The Year That Happened

This feels a bit self indulgent but I can't resist attempting to place 2008 in some sort of narrative context. That's one of the reasons I have a blog, I guess, along with a place to hang my art publicly.

The year started off terribly. I feel like I stumbled into 2008 after being forcibly removed from 2007 by a number of disappointments. I was set to do a book with Canadian publisher Raincoast. My contract said 2 possible books so I felt like my year was set ; I'd be working with Canada's biggest publisher with some of it's biggest names. I was working away on these contracts when I got word that Raincoast was shutting down it's domestic publishing department and concentrating on it's international licensing, like Harry Potter for instance. I felt like I was set back 2 years. It was terribly depressing.
And then I was nominated and lost a local illustration award. This stung far worse then it should have because of the lost contract. At this point I wasn't sure what to do. 2007 had been a very good year and it seemed like everything was unravelling. Pretty melodramatic, I know, but that's how it felt at the time.

And then in February we found out that Julie was pregnant. This added some pressure and a whole lot of uncertainty. Of course we were very happy. But we headed into very unknown territory.

Much of early 2008 was spent working on my portfolio and contacting publishers. A commissioned book cover from Canadian publisher Orca books improved matters somewhat. Other commissions came along and I slowly started to shake off the dreary beginning of the year.

Much of 2008 was devoted to developing my ideas for graphic novels. I really hope this work and exploration pays off over the next couple of years. Robot Museum, Cecily Briggs etc..

Despite the commissions things were tough and the baby was hurtling at as pretty fast So it was a big relief when Scholastic Education commissioned a short Robot Museum piece. This was a huge help.It took most of the Summer to get this done. There was also my first attempt at telling a story on my blog with the Fogg Academy.

It was around around the middle of the Scholastic project when Dice Tsutsumi, Pixar animator, contacted me about the Totoro Forest Project. This was exciting. My first international exposure and an opportunity for my work to be seen with some of my favorite artists from around the world. I'm still thrilled about this. And grateful. This also led to my piece being on dispay at the Cartoon Art Museum in Fransisco.

Then, late in the Summer there was a big move and next came the Earth shattering arrival of Henry. I find there's little I can say about Henry's birth. It was an amazing time and I'm not over it yet and it feels like the world is richer and more magical. I'm in awe of him and he makes me laugh.

Then late in the year I find out I made it into the 51st annual Society Of Illustrators exhibition. If there's a higher honour for illustrators I can't think of one. Plans are underway as I write for my big New York adventure.

Also, I am on the edge of a number of very exciting things. It's too early to talk about but 2009 seems like it's going to be an extraordinary year.

Happy New Year everyone. And thanks so much for your readership and comments this year. They mean a lot to me.

Eyes In The Hat

I find the Holidays a really funny time of year. On the one hand I'm visiting friends and relatives, trying to relax and on the other, I always seem swamped with work. Add a baby into the mix who insists on being up at 4:30 am and things feel nuts. I'm behind on everything and I just bought a working Gameboy for 2 dollars at the local junk shop, which will not help me get on top of things. However, I'm going into the New Year hopeful and more than a little excited - nervous too - the economy is bad everywhere but it seems like there's so much potential in times like these.

As for the guy with eyes in his hat~I don't have a clue. Not enough REM sleep?

The worlds Of Colleen Doran

Here's a lesson that Colleen Doran's work has taught me : if you are going to do fantasy or science fiction it should be meaningful. Whether on a personal level or on a universal level those drawings have to be rich in meaning.Colleen Doran is an independent artist I discovered in the 80's and whose work has had a deep lasting impact on me.One of Her masterpieces is A Distant Soil, I really highly recommend this epic science fiction comic. It's amazing. Beautiful to look at and an amazing, complex story. And all of her work has been high quality.One of my favorite works by her is Orbiter published by Vertigo and written by Warren Ellis. It's Ellis' most hopeful story and Colleen's work is just exquisite here. Darker then usual but hugely powerful.
Anything by her is more then worth the money. Each different work is a thoughtful, beautiful doorway into another world.
Colleen also has the most informative blog about publishing and comic books. I learned more from reading her blog then from a whole stack of books on publishing. Please check it out.
Also, there's a character in the Sandman based on her...

Drawing Through The Holidays!

Hope everyone is enjoying the Holidays! It's been a good one here, fairly quiet. I've been doing a lot of drawing for a new project. I've gone through a funny cycle of utterly losing confidence in my abilities to being really excited about things. It took a lot of drawing though. Trying to find my voice again is sort of what it felt like. I am trying to translate a story to comic book form and for a while I couldn't seem to forge ahead on it. Everything I tried seemed so wrong and I was getting so frustrated.It was one of those moments where you have to reassess your work and figure out why something isn't working. The story is beautiful and textured and nuanced and I didn't know how to approach it.At first I was drawing pretty realistically.That's my default when I'm worried about a project. After a while I felt like I was lingering at a dead end.I couldn't express anything in that mode.So I spent days sketching faces.Loosening up, looking at Van Gogh and Kollwitz drawings and slowly I pushed through.My drawings seemed to start to say something meaningful to me again.

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Wishing everyone a wonderful Christmas and New Years! Thanks for all your support and comments this year.I'll be back before New Years.

Favorite Books Of The Year: Novels and Collections

Well, the year is coming to a close and I'm in a reflective mood. I'm also embarking on a new project which feels like staring up at mount Everest. So I'm looking for ways to procrastinate. lists are always good...Here is a short,incomplete list of some of the best books I read this year. Please feel free to add your own in the comments..I'm limiting myself to novels and collections of prose but not to books published in'08.
1. The Graveyard Book-Neil Gaiman
2.Pretty monsters-Kelly Link
3.House of Leaves-Mark Z. Danielewski
4.Steampunk-Jeff and Ann VanderMeer
5.The Savage-David Almond
6.Varjak's Paw-SF Said
7.Tales From Outer Suburbia-Shaun Tan
8.The Diamond Age-Neal Stephenson

Scrambles And Updates

Well, as the year comes to a close I find myself scrambling to finish a bunch of stuff and send out copies and of Harry & Silvio~which I can not believe how well it's sold so far! I think I sold almost enough copies, along with donations to get my piece to the Society of Illustrators show in January. Thanks everyone!
At the moment I'm still in the midst of agent stuff and working on completing several requested proposals. I think by early January loose ends will get tied up and things will start to take shape. By then I hope I'll have exciting news to share. At the moment everything still feels up in the air.
I'm re-posting the detail from my Green skies painting because I'm going to try and get it off for the next Spectrum Annual deadline which is coming up. I'm going to enter a few pieces. Anyway, sorry about the vagueness of this post but I hope to have some solid news soon.

Harry & Silvio Minicomics!

I finally picked up my Harry & Silvio comics from the printers yesterday. They are very short and very silly. They are 3 dollars each plus shipping and each one is signed and numbered out of fifty. They are available on my Etsy shop or you can email me at eric.orchard@gmail.com.

You've Gotta See This!

My friend Bruce Ross has been making toys as long as I can remember and he is amazing. I chose as examples pieces that show mostly his invention. I think his work is incredible and his design sense has had a huge influence on me(He's way too modest to believe that though). When you go into Bruce's toy room it's a magical place-hundreds of little action figure eyes looking up at you. The Chamberlain from the Dark Crystal is one of my absolute favorites. I am very lucky to own an original Bruce Ross-a Lobster Johnson from Hellboy.

Castle Of The Moonless Mountains

Here's a page from my newest Harry & Silvio story. I bought a smaller pen nib and now I'm spending ages working on little tiny details. I don't mind that though, I love details.
The past week was crazy. I can't even really talk about it because it was a string of business related events where nothing has yet been resolved. I can barely keep straight all the loose ends that I have to deal with. All positive things though. And it's certainly been a huge education in the world of publishing. Or at least I can confidently say I know even less then I thought.
I can say I'm making plans to go to New York in February. I was looking at train tickets last night. I think I'll be going by myself which is both really exciting and terrifying. I'll be going for over a week and it really bothers me to be away from my studio for such an extended period but I will honestly put off traveling as long as possible and this is a trip I really should make. I will be attending the Society Of Illustrators award show on February 7th and that weekend is the New York Comic Convention which I thought would be fun to attend. If you live in New York I will be eagerly looking for friendly faces. Please let me know if you'll be around for either of these events.

Lord Of The Rings Sundays Part One

Over at Tor.com wonderfully insightful writer Kate Nepveu is rereading Lord Of The rings and sharing her thoughts on the book as she goes along. she's inspired others to read along as well. Two other artists who are doing similar posts and sharing their incredible work are Eric Braddock and Justin Gerard.
I'll be posting along for the whole book on every second Sunday. It would be a lot of fun if anyone out there wanted to read along as well.
This is pulled right from my comments on Tor.com.
Here are my thoughts on the introduction
I read LOTR in a swamp in northern Newfoundland on a scouting trip when I was 12 and it was the best thing in the world. Funny how different my conception was then Mr. Jackson's. I envisioned the world both far more expressionistic(eg. Gandalf's brows reaching farther than his hat brim)and far bleaker. I've always been interested as to whether my visual understanding of the book's landscapes is based on the rugged,bleak place I live

and here are my thoughts on chapter One, A Long Expected Party
I'm loving hearing the responses young people have had to this book. It's a book that has a really broad audience.

I first read the book as a teenager and haven't read them in a few years so my thoughts are largely in response to the films take on it.

There elements in the book that expressive to the point of being cartoony(to me) like Gandalf's eyebrow's and blue hat. It makes me recall the vividness that is evoked by Tolkien whereas Peter Jackson's take seems much more realistic and starker. The opening tone in both is wildly different. Where Tolkien subtly hints at the gathering shadows Jackson states them boldly.

Knowing what's coming brings a real tinge of sadness to the party and Frodo's life before the quest.

I forgot how much I love the dialogue in the book. Again it seems expressive to me. Maybe it's the up down rhythms you are talking about.

Harry Drawing A Map

Here's a drawing of Harry making a map. It's in the minicomics I've just had made at the printers. I should have them up on Etsy by Monday or Tuesday. They're pretty tiny and don't make any sense but I love them.
In picture book news I had a book launch last night at Local Jo's- a kid friendly cafe on Oxford street here in Halifax-for the book Anything But Hank. It went really well especially considering there was a rain storm last night. I didn't take any photos but there was someone there from local media who took pictures that I'll post when I can track them down.
In comic book news there's something in the works that could be incredibly exciting. I'm hoping i can talk about it soon.

Help me Send My Picture

As some of you know, this month I found out I was accepted into the 51st annual exhibit at the Society Of Illustrators in New York. The piece above, guardians Of Autumn got in.
I got the information on the Society Of Illustrators exhibition in New York and it's going to cost a bundle to send it to New York from San Fransisco and back and again. So I thought I'd ask, in the most dignified manner I could manage, for a little help. If you can spare even a tiny bit I'd really appreciate. If you can't or just don't want to that's OK too, my art is free here and I don't want anyone to feel compelled to give me money. Thanks all!

Bera Panels

Some random panels from Bera The One Headed Troll. I wish I could work on a hundred things at once. I'd love to get this book done this year. But Harry & Silvio is so much fun.

A Darker Museum

I wanted to post a few panels from my original Robot Museum so that I could show what I mean when I wrote a couple of posts ago that my idea of Robot Museum was darker then the work I did for Scholastic Education. There wasn't pressure from Scholastic to do this but I felt it was more appropriate. I do prefer it much darker.

Blue Yellow Moon Of Kentucky

A number of you have postulated that a touch of colour may add a further, more interesting dimension to Harry and Silvio. Here's a timid attempt at making that so. This also is the finished version of "Blue Moon Of Kentucky" and will appear in my minicomics on the back cover ( in black and white) .

Pssst ! Hey Kids Comics!

I hope it's OK to show this. This is the first page for the Robot Museum comic I did for Scholastic Education. It's way brighter then the way I'd been painting RM for myself, I guess I was thinking it was going to be used partly for education and I wanted it to have lighter look. It was only 13 pages but it took forever. When I do RM for myself I won't do it in gouache. After the first few pages it got really tedious. I also discovered that it was hard to maintain the same colour throughout the book because gouache dries so quickly and I had to keep remixing. Nora's hair went from magenta to orange to some entirely new colour.
I spent most of the weekend working on book proposals. I'll update you all on these projects later, they're all comic book ideas that I've discussed in this blog. The problem I have with writing proposals is I get really cool new ideas as I write them and then they end up sounding like I just made the whole thing up right there in a fit of inspiration. I have to walk away from what I'm writing and come back later. My wife, who helps me edit this stuff, said " You get so excited you don't realize what you're writing doesn't make sense"

Seven Impossible Things

There's a really nice article about me at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast! I love this site and am very honoured to be featured here.

Washy sketchbook

Here are some ink doodles from my last sketchbook(Nov 08 to Dec 08) I've been studiously keeping sketchbooks since I was 14. I think there is no better tool in exploring your own artistic potential. Now of course I have boxes and boxes of them.
I am once again looking at being represented by an agent. I was talking with the super-talented and inspirational Colleen Doran earlier and she suggested my problem with agencies earlier may have been to do with the type of agents I was looking at. That perhaps a literary agent might be a better choice than an art agency. She has done a tonne of research on the subject and published the results here on her blog. At the moment I'm talking to 5 different publishers and it's just too much. things keep petering out. So, I'll give it another try.
And finally, do you like Lord Of The Rings? Well, blogger Kate Nepveu is weekly publishing a post about her reading of the book on the Tor.com site. I'll be reading along and leaving comments. Also, I may republish my thoughts here.

Femme-Marionette

Here are some sketches I've done for a piece for a gallery show in Paris in the new year. The theme of the show is female puppets. It sounds like a lot of fun to do and I'm already enjoying working on it and I just found out about it yesterday. I'll update about this later.
I'm getting a bit flustered about publishing at the moment. I've been offered a book and it's not the kind of thing I'd enjoy or put on my shelf but I'd like good relationship with this publisher and it could potentially lead to some of my own books. It's really hard to make these kinds of decisions.

You can find out more about the show here.

The Savage

I read this book yesterday and really enjoyed it and think you should read it too.

"Everything We See Could Also Be Otherwise"

This is a panel from Harry & Silvio where they are entering the Moonless Mountains. The quote I stumbled on in an article in The Hornbook by Tim Wynn-Jones. He was quoting Wittgenstein and relating it to imagination and the works of J.M. Barrie. I thought the quote applied nicely to how I work.If a cloud shifts to just the right degree and the sun hits it at just the right angle I'm sure I can see a tiny raccoon sitting on the edge with his fishing line going over the side.

Guy Davis Art Swap

When I was a kid I loved comic books (and still do of course) I liked Superheroes OK but preferred other kinds of comic books. Comic books without superheroes were really hard to find when I was a kid. Luckily there was Guy Davis. When I was 12 Mr. Davis was publishing an amazing, beautiful comic book called Baker Street. I loved baker Street and still do. there was nothing like it at the time. The art was better and more interesting then anything else published. And it had punks in it. And the punks were detectives. I still think it's one of the coolest comics ever. That's why it was so cool when guy Davis offered to swap his self published sketchbooks for the book I illustrated anything But Hank. His sketchbooks are amazing, revealing a humour and versatility not always evident in his published works. Mr. Davis is now doing BPRD comics which tell stories in Mike Mignola's Hellboy universe. This work is amazing as well. Anything by guy Davis is well worth the price of admission.Nevermen, Sandman mystery Theater and more. if you don't know his work you should check him out, he's an important and extremely talented comic book artist.

Whoops! Thanks to Erin Kubinek for pointing out the fact that i neglected to tell you all how to get a sketchbook of your own. You can purchase them right here.

The Moonless Mountains

Here's a panel from the newest Harry And Silvio comic which I've renamed The Moonless Mountains.there's recently been more developments with this story but it's still too soon to say anything definite about it....

Albion

I wanted to make sure everyone knows about this wonderful comic and it's amazingly talented creators. This comic is especially cool if you're a fan of comics history like me. Albion was released as a 6 issue mini series a few years ago(now available collected) by Alan Moore, Leah Moore, John Reppion, Shane Oakley and George Freeman (a Canadian who worked on Captain Canuck!). It's worth the price of admission for the talent alone. The story is amazing, it's an alternate world where superheroes existed but have all been locked away in an asylum. I won't give away too much. The story moves fast and is always compelling and the noirish,expressionistic art is the kind that works best in comics. Shane's work is beautiful here. He creates some of the best characters with his pen.... another super cool thing-if you've been following my blog you'll know I'm cooking up a project with Shane...

Cloud Rat

This is a new character from Harry and Silvio, an older pirate rat gentleman who acts as a scout for the cloud pirate ship. He meets the guys on a train heading across cloud to the Moonless Lands. I'm pretty immersed in this right now. It's a lot of fun. There's no direct narrative, the story kind of ends up where it does and I have to say, it's nice to be surprised by your own work once in a while.