One Thousand And One Nights

I found myself with power yesterday.  EDF installed a new electricity meter and all my plug points just stopped working.  We were abruptly thrown into chaos, and the thing we were most concerned about was not the fact that the fridge can't cool, or that there's no hot water, it was that the internet stopped.  

I took it as a chance to put off some of my lesser-relished promotional-type tasks and just sit down and draw instead.  Perhaps it was to vent frustration, but I chose this grizzly scene from 'One Thouand and One Nights' by Hanan Al-Shaykh.  King Shahrayar finds out that his wife and his ten concubines have been cheating on him and so he metes out swift and final justice to all concerned.

King Shahrayar's revenge

This guy can't believe what just happened!

Stories within stories within stories

Competition time: Cover it up, luv!

You can now buy top notch phone covers from Mooskins that bear my designs and make your phone look pretty (if a little dark) with assorted songbirds, fawns and rubies drawn by my fair hand.  They are available for purchase to fit iPhone 3 / 4 / 4S and Blackberry 8520.  Take a look at the options here.

Mooskins also offer a brilliant custom service which allows you to have your favourite photo made into a phone cover.

These covers are great quality, good for protecting your fancy device from knocks and bumps, PLUS you get to personalise that thing that we never leave the house without and can't seem to put down (mobile telephone).  

To be generous and generally lovely we are offering the chance to win one of my designs (you pick) or a completely one-off super personal photo cover for two individuals!

To enter please tweet a link to the competition page and include @abihey and @MooskinsUK.  For example…

Cover your phone with @MooskinsUK and @abihey. For the chance to win follow the link: http://abihey.blogspot.com/2012/01/competition-time-cover-it-up-luv.html

Copy and paste if you like, you won't get extra credit for creativity.

Two lucky tweeters will be chosen at random and will get a cover of their choosing for their device.  The competition will close at the end of Monday 6th and I will announce the winners on Twitter on Tuesday 7th.

Get tweeting or buy one!

Image Hoard: Black & White

It's about time for another stack of inspiration on this here blog.  These are all monochrome (or close enough) and have struck me at one point or another over the last couple of months.  The reasons that an image resonates are always somewhat intangible, and I like to keep it that way, keep it fluid. 

Enjoy!

Doreen taking an Alligator ride - Unknown

Unknown

Young girl in profile - Consuela Kanaga

 

Speak Flower (detail), hand cut paper - Kako Ueda

Homeless Portrait - Lee Jeffries

Jacopo Ligozzi

A Heroic Abduction, mixed media assemblage - Kris Kuksi

Marilyn with diamonds

Spanish Dancer (detail) - John Singer Sargent

Annelise Kretschmer

Irises - William Morris

... Good Things Will Come

'The Fairies' is a short story from Charles Perrault's Fairytales where a beautiful but put-upon young girl is kind to a stranger who, naturally, turns out to be a fairy and bewitches the girl so that jewels and pearls come from her mouth with every word she speaks.  The moral is basically that when kind words are spoken; good things will come.  

This is my imagining of the situation.  You may get richer the more you talk, but it would be pretty gross to drool jewels.  It's still a good reminder that you have the power to be cruel or kind with your words.

Image Hoard: Pink & Peach

This collection of images is a little less 'Skulls & Death' and a little more 'Light & Feathery' than usual.  I noticed that a lot of the images I have been collecting recently have a touch of salmon-hue about them.  Maybe it's because it's Summer, who knows...

Left: Cigarettes on sale at todokuyo.net
Right: Tiger Bone Wine by Sam Wolfe Connelly

by Alyssa Nassner

Altamira / William Merritt Chase colour comparison by Diana Moss from missmoss.co.za

Album artwork for Brother Mitya and Friends by Kristina Collantes

From Marie Claire May 2011

Illustration by Einar Nerman from Fairytales of the North

Source Unknown 

GTLK from Andrey Muratov on Vimeo.

Still from GTLK by Andrey Muratov

Source Unknown

Proposed tower to be added to Selfridges
via ianvisits.co.uk

Waxwing by Sam Wolfe Connelly

Poor Bruin!

The Shaman and Walser did not live alone. There was a bear, a black one, not yet a year old, still almost a cub. This bear was part pet, part familiar; he was both a real, furry and beloved bear and, at the same time, a trascendental kind of meta-bear, a minor deity...

He would be offered bear steaks only after he was dead...

On its first birthday it would be taken to the god-hut and its throat would be slit in front of an ursine idol sitting above a heaping mound of skulls of bears who had met their fate in a similar fashion... 

The entire village crowded into the god-hut to watch the ceremony, lamenting vigorously and apologising profusely: "Poor bruin! We're so sorry, bruin! How we love you, poor little bruin! How bad we feel because we must do away with you!"

from Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter

I have finished reading Nights at the Circus; it's a fantastic book, very enjoyable and full of evocative imagery.  This is my first full-blown illustration spawned from the text, of a bear who is blissfully unaware of his intended fate.

Sketchbook: prep for The Rose-Elf

I'm just starting to work on an illustration for 'The Rose-Elf', a short story by Hans Andersen.  I've been reading a collection of his fairy tales and I find the quality of Andersen's work varies a lot; some stories are genius, some are baffling, and one was so boring I actually skipped it.

But 'The Rose-Elf' is a the story of a quiet revenge reeked by some conspiring jasmine flowers and a rose-elf on a cold-hearted murderer.  It's a good'un.  

A disembodied skull features in the tale; and anything with skulls and flowers together quite tickles my fancy, so it inspired me to have a bash at an illustration. 

The following are my first sketchbook pages dedicated to the matter...

First with pen & ink

Then inks

The Erl-King's Chorus

I just finished this!  It is a piece based on a short story by Angela Carter called 'The Erl-King', from 'The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories'.  The Erl-King is king of the forest, and likes to keep the song-birds he catches stacked in cages that he weaves from branches.