A spot of reading : Stan and Nan by Sarah Lippett

When it comes to graphic novels I mainly pick them up and buy them because of the drawings, the colour scheme, the general look.  The storyline for me is just the extra bonus. That is why I picked up Stan and Nan by Sarah Lippett. I was immediately drawn to the textural line work and the earthy colour scheme.  I do love a good earthy colour scheme.

Sarah Lippett tells us the story of her maternal grandparents, Stanley Burndred and his wife Joyce.  The first part of the story is told by Joyce, reminiscing to Sarah over a cup of tea about the life of her late husband. Sarah never met her grandfather so her grandmother details the path his life took, his love of making pottery, family life, the ups and downs, up to his sudden death. There are little interviews with Sarah asking her aunties and mother questions about her grandfather, all illustrated beautifully and all evoking a relatable nostalgia which builds together the personality of Stan. 

As we follow the story of Stan we learn more about the family as a whole. The stunning illustrations show a great deal of emotions in their faces, the sadness at losing Stan, the joy in remembering his memory.  It really reminded me of my own family members that I have lost and how we deal with the emotions of remembering their lives.

I found the parts of the story relating to Stan's love of art and pottery making very special as it must have been incredible for Sarah to find out about her grandfather's creativity which has clearly been passed on to her and the proof of it is the very graphic novel we are reading about it in.

The second part of the story cuts to years later when the funeral of Sarah's grandmother Joyce is taking place.  I found these scenes very relatable, and very accurate in displaying the emotions felt at the funeral of a loved one. The overwhelming loss entwined with the happy memories shared with them is shown wonderfully by Sarah. The whole novel has a brilliant conversational feel about it. The novel itself was created from letters sent to Sarah by her grandmother detailing her life and also some of her grandfather's old letters. I think it's a beautiful memory of both of them, complied together, showing the love of a family and the reality of ageing.

Sarah Lippett is an artist and author living in London.  She graduated from both the University of Brighton and The Royal College of Art. Stan and Nan is her first graphic novel and was published by Jonathan Cape in June of this year. You can find out more about Sarah and her art at her website www.crayonlegs.com

A spot of reading: Killing and Dying by Adrian Tomine

This Sunday my spot of reading is 'Killing and Dying' by Adrian Tomine. A stunningly crisp collection of six interconnected tales which delve into the cracks and crevices of everyday live. It includes those glances, the unspoken emotions and the awkwardness that couldn't be conveyed through language but come across so clearly through the beautifully drawn panels of Tomine.

 The title story, Killing and Dying, focuses on the complexities of parenthood  intertwined with the dark cloud of terminal illness. The conversations we follow in these panels are fraught with an underlying depression, a sadness of what is to come, which transgresses into the frustration of dealing with a teenager focusing on wanting to become a comedian at what could be seen as an inappropriate time.

Out of the six small stories, 'Translated from the Japanese', is a personal favourite as Tomine's full colour sharp illustrations carry the thoughts of a passenger on a flight home.

'Go Owls' follows a young woman who meets an older gentleman at an A.A. meeting, falling  vulnerably into a relationship that swings from supportiveness to abusiveness from one panel to the next.

'Amber Sweet' follows the tragic story of the life of girl who has been mistaken for a popular porn star, which alters the way people look at her, how her relationships pan out, destroying her happiness.

These along with the other two stories carry us through a range of relatable emotions, the ebb and flow of relationships, humour, sadness, creativity and the need to succeed but also the acceptance of failure. Every drawing matches the story it tells, some are filled with more vibrant colour, others are muted, some are more minimalist than others. It all works and flows in such a stunning fashion.

You can find more of Adrian Tomine's work at his website here. His author page on Drawn and Quarterly can also be found here. I'll certainly be seeking out more of his work in the future.

A spot of reading: The New Ghost by Robert Hunter

When I'm not drawing or at work, I read. My commute to work is also the perfect time to make my way through a few chapters. My bookshelves are lacking in free space and I always find my legs taking me to the nearest bookshop and before I realise it i'm trying to find some nonexistent room for these newbies. Book buying is incredibly addictive. It's even more addictive when they are stunning graphic novels and comics such as the one I'm featuring today, The New Ghost by Robert Hunter. 

Robert Hunter is a London based illustrator and this is his first comic printed by Nobrow Press. If this was my first comic I'd be more than chuffed because it is beautiful.

The story follows a brand new ghost on its first day and it's not too sure what it's actually meant to do.  We also meet Tom who works at an observatory, trying to work out the secrets of the stars when he spots the new ghost through his telescope. On encountering each other they learn the secrets they've been searching for in the most thought provoking and moving way which Hunter has managed to capture in a neat twenty four pages.

The colour scheme isn't the stereotypical spooky of black and white, but instead a stunning range of cool blues and greens with delicate use of more vibrant oranges and yellows expertly placed through out the pages. This also has the added pleasing aesthetic of being printed by Nobrow Press on quality matt paper. You cant beat great paper. Their 17x23 series is just the sort of thing that you'd want to start collecting if you like beautifully made comics by a wide range of talented artists, with intriguing stories to tell.

 If you want to see more of Robert Hunter's work head over to his website robertfrankhunter.com.
To see what the guys at Nobrow Press are producing next head over to http://nobrow.net

If you liked this little book feature, let me know! I'm hoping to keep keep it a regular themed post.  Also, if you have any book recommendations, send them my way. There's always room for more books...

Parcels, drawings and books

I have taken part in Oh Comely's Perfect Strangers project again.  The project is a pretty simple but fun idea where you get paired up with someone else from the project and send each other a parcel in the post. My swap partner mentioned that she liked Wes Anderson films and Amelie so I tried to create a box that sort of looked like something from them.  I've included some books, drawings, postcards, knitted and felted animals, ornaments and other nice bits and bobs.  I hope she likes it! 

I've also been spending some time looking about Broughty Ferry beach for pieces of old ceramic that's been washed up.  I'm hoping to do some paintings on some of them.  I'm not too sure what I'm doing with the pattered ones but I just like collecting them because they look nice. There's also a few interesting stones in there too that I decided to keep.

In terms of drawing I'm fitting it into my spare time as much as I can. I recently watched the film 'Her' with Joaquin Phoenix as the main character Theodore Twombly.  A film set sometime in the future but certainly not unreachable from our current advances in technology. It's story of a guy, Theodore,  who's going through a divorce, during which he gets the latest operating system.  A not so remarkable thing to do since we always seem to be updating our devices these days.  This operating system is like the next step of Siri in which you speak to it and it answers but unlike previous versions that sound quite robotic, this update is just like talking to a real person. In such a lonely period of his life it's a welcoming, if a bit strange, new relationship that evolves throughout the film. I loved the colour scheme and the whole feeling of the film which was quite melancholy, slightly detached from how we live now but also frighteningly close. So after enjoying it so much I decided to do a drawing of Joaquin Phoenix as Theodore. 

I also recently watched The Grand Budapest Hotel by Wes Anderson. I found out that he was influenced by the writer Stefan Zweig and that the film was inspired by two of his books, one being 'Beware of Pity'.  I decided to give it a read and it was like reading a big collection of strong emotions.  There was no subtlety in the way the characters acted, everything was very dramatic and full of a great deal of over thinking. The story is about a young lieutenant Anton Hofmiller who is invited up to the nearby castle owned by an aristocrat Lajos Kekesfalva.  After having such an incredible evening full of drinking, eating and dancing he makes an incredibly embarrassing mistake asking the daughter of the house to dance, not knowing that she is paralysed. Consumed by his shame he experiences true pity for the first time and becomes a slave to this overwhelming pity he feels for the girl which becomes more and more suffocating as the story goes on. It doesn't read at all like a Wes Anderson film but you can see that certain characters or scenes influence The Grand Budapest Hotel.  The story itself stands on it's own as a tale of inner turmoil and despair. Now I've moved onto the newest book by Haruki Murakami, 'Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki' which is proving to draw me in already and I'm only on chapter two. 

I'm off on holiday soon, camping on the west coast of Scotland.  I have a brand new sketchbook ready as well as a list of books I'm planning to take.  I'll be away for two weeks and I can't wait for a break away. 

A week of reading

This week has been a very sleepy one but I've not been the only one.  It seems a lot of people have been feeling a bit lethargic this week so perhaps there's something going about.
Thankfully though I've had a series of books to nestle into which has been my main activity this week.
Ben Aaronovitch has written a series of books following the life of PC Peter Grant.  A young policeman in London who discovers that there is more to policing than meets the eye. After meeting a ghost face to face in the first book 'Rivers of London', he is taken on as an apprentice by Detective Police Inspector Thomas Nightingale, head of The Folly that deals with the supernatural and magic side of things that occur for the Metropolitan police to deal with. Nightingale also happens to be the last sanctioned wizard in England and Peter is the first apprentice in over seventy years to be taken on. If you like ghost stories and the paranormal, which I always have done, then these books would be right up your street. I'm now on the fourth book in the series 'Broken Homes'.  They are a perfect companion for the bus journey to and from work everyday.
This week has also brought with it the next Oh Comely magazine issue. Perfect for curling up with a cup of tea, Oh Comely is full of inspiring stories, beautiful illustrations and photography, tasty recipes and crafty ideas. This issues theme is weather and I'm looking forward to settling down to read it this coming week.
I also got a delivery of more Fabriano Venezia sketchbooks. I keep talking about these but they really are my favourite so I got a few more to stock up.
Finally I've been continuing to look back at previous work. I really do recommend it as it gives you new ideas and you can pick out what you were happy with and what to improve on.  It's also always nice to take a walk down drawing memory lane.