Orange Monster

I have been producing a lot of visual poetry at the moment – I’m really sure if that’s what it is but it’s sort of a mix of writing and visual art for me. This month I have as well as Scriptfrenzy been taking part in a poem a day challenge NaPoWriMo but as I did WoPoWriMo in February I decided that I would do mainly visual for this one.

I think there is a huge cross over here as I’m not sure if I am illustrating a poem or creating a visual poem half the time!

My efforts will be appearing on Turquoise Monster and I may post some of them on here.

Because I am bonkers and love my writing challenges I am currently taking part in Script Frenzy which is a sort of off shoot of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) and I have decided to a comic book script of it!

I’m mentioning it here as I will abviously be illustrating this at some point and am having to work on the basic story board anyway. The comic is based on the over all story arc that my NaNo novel is part of – the novel starts in the middle – the comic starts at the beginning!

It’s a science fiction story but may seem fantasy at times and I want to do some fun things stylistically with the drawings and set out 🙂 However this is a steep learning curve and I can already tell I am not going to meet this challenge but am in stead laying the foundations to be able to next year:) I hope to share the process of the pictures on here but the general story stuff is chronicled on my Nanowrimarian Monster known as Purple.

I didn’t manage to get any illustration type stuff done for the stories but I did use the glove puppets when I read them out at my little girls Easter Egg Hunt – I had a room full of over excited, chocolate filled 3-9 year olds, a lot of whom where five!

There where 17 of them with a few older and a few younger ones tagging along for the ride – and to my astonishment they shut up and listened! Though I did have to tell the adults off for talking to much in background 🙂 The kids loved the story but then there were the puppets and they where having a fun day anyway but afterwards it turned out that the adults hadn’t realised they were my stories and thought I’d bought them especially for the party. I’m viewing this as a very positive thing.

So I am very very pleased and hope to have the illustrations done for both stories by Easter next year so I can release them as books 🙂

The only thing I will say is it’s alot harder than you think to have a glove puppet doing something whilst you’re reading or doing something else!

With the Easter stories as I’m thinking of them and some of the children’s rhymes I have written, I am thinking of myself as a modern day Beatrix Potter. Of course my personal life is completely different but I mean from a stylistic point of view – kids love animals but they are no longer victorian kids used to market days full of animals.

For this reason I put my animals into situations that I think modern kids can relate too – so there are housing estates and laptops. The books I also felt should deal with the issues that everyone is different and we have to work with each other and love each other for the world to work. These are issues that I feel get skirted or are addressed in a slightly negative way by some children’s books.

And this all sounds rather deep for the actual creative process I went through.

I’ve now written this story too – it is about a chicken who suddenly finds herself raising ducklings. She is a foster mother and runs along clucking when the ducklings go swimming. The story is based on my nan’s tale of putting duck eggs under the chickens as they are better ‘sitters’ so more eggs hatch and are actually better mothers than ducks so more of the ducklings survive. But they had one chicken who would run along next to the ducklings whilst they swam, fussing and scolding them.

My Nan died when I was about 6 but I still remember this story so vividly – I read the story to my Dad who’s first comment was how he wished his mother had been there to hear it 🙂

Well I have written a story about a gardening obsessed rabbit who causes mayhem in her home and thiks she has to give up what she loves – it has a happy ending though 🙂 And she is not based on anyone I know honest…. ok well maybe a little bit!

Now for Christina’s story 🙂

I am going to attempt to get Ester Rabbit and Christina Clucklesworth written in time for Easter and our little girls Easter Egg Hunt 🙂

I have a vague idea of where the chicken story is going as I have a cute little tale from my nan to use 🙂 The Rabbit story I think I have some ideas for too. The whole concept of these came from last years spring craft project which was making hand puppets – one was a rabbit and one was a chicken.

I have until the 3rd of April which is when we are inundated with small children looking for a sugar high of great proportions!

I submitted my rather wonky looking creation to Art Evolves Therizinosaur Time Capsule. I decided it looked like something out of the Dark Crystal!

The live blogging however suffered a set back in me being inept with remembering where I have put things :/

I am attempting my second piece of paleo-art for Art Evolved – the subject matter are the dinosaur therizinosaurs and I am live blogging my progress on Salaric Art and Craft.

I have been filling a Moleskine notebook full of visual poetry / illustrated poems for Escape Into Life‘s Moleskine project. Here is my flickr stream and here is the projects.