Art Journal » Moorehawke

We won!!

elise — Fri, 20 May 2011 02:00:33 +0000

Last night, at a gala event in Sydney, the results were announced by the Sultana of an exotic land from atop the back of a festooned African elephant. As she spoke the words – red rose petals rained from the sky and rivers of champagne flowed from all of the bathroom taps…

Lo and forsooth – The Moorehawke trilogy was the Winner of the Best Designed Children’s Series… specifically books 2 & 3 as designed by myself and the indomitable Bruno Herfst of Allen & Unwin.

At which point the elephant itself clearly said “woot!”.

Ok so I wasn’t there and may have a couple of details wrong but we most definitely did win! Huzzah!!! Learn more about the wonderful books written by Celine Kiernan here. And view the full results of the Australia Book Design Awards here.

Woot!

The Moorehawke covers live on!

elise — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 19:37:16 +0000

Last year I had the utmost pleasure to create the covers for a brilliant trilogy by the divine Celine Kiernan. You can tell I’m happy about that! It was a big undertaking and it was my decision to go all-out in their design and style to really shoot for something memorable that would also engage with the books as completely as possible. I also got to use my favourite style for the first time on a cover – very rewarding.

Well the books have gone into heaps of countries, they have been winning acclaim left, right and centre, and while different covers abound, mine have received a fantastic response. Most recntly from the SFSignal blog. Here are a couple of the comments (joy!)…

“I love these covers so hard. If I had the shelf-space I would display them all face-out on my bookshelves. I’m entranced by the layers of perspective – I feel like I could stick my arm into each one and it would go for miles.”

“They thematically work together, and have a unified artistic point of view that works rather well. This is the sort of cover that gives fantasy book covers a *good* name.”

AND WHAT’S MORE…

The 59th Annual Australian Publishing Association Book Design Awards 2011 judging is complete, and the shortlist results are in.

AND…

Best Designed Children’s Cover of the Year
Crowded Shadows: The Moorehawke Trilogy Vol II – cover by Bruno Herfst, illustrations by Elise Hurst

The Best Designed Children’s Series
Crowded Shadows: The Moorehawke Trilogy Vol II – cover by Bruno Herfst, illustrations by Elise Hurst

The winners will be announced on Thursday, 19 May.

Wooohooo!!!

Mondoodle 24-01-2011

elise — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 11:13:19 +0000

My hands weren’t up to drawing today but it doesn’t matter because I received something very exciting to share! The Russians are releasing the Moorehawke Trilogy by Celine Kiernan and they’re using my covers. Woohoo!

And here’s the first one! I LOVE it.

I’ve always found it very exciting to see any of my work appearing on a translated work. It’s just so damn exotic and cool. And did I mention that I LOVE it?

Magnifique minis!

elise — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 05:08:23 +0000

What is it about little things?? My favourite books as a kid were the smallest ones I could find. The Beatrix Potter series were excellent, a books called Paddy’s New Hat was brilliant, but the crappy little thumb-sized books we once got in a Christmas cracker were best. From memory the stories weren’t good and the printing terrible… but I didn’t care, they were wonderful to hold.

On the weekend I was in Sydney for an ASA meeting and I arrived with a little time to spare. So I wandered along the street until I came to the Hill of Content bookshop (in Balmain) where, to my delight, I found these…

They are the Nutshell Library by Maurice Sendak (published by Harper Collins) comprising of: One Was Johhny a counting book, Alligators All Around an alphabet, Chicken Soup with Rice a book of months, and Pierre a cautionary tale in five chapters and a prologue. I just realised I’ll have to photograph them with something to show the size. Haha – you just can’t tell they’re so titchy… about 10 cm high I think.

But there’s more!! I just found out about these on the Orbit blog… they are beautiful, tiny complete versions of the Moorehawke series and those black and white ones… are my covers. They were put together by an artist called Nyukaa and they look magnificent!

New arrivals!

elise — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 11:09:21 +0000

I have been quiet for a while! After the show I took a little break – the first in a very long time. And have been getting back into a variety of projects slowly. I even had a break from painting although I’m getting twitchy around paintbrushes now – its definitely time to pick them up again.

I have received a couple of packages lately. It’s one of the most exciting times in this job!

This one is the third of the Sarindi series by Janine Fraser and it is a wonderful book. That has nothing to do with my bias! In this one, Sarindi’s Dragon Kite, a very powerful event happens in Indonesia and the repercussions are huge. Sarindi and his father go on a journey and…well, I don’t want to give anything away!

I loved doing the illustrations throughout this book. And there are a lot of them! He’s a great character.

And then – there is another third in a series that arrived… the final Moorehawke book. This one, The Rebel Prince by the fabulous Celine Kiernan gives us the thrilling conclusion to this amazing series. And for the first time I got to see them all line up, side by side, pictures running across the three books. Hooray! These are advance copies so it may be a little while before they start to arrive in shops… keep your eyes peeled. They’re both worth the wait!

new books

elise — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 04:43:11 +0000

Back to work finally. Remarkably, I have a couple of days with nothing marked in my diary so it’s back to normal illustration! Woohoo! I have a few projects to catch up on that were booked in ages ago and need some tlc.

Recent things.

1. I got some advance copies… so I took some pretty pictures.

The second Sarindi book “Sarindi and the Lucky Buddha” by Janine Fraser.

2. And “The Poison Throne” by Celine Kiernan – the first cover in the triptych. Ooo it looks good!

3. There were some Writers Festival fun things too… the Text party at the Blue Diamond in the city (very cool, lovely people and amazing view), the Festival Party on Saturday night, with a dinner to come. It’s been really good to meet people, celebrate writing and think about ideas for next year.

4. And the CBCA Book Week launch event at the Abbotsford Convent. I love these events as I get to play with paint and talk to people. I like that

Hello to all the people I met! Here are some pictures taken just on home-time.

I only got time to start the tiger… can’t wait to keep going.

Moorehawke covers

elise — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 05:12:26 +0000

Hey guys,

I’m allowed to show you the final Moorehawke covers now! Written by the wondrous Celine Kiernan and published here by Allen & Unwin – I can’t wait to see them in-store! Here are each of the individual covers and the collated image below.

I’ve heard that they’re developing some great posters for the shops.

As you may know, they were done as one single illustration and they should all match up when laid side by side. I’m so pleased that they are being published in black and white without wanting tinting. It’s a much stronger set of covers this way. Thanks A&U! Click the below images for big versions…

And as an extra complication I made it so the centre image could tile. Just for fun…

The first Moorehawke cover

elise — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 10:44:12 +0000

And here it is! The first cover and left hand piece of the triptych. It’s going to be mainly black and white. Lovely!

The three covers

elise — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 01:54:34 +0000

…are done! Complete, polished-off, kaput, done, done and done. (Do I sound relieved?) And I’m really happy with them. It’s been a very interesting project and a very hard one. Here are some of the unique challenges:

* Having three dramatic phases of picture – usually there is one focal point and the rest organises itself around that to complement and accent it. This had to work as three flowing interconnected pieces – while having all the necessary drama of three individual and equally important ones.

* Doing four overlapping trees. I decided that the middle scene, being a forest, could be made to tile if multiple copies of the same book were placed side by side. So there is a half-tree on each edge – and these halves need to make a whole when joined. They also need to continue into the following and preceding pictures, and become the trees that compliment those very different scenes. So two trees became four and photocopied slices of the middle halves allowed me to make the lines match up. If that makes sense. Also there is a horse running onto one edge and off the next which are meant to match up too… For just one second of lunacy I wondered if they might be made to tile vertically but then the devil returned my brain and I decided against it.

* Doing very light, slight shading with a pen. Especially small subtle things like distant faces.

* Making myself continue the picture into the bleed. This is where you extend the picture beyond the area that is going to be used in case the printing is slightly off-centre. This way you don’t get a white edge suddenly showing up. When the technique is very labour-intensive it’s a rotten thing to do. Especially when you end up doing something rather good that may never be seen! There’s a delightful little bit of cloud and some rather racy twigs (if I do say so myself!) that will never see the light of day.

Clever things I worked out:

* To make some flaps of paper to cover up the bleed area. One of my faults is that I can’t help but fill all available space. Every time. It doesn’t matter if I’m only meant to do a little illustration – if there’s lots of paper around it I can’t help but make the picture use it. This means that I often mess up my design and don’t have as much space as I’d like around things. By making extra flaps I could trick myself and restrict the drawing to the area I actually wanted to use, and then I could move the flaps aside to draw into the bleed. You can’t always change your habits – but you can sometimes fool yourself for the right result.

* For subtle fine lines and minuscule detail – use black watercolour and the finest of fine brushes (just a couple of hairs) to do controlled light strokes. They look the same as pen but avoid the terror of not knowing when the pen’s ink would suddenly engage properly with the paper and do a bold and utterly incorrect line.

* That there is no substitute for a detailed rough when there’s no room for error on the final piece. Sometimes you just don’t know something won’t work until it’s on the paper.

* A fresh eye is worth its weight in gold. What a disturbing metaphor. The fresh eye was Erica Wagner’s of Allen & Unwin who spotted where things needed a little more and hey presto, the next day I had added, tightened, softened and it felt properly complete. Thanks be to Elise Jones editor-extraordinaire, Bruno Herfst font-genius, and to the author Celine Kiernan who answered all my questions about armour, tack, handedness and a hundred other things. It must have been hard to not see what I was doing to her book – especially as she is an artist herself and would have very strong images in her head already. Oh, I hope she likes it! I think the first cover is sitting in her inbox awaiting for her return from Cork on Monday.

update

elise — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 22:27:31 +0000

Hello gang.
Ok. I often don’t do this because I’m scared of publishers knowing how many things I’m working on at once! But here’s what I’m up to this month… It’s a partcuarly busy one and all great projects (which is why I couldn’t say no! Also, money is useful.). I’m leaving great swathes of the rest of the year for particular things which need all my attention. Undivided, uncompromised, un-hijackable attention.

In no particular order…

Three covers for a brilliant fantasy trilogy – Moorehawke by Celine Kiernan (A&U). I’ve read the first book and it’s an absolute winner. The chance to draw all three at once is sweet. I’m planning on making sure the design moves across all covers…

Maps for Christine Hinwood’s debut novel, Bloodflower (also A&U). It’s beautiful writing and I feel very honoured

A cover and internal illustrations for a lovely manuscript about Robert Ogilvie Crombie’s (Roc for short) experiences in the Findhorn area, Scotland. A very interesting and magical read. I’m so pleased to be drawing real fairies in a gorgeous old fashioned stye.

The drawings for an illustrated novel, Sarindi and the Lucky Buddha by Janine Fraser. An absolute gem of a book. These are in b/w pencil and it’s a HarperCollins book. I love doing these.

And of course my ongoing MAMMOTH TEXTLESS PICTURE BOOK, The Collector . Working on roughs, imagining the world… No, it’s not about mammoths. I just mean – it’s big. Huge.

And this weekend – my Sunday Arts at the Convent market! So that means a new painting Yay!

Oh, and I’m drawing pirates! Which I’m about to go to a cafe to finish off, now. It’s an illustrated chapter book for a UK publisher (Ragged Bears), called The Pirate Suit by Raewyn Caisley. I like pirates.

Generally, my reaction to this list is eek. Although, somehow, it all seems to be flowing smoothly… They’re all at different stages (design, roughs or final art) and require different head-spaces to be completed. So it’s a bit here, a bit there and then voila. At least that’s the plan.