stuff.

Thomas Hicks Animation Montage from Thomas Hicks on Vimeo.

My House

2009-04-26T12:46:00.002+01:00

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I was trying to fill out my sketchbooks a while ago, to submit with my portfolio, and ended up doing quite a few drawings of my flat and the objects in it. It's a good place to draw; one of those old fashioned Edinburgh flats with high ceilings and a bit aged and eccentric. Here's a drawing of the hallway, complete with a ghost - a portrait on the page behind it showing through the tracing paper:

Our kitchen window at night:

...and just the window pane with raindrops and streetlights:

Animal People

2009-04-16T12:54:00.003+01:00

Morbid Anatomy: Beautiful on the Inside

2009-04-16T11:28:00.007+01:00

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I found this goldmine of images related to anatomy, surgery, teratology and assorted weirdness. Here are some highlights:
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Ernst Haeckel: Kunstformen der Natur

2009-04-11T13:16:00.012+01:00

Haeckel was an embryologist, philosopher and a zealous advocate of evolutionary theory in Germany. He is said to have coined the term ecology. He is also famous for his stunningly beautiful illustrations. I would recommend finding Kunstformen der Natur (Artforms in Nature) in the library because the book itself is enourmous so these tiny digital images don't do it justice. Click on them to see larger versions.

Spottiswoode Street

2009-04-11T13:06:00.002+01:00

This is the cover of my home-made sketchbook. A corner of the street where I live. I did it with felt tips, several shades of green and brown. It's a bit wonky but I like it that way. There are places where I've tested new colours and decided they didn't work out and then left them - notably the green and black windows and the bit of blue and turqoise paving stones. I think it adds charm. Mistakes are good.

Crush!

2009-04-07T13:55:00.003+01:00

This is what comes out of basically just fooling around in my Moleskine. These kind of drawings take months to make; I keep returning to them and adding stuff and then eventually it starts taking some kind of shape. It's almost like drawn collage if such a thing can exist. At the top is a nice quote I found: "Only indifference is free. What is distinctive is never free, it is stamped with its own seal, conditioned and chained." (Thomas Mann) It's fitting, somehow.

The London Zine Symposium 2009

2009-04-07T13:41:00.007+01:00

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I'm going down to London for this event next month to sell my comic Toastycats and mingle with the zine scene. Last year's Symposium was really good: packed with stalls and visitors and featuring great workshops and food from the Pogo Cafe.

It will take place on Sunday the 3rd of May 12pm-6pm at The Rag Factory, 16-18 Heneage Street, a small street off Brick Lane.

Check out their website.

More Randomness

2009-04-02T13:54:00.002+01:00

This past week has been a little stressful as I've been putting the final touches to my portfolio of drawings. I've been especially preoccupied with my sketchbooks, in which I've been filling every last bit of space with faces, creatures and whatnot. I'll be posting scans of all that stuff. Here's a little sample.

They Are Coming

2009-03-26T12:01:00.005Z

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I've been asked when the new Toastycats will be out and I say this: issue 4 will be out by the beginning of May. It will be a special issue too, the Creature Issue. If you're not familiar with Toastycats, have a look here, where you can order back issues. ( The PayPal buttons are only for UK customers, but if you live somewhere else and you have a PayPal account, just email me at: magda@magdaboreysza.com . Postage outside the UK is 50p )

Where the Wild Things Are

2009-03-26T11:45:00.005Z

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Found this trailer today. Not sure what I think about it. I like the style of the film and I'm glad they didn't use CGI to make the monsters but they seem to lack the fierceness and charm of Sendaks illustrations:

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Sketchy

2009-03-18T11:48:00.008Z

I'm trying to fill my sketchbooks over the next couple of weeks because I will be applying to a drawing course. I fell a little rusty, so I will be doing a really intense drawing session every day for a while, to get going.

I’ve got two sketchbooks at the moment. One of them is a large Moleskine. It’s a great brand: nicely shaped, a pocket in the back for storing loose drawings and a rubber band to keep the book shut. And the paper is incredible: thick and smooth with a creamy ivory hue. Most sketchbooks have very white paper, which looks cold and abrasive. Someday, hopefully, I will find Moleskine-type paper in big loose sheets, too. The right kind of paper is very important. Fineliners and brush pens work especially well in a Moleskine, so that’s what I normally use. I do a lot of imaginative drawing in here, as opposed to observational drawing.

The second sketchbook is something I made myself, out of different kinds of paper: sugar paper, coloured paper, graph paper and tracing paper. This one is just for observational drawing. Because of the different papers (some are translucent) and because the pages vary a lot in shape and size (resulting in flaps and overlaps), it presents quite a challenge. I need to give extra thought to where I draw and how it all looks together. Here are a few sketches I made in the natural history museum in Oxford and in the Horniman Museum in London last spring (as always, you can click on the images to see them up close) :

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I’m making an effort to loosen up my drawing: to draw more, to take more risks and use a variety of materials. In the past I’ve usually strived to make finished pictures, an attitude that easily freezes you up and results in boring, flat images. But now I’m trying to let myself make mistakes in my sketchbooks. After all, they are for sketches, not finished drawings. If you see the sketchbook as a tool for investigation and exercises, then you can learn from both the good stuff and the bad.
I’ve also started to revisit old drawings and to change or add to them. With some distance to old work, it’s easier to see what works and what can be improved on. Sometimes, with stuff that’s completely rubbish, I’ll even paste a piece of paper on top and start again. Another thing I do, for some reason, is that I turn failed portraits into monsters. I’ll add snouts and fur onto faces I’m unhappy with. Like so:

I Wrote a Hit Play!: Wes Anderson on Meeting Pauline Kael

2009-03-14T15:13:00.009Z

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Isn't this a lovely poster? Wes Anderson's Rushmore is one of my all-time favourite movies. I found this piece, written by Anderson himself, on meeting the legendary film critic Pauline Kael and screening the movie for her. It's a real treat to read.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C01E6DD1339F932A05752C0A96F958260

Doll with Teeth

2009-03-12T19:03:00.006Z

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Just another one of those random things.

Newcastle Murals

2009-03-09T13:14:00.009Z

I finally got photos of the murals we did at The End bar in Newcastle. It’s the first time I’ve made colour murals so it was a good learning experience. I used Posca pens, which are great. They are essentially like big markers but contain acrylic paint, which has a nice flow and doesn’t smell like alcohol. They come in several different thicknesses but unfortunately their colour range is a bit limited and not all the colours have a good flow when you hold the pen horizontally, i.e. when you work on walls. I also used some spray paint, but sprayed it into the cap and applied it with brushes. I hadn’t really planned the murals at all but I had been drawing a lot of human/animal hybrids in my sketchbook so it seemed natural to do something with that. Tasha and I started with our individual murals and ten made a collaborative mural, which you can see above. The Arm Lady in the middle is mine, while Tasha did everything around her. Some detalis:

I really like how she grounded the weirdness of the hybrid by having her interact with things that belong in the bar, like a record deck and a keyboard. And the green things are wonderful. The face of the arm-lady, by the way, was inspired by a photograph of a young Katharine Hepburn. I often use photos of interesting faces as starting points for this kind of images. I’m also, quite obviously, very fond of medieval religious imagery and I borrow a lot from its poses and symbolism.
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Here are photos of the two smaller murals I made. Not the greatest space for them but not terrible. The Hairy Snake Lady also came straight out of my sketchbook and then I surrounded her with improvised creatures. What I usually do is I start putting in a few well-placed, large characters and then I fill in the spaces between them with smaller dudes and then the spaces between those and so on. That way I can add stuff almost infinitely but I can also stop if I run out of time, without the piece looking unfinished.

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This one is on the opposite wall.
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All in all, a nice and productive time in Newcastle. Everything was organized by the Ghetto Method Crew. Thanks to Sandy Duff, John Bullock and Dave Guy for a lovely, lovely time.

Who I Am and What I Want

2009-03-07T12:30:00.007Z

A really great animated short from Dave Shrigley.

Notes on Puppet

2009-03-05T13:42:00.003Z

Puppet was my degree film and it’s been about 2 years since I finished it. My first instinct is to be very defensive about it. I think it’s flawed and might come across as gratuitously weird. I didn’t make it to be weird, though. I was just using a lot of ideas that had been with me for a while.

The story went through some very different permutations but the main idea was always that there is this world where puppets live, and where perhaps all lost or unused things end up. My first draft was a TV broadcast, from the puppets to us, in which they acted out a complex, ritualistic narrative based on their observations of the human world. It would have been the animated equivalent of Finnegan’s Wake so I’m glad I didn’t go through with that.

The next idea was a detail from the first one, which I isolated and elaborated on. There was a group of puppets, who would use a wire hook to fish out, as it were, objects from our world and collect them. They’d try to figure out what they were for and play with them and put them in glass jars. Then, because the puppet world is a magical place, the objects (a fork, an old sock, a severed doll’s head…) would come alive and be put together as new puppets. I simplified that idea and came up with the story of just one puppet, who has crossed over from the puppet realm and gotten lost. And there you have it.
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The film was shot on a set modeled on a specific place (an alley off Bread Street in Edinburgh) which is where the location shots were done. I tried making the set as grimy as possible (There were complaints from the janitors, who apparently didn’t realize that the rubbish was a part of the set – they just thought I was really messy). I winged it through most of the shoot; I hadn’t really planned much apart from the story and chose camera angles and lighting on the fly. This is one of the good things about stop-motion: it’s easier to ad-lib because you’re not drawing every single frame. The birthday cake at the end, for example, was not in the original story at all. It had come with one of the dolls and I thought it would be a nice touch. Only later did I realize what a crucial plot element it had become. Sometimes things just come together like that.

I was very conscious from the start that the film wouldn’t be liked by everybody and it did turn out to be quite polarizing, among fellow students and tutors alike. (Although the tutors in the animation department were into it, apparently there were some in other departments who hated it). I’m aware of the flaws in it. As a piece of work, it was obviously very a huge deal to me. My four years at art college essentially culminated in this one thing. In your first movie (as, I imagine, in a first novel or any first large artistic project) you put in ideas that have accumulated over many, many years. It’s an exorcism of sorts and in that way it runs the risk of being self-indulgent. I certainly realized even then, that I was cramming all these ideas (which some would find extremely weird) together into a pretext of a story and I can imagine people being bewildered by it all. The important thing to realize about film, is that, unlike a still image, it demands a larger investment from the viewer. You are asking for their time and attention and with that comes a responsibility: if they feel that their time has been wasted, you have lost. And people’s attention spans are very short so each second of a film has to be a convincing argument for the viewer not to turn away from the screen.

All this aside, I don't think that the movie could have been anything else than what it is. The main thing I was trying to achieve was atmosphere. I think that works ok. The second thing is the puppet itself, which is something to empathize with throughout this strange and dark experience.