My Illustrative Life

International Women’s Day! I hope you all had a good one. I wore purple, and green, but no white. I don’t really own white, because it requires you to be so careful when wearing it.

Have you ever read anything about Suffragette Jewelry? It’s very interesting. In political movements, particularly in the push for rights that are denied due to what is perceived as basic inequalities in the people who have and do not have them, image is terribly important. It’s used as a weapon by both sides, of course, but the underdogs are generally cleverer about it, I think. They have to be - if you can intrigue, visually, you have your foot in the door of a person’s opinions.

I’ve got my mind on the Suffragettes at the moment because I’ve been doing some illustration for Sherin and Orchid’s Political Awareness gig’s fliers. The aim is to get people who aren’t that fussed about voting interested and maybe a little bothered - but first things first: my part’s about getting them (you?) to the event in question.

When I asked for a basic brief, they said they wanted a goat motif involved somehow. Gotta have a gimmick, as the movie said! And honestly, the loose guidelines mixed with the one specific (weird) bit of imagery is right up my artistic alley. When I think “votes!”, I think “for women!”, so this was the natural port of call at the head of my list (if you want to see more, and the images in a later stage of ‘finishedness’, keep your ear to this ground):

I figure, that a goat-headed person is unusual enough to catch the eye of an uninterested party.

I allow that it might be taken as an insult to female voters - that would suck. I took pains to depict a benevolent (but not weak!) goatface, and to keep her posture capable. I’d hope that the pagan / faux-satanic air of subversion would keep the image from appearing straight-up offensive.

But to be honest, people who don’t care about voting probably don’t care about showing respect for women who were prepared to die and endanger for the right. When was the last time you heard someone truly, honestly “sing in grateful chorus, Well done, sister suffragettes?”

If you are me, never. So I am singing it now, via blog via youtube via film via book. Well done, sister Suffragettes! Your movement wasn’t perfect, but whose is? You paved a great road for us, and we shall continue to alleviate the tolls.

If you think you might be interested in giving any sort of help to a London multi-band gig that wants to inspire the yoof of today to care about their ability to vote, send Sherin and Orchid a note. Every little helps! Your daughters’ daughters will adore you.

Has anyone else noticed that all the Valentines-themed window displays this year are red (with silver or black accoutrements)? Red to hot pink, at least. Where is all the marshmallowy pink, the fluffy powder colours, the teddy bears swearing eternal affection? Everwhere I looked, in town yesterday, there were red satin undergarments with the spindliest of garter belts (they won’t work, don’t you want your sexy to be practical too?), and shiny metallic balloons.

I did consider that it was a display of solidarity with China, any British-Chinese or visiting tourists, Chinese New Year falling today also. Red being an important related colour. But there wasn’t any gold involved, and besides - shop windows don’t tend to be that inclusive.

I hope you’re having a fine day, whatever you’re celebrating or whatever you aren’t. I do think it’s a shame when people are vitriolic against Saint Valentine’s Day, because being martyred because you refused to disallow soldiers to marry is pretty bloody admirable if you ask me. And technically, by visiting my blog, you did. Ha-HAH! I think it’s a day to celebrate, unless you prefer to make it a day for activism - St. V died for the cause of marriage for a portion of the population who higher-ups felt shouldn’t be allowed it. Who knows what his views on homosexuality would be, but luckily for us (and the whole point of this is that) he’s dead - so he can’t complain if we use his Day to say “Hey, Governments - Let Your People Marry”.

I was unconsciously mirroring the red red world, when I ventured out into it to search out records with my newly-drivers’-liscenced sister. My reds were deeper though, because straight-up primary colours make me look startled. And besides, I like the mystery of a slightly dirty hue.

I couldn’t physically be with my beloved for Valentine’s Day - actually, we’ve never been together on The Day (don’t worry! It’s never mattered, either) - and I’m not near any New Year celebrations as I thought I would be so I’m here typing.. Able to say that if you are feeling blue (and so quite out of place) then all you need to do is put on some dreamin’ gear and use that in-head laptop we call ‘imagination’ to fly you to where and with whom you really want to be. Look, I’ll show you:

Oh - and I beg your pardon, happy New Year to China, and anyone who celebrates!

It just occurred to me that I never bigged up my last BSB post! Don’t I know anything about INTER-TUBE MARKETING?

No.

Well, clicky piccy, chickies.

When I was in bed last night, it occurred to me that “Dinkley” is a rather better euphemism for a penis than for an actual sex act. So please adjust that title, in your head. Thank you!

,p>Recently I’ve been working on some possibly secret drawings for the Big Finish over at BSB’s current positivity-focused season. Related to those, though, is this: something a little more personal but nevertheless an important sentiment to share I think.

So, please enjoy! Be your skin dodgy or as smooth and consistent as the quality of.. humm.. Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex.

Inks on Tate Britain sketchbook card-paper. I really should learn more about what I draw on.

Click it! YOU MUST CLICK IT!

I just joined tumblr (click any picture) to post a sheaf of stills from the episode of Ironside I watched this morning; it’s all good stuff. The episode itself was a bit of a bummer. Backstreet abortions may have been unsafe, and some of the people performing them may have been mercenary and unqualified, but the fact remains that abortion is a necessary option for a person and the illegality of their availability was what drove women and girls to go to these unsafe operators. Legal abortions means safe abortions. Voters in Ireland and America in particular? LISTEN LISTEN

I used this for the title over at Flickr, too, but it’s just too amusing not to flag it twice. Thanks, Stylish Man!

Now, in case I am speaking to an audience of keen sensibilities, I warn you: I wear fur here. Fur that died before I was born, that keeps me warm sans wow, I haven’t done girlish light-comedy francaise for an age! electricity, but nevertheless. If this will upset you please scroll no further down! Or just do it fast, and read about something else once this post is past.

I should have worn my work shoes.. alas, DMs do have their weaknesses. I suppose one shape cannot hope to speak all languages.

Trousers: PAUL separates, via a Christian-run charity shop where I also once found a Suchet-read Christie audiobook for 20p

Sweater: Burberry, Ebay’d (£3ish; it has holes (learn to darn!))

Fur: Left unsold at a jumble sale, subsequently gifted to me

Right now I am watching The Mummy Returns on the Hallmark channel. Which is serendipitous - I have been planning to write this post all week.

So: 2001’s The Mummy Returns, starring Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weiss. I really, really enjoy this movie! I didn’t see it in the cinema, but I’ve owned it long enough that my copy is on video. It’s just.. basically flawless*, as a movie to feel good whilst watching. It has:

• A married couple who are in love
• who have a child
• who isn’t annoying
• who is actually fun to watch! He’s spunky!
• The wardrobe is marvelous, all 1933s archaeologist-adventurer/stylish English lady wearing egyptian burnished-deco
• The supporting cast all have personalities and are not crippled by their quipping
• Emotions are engaged despite the action-movie set pieces, the cg monsters, etc
• Imhotep is one of my FAVOURITE VILLAINS EVER.

Let’s talk about Imhotep.

In this film - which is a sequel to the remake of the 1932 Karloff picture The Mummy - Imhotep is played by Arnold Vosloo, in place of Boris Karloff.

Part of the reason I like Arnold Vosloo is that I think he looks like G1 Megatron, and I both find that amusing and enjoy Megatron, so I start this situation with kindly feelings.

In this version of the history, Imhotep was (basically) advisor to the Pharaoh who fell in love, reciprocated love, with the Pharaoh’s woman. And from here-on in, SPOILERS. Be ye warned. Imhotep and Anc-su-namun are discovered together, and he is taken away to be executed whilst she kills herself, unwilling to stay the property of the Pharaoh. In the twenties Imhotep is raised - as per the curse he was buried under - and searches out Anck-su-namun, only to be foiled. In Returns he (guess what!) returns - raised by the reincarnation of Anck-su-namun, and they plan to gain the power of the Scorpion King and live it up like they never got to before.

Imhotep’s motivation is, basically, he misses his girlfriend and he’s cranky after being woken up from being murdered horribly (twice). I feel for him; I miss my [gentleman]friend and I too am cranky when I wake. Occult rivalries, too, bring out a worse side than my usual face. He has a minority of the movie’s kills. And his reaction to his final betrayal.. well, do you have a heart? You may find it squeezed for him, the poor mite.

Right??

As per last time: I owe this movie to Karloff’s movie. And he did make that movie; if you haven’t seen the Universal The Mummy it is available for free, legal download on archive.org. It wowed me, to be honest. I was so-so until the close-up on Karloff-Imhotep’s awakening. That, friends, is acting.

And I enjoyed, enormously, comparing the old Mummy with the new Mummys. These remakes.. in my opinion, they are respectful. The build on the story. There are a couple of references that really made me smile, but the story weaving is my favourite. Take 1932Mummy on one hand, and the 1999/2001Mummy(Returns) on the other. If you watch one hand, you will have a fine cinematic experience. If you watch the other, ditto. But if you watch both, you will have a better experience. They work together, they’re a dialogue. The way the nuances of the story and the characters change between the eras, the way the new ones are the old one re-worked rather than simply re-written. The Mummy vs The Mummy will give you some of this, but for the full joy Returns is a must. It is a rare breed of sequel. I think it is a fine tribute.

Once again, let us cheer! Thank you, Boris Karloff! Thank you very much!

Oh, and one more thing - Don’t bother with Tomb of the Dragon Emperor That movie can go.. fish.

*Bar the only-features-two-ladies (three if you count the “I am a gold-digger with my non-1933 cleavage” five-second cameo) catch, natch. :/

Catching sight of this article whilst researching an upcoming post (no, really; just because I haven’t done what I’ve said I will yet doesn’t mean I won’t), “Boris rescued by feminists” I thought how absurd that sounds, as if we were some sort of species. Well, we aren’t, obviously.

I always thought those This is what a feminist looks like shirts were a bit ridiculous, but.. then again, I used to think that “feminism” was a bit ridiculous. How we grow!

Naturally, in the headline vein, my title is misleading. It is really only one door, repeated. And actually I only mimed knocking on it. But then AGAIN, I do fairly often knock on doors. So the title stands*.

*Not literally! In this case..

ETA: I just noticed that one might misunderstand my facial illustrations as a statement re: mentioned feminism. They aren’t, I just like to draw on my face for a) privacy and b) practice. I drew these two before I started thinking about what I would write today.

Having written in brief about Scary Go Round yesterday, I pondered last night how long I’d been reading it. I thought, wasn’t I introduced to it by someone I knew in school? I’m sure I was. But I haven’t talked to them regularly in.. ages.. hi if you’re listening! :] ..but I can’t have been reading for THAT long, can I?

Apparently I can, though, because I just looked up John Allison on wikipedia, and SGR has been running since 2002.

Don’t you think that’s amazing? Seven years?

I looked up Bobbins, the preceding story, as well and I’m remembering that I read that, too! So really, the fiction and imaged of Mr Allison have been in and out of my brain for seven or eight years, and that’s pretty.. I dono, interesting somehow.

But like I said yesterday, the illustration - as well as the scripting and plotting - grew and grew, skillwise, throughout. It’s not getting any weaker in Bad Machinery, the three-years-later SGR sequel (new characters, but not ALL new characters, and same town-setting). I want to show you some examples, and a little bit of discussion, about just why this art is so good.

Apart from the general good draughtsmanship, this stuff has heart and quirk. There’s a sort of joyful wickedness that seeps into a lot of the expressions, and the levels of detail of body language is quite marvelous. Even if you have problems with the type, or if you have other reservations, I don’t expect anyone to feel able to deny that these people have character. And that’s the thing - I think that John Allison is sort of a phenomenal character designer.

Most of not all his women have that suited-for-empire-waists shape, the nipped-most point of the body being just below the breast, and most of them are thin. He draws faces with the same conventions and there’s not too much of what you might call variety of nose. But.. he draws people. People who know what they look like, who project themselves with their outsides, who look how they live, who have opinions and tastes. Esther is a goth, but she is a person who is a goth. She’s not a person made of gothiness. They’re all (the main cast) kind of hipstery, kind of perky, but they all give the sense that they exist. They really do.

John Allison puts his characters in clothes that people who have real world lives might actually wear, and I cannot stress enough how grateful that makes me! It proves it’s possible, it enhances my enjoyment of the comic so much. LISTEN, Comic book artists and illustrators in general! Just be aware of people’s relationships with their clothes and garments in general, because they are a part of the story.

Observe.

Tell me that Milford is not a skilled representation of a real type of schoolboy. Go on. I dare you.. to LIE to me!

Look at the level of detail! That face! The armpit hair!

Eustace’s design is a bloody triumph. That hair. He is such a real sixth-form slightly posh boy.

Scary Go Round’s world is not a world where horror movie stuff doesn’t happen. This is another reason why I hold it in esteem.

From the last page of the last strip of Scary Go Round:

Check it out, huh? And thanks, John Allison, for telling these stories and making these pictures. Your work is fine work.

You might not think, on first assumption, that 1940s British Girls’ School Stories (for young ladies) and 1970s american punk groups would have anything in common. (You might think that they might, in which case hurray for you and you maybe have nothing to learn here. Stick around anyway!)

They do though! I shall tell you some ways how, but in a roundabout fashion.

This above is one of my favourite photographs. I pinched it off punk77’s “Women of Punk” sub-site, which is a good place to visit. Go visit.

They’re so gangly and angle-y and you can feel the momentum in the moment. The black splashes are just right against the high-contrast washed out background colours and the facial expressions are wild-goofy and candid. They look like they’re having fun and feeling their own power; not power over or against something but just the power that it is to have a body that’s yours and enough of a purpose to be able to blow it off for a while and resent having to work if you feel like it. It’s two teen girls in matching bikinis and boots but skimpiness isn’t always exploitative, and even if it’s meant that way sometimes the sheer self-contained awesomeness of the wearer blasts through that and turns a “hey, jailbait’ll sell” bikini into an outfit that actually says “I am so fantastic and alive that I could go naked, but y’all have no right to my privates so HAH”.

Now I don’t know what made that photo, but that’s what it says to me. When I saw it (researching feminism in punk as a prelude to character design) the Runaways became one of my favourite bands. The fact that their music speaks to me and is, actually, really good is just the silver icing on my cloud-shaped cake.

I darned my dad’s jumper earlier:

I wasn’t taught darning at school. We had FT, which was Food (and?) Technology, where we learnt (or rather, did) basic-ish cooking and learnt how to thread a sewing machine and did a couple of fabric projects (make a bag, make a hand-puppet) but darning was old hat, I guess? Whatever the reason, I wasn’t taught it.

When I was very small I read my first “grown up” Enid Blyton book, Claudine at St. Clare’s. It is still my favourite Blyton, though maybe tying with Fifth Formers at St. Clare’s.

St. Clare’s was a girls’ boarding school somewhere in England, and the series of books followed a pair of twins and their classmates through their journey up the school. Claudine was a French girl, niece of the French Mistress, who joined in what I think is year ten and made much charming mischief whilst learning that English-British values are not so outmoded after all. I do not pretend that Ms Blyton was a perfect author, and there are many aspects of her books that make me go “oh, no.” such as cultural stereotyping, bullying and the free ride that Fathers get in regards to their daughters’ upbringing in many of her books (I never read one of her gollywog-featuring stories).

Naturally perhaps, I heroine-worshiped Claudine. She was slight and brunette, just like me, and everybody liked her even though she was a bit naughty. She could get her way quite easily, and she was funny and talented. What she was talented at was sewing. To get out of gym class (she was not one for sports) she purposefully crossed (the) Matron, knowing that she would be assigned darning to do in her sports-time; this was a harsh punishment to the majority of the very Good, English Gels. Claudine did her darning perfectly, and enjoyed it, and finished in good time enabling her to take tea with her aunt before her classmates returned inside.

Darning, for me, is a symbol of capability and charm.

Nineteen-forties British Girls School novels and nineteen-seventies American punk bands have this in common: they are a proof that feminism is not just something you protest for and dream of and work towards. It is something that you have, because of your innate human power. You can come out on top, in the moment, however you go there and no matter what you come from. It’s not all about getting a law changed or a policy implemented; feminist victory is a part of your everyday life.

You Can Do It.

I want to see this film so much. Roller Derby looks amazing (AMAZING), and who doesn’t love a movie about finding something that makes you want to shout FUCK YES and leaping for it? Especially (especially) one that passes the Bechdel test.

The uniforms are nifty too, the whole movie looks so bright and.. spunky? I’m not a fan of Drew Barrymore’s acting career or public persona but who knows. Maybe she’ll turn out to be a great director. And I’m yet to enjoy an Ellen Page movie but. Who knows? I’m optimistic!

The nearest I have ever been to Roller Derby is Saturday night Roller Discos in primary school. I’m not desperate for bruises or anything, but if I had to pick a sport..

The transformative powers of image changes, and subsequent de/empowerment. One of my FAVOURITE THEMES EVER.

Heart heart heart, The Legend of Billie Jean!

EDIT: “You keep quiet, Binx. It’s wonderful.”

..I love you, movie.