composition – Gerry Mooney Illustrating Dickens

London? Definitely MAYBE!

It’s been pretty hectic around here, planning my trip to London to speak at Dickens Day at the University of London. My sweet wife Vicki is currently on hospice care due to her strokes, and her sister who was planning to come from Charlotte to take care of her, went and broke her arm about two weeks ago. Planning for home health aides was a process, but ultimately we worked it out and Vicki will have good care while I’m gone.

In London I’ll be speaking in some detail as to how I arrive at and design the linoleum cut illustrations I’ve completed for BLEAK HOUSE. I’ve selected ten out of the forty completed pieces that are in the published book. The audience will be international and made up mostly of academics and Dickens experts. I have no idea at all of the number of attendees expected.

I’ll also be meeting up with several of the fifteen speakers at a pub the night before, which should go a long way toward feeling at ease on the day of the event.

I’ve been making lists and working on my speaking notes. I’ve rehearsed it a few times before friendly audiences (mostly Vicki but had some other folks stop by for a listen), been making packing lists, got my passport and visa, downloaded the American Airlines app to keep track of my flights, emailing with the event organizers, and a few other things probably!

What comes next is news as it happens, but as of last night (Tuesday) the Republican-authorized shutdown of the federal government has now affected the reliability of air travel in the U.S., with a spreading sick-out of air traffic controllers.

At this exact moment I am proceeding as if the trip will actually happen. I’m packing, making arrangements with the home health aides, and mining my world-traveling friends for travel trips, as I haven’t been out of the country since the 80s.

All these preparations have sort of taken over my life lately and social media seems more and more distant, however I do hope to do some live-streaming of my trip. Stay tuned to my Facebook page and send me a friend request if we aren’t already!

Book signing and Linoleum Printing Demonstration

Promotional poster for a book signing event with Gerry Mooney, illustrator of Charles Dickens' Bleak House, featuring details about a linoleum block printing demonstration at Barnes & Noble, Tulsa, on September 13, 2025.

If you’re in the Tulsa area it would be great to see you at my second book signing and lino print demonstration, 1PM on Saturday, Sept. 13.

The Barnes & Noble Store is across from Woodland Hills Mall on 71st St., and the store staff has offered to help me live-stream the event on Facebook, so there’s an opportunity to watch right from your couch!

In other news, I expect to be traveling to London in October to speak at Dickens Day at the University of London. I’ll have more info about this soon.

A Christmas Carol

I recently started an Etsy shop (since closed!) to offer prints of a couple of my BLEAK HOUSE illustrations. I’ve done a soft launch but the fact is my offerings so far are pretty slim. I know a couple of images I’ve done for this project have a broader appeal, but growing a shop like this based on what I’ve done for this one book has some problems. So as I said, a soft launch just to get some feedback, but it is certainly off to a slow start. It would be nice to have something special to offer for Christmas.

I love “A Christmas Carol” as much as anyone, but mostly the movies (Mr. Magoo is my favorite!). I hadn’t read the text for a long time, but recently I read it again as a way to refresh my Dickens knowledge. I pretty quickly felt moved to do some sketching, in a way that movies do not inspire me. Interesting!

“The Last Picture” Show

As promised in my previous post, I’ve completed a “making of” video of the final large illustration for my BLEAK HOUSE project. It’s not the last chronologically in the book, just the last one to get to. In fact there are two more small, or “spot” illustrations still to do, and those I can do in a few days or a week at most.

The larger ones take more time to work out a more elaborate composition, and can take a month. Shooting a video while doing this work adds a great deal to to process, and of course cutting and editing a video can be time consuming, but I hope the results are worth your time.

A “making of” video in the works

Hi folks, I know it’s been awhile since I’ve posted, and the last post was about a rare but serious creative block. The thing about blocks is, eventually, they just go away and you start plowing back into it.

I’ve been working on this BLEAK HOUSE illustration project non-stop since Spring of 2019. Enormous and all-consuming as it is, I’ve never lost the spark that has moved me so in this sprawling work.

Blocked.

It’s been awhile since I posted here, and the longer I go without posting, the guiltier I feel. I had to think about the reasons for this gap, aside from the usual distractions of life, of which I have at least as many as any other person.

No matter what I may be doing at any given time, there’s always a part of my brain thinking about BLEAK HOUSE, about the next picture, about finishing this project, about NOT finishing this project, and about constantly moving it forward, in big and little ways.

I’ve finished a few new pieces and made good progress, but wasn’t moved to write any posts, as my list of topics had been dwindling. Then things in other areas got busy and BLEAK HOUSE was put aside for awhile. It didn’t last, but when I came back to it I found I was blocked.

Four New Spots

As work proceeds at what sometimes seems like a glacial pace, I would like to present these four recently-completed small illustrations. I’ve strived to provide some context for each with excerpts from the book.

It may seem like there are some spoilers here, but BLEAK HOUSE is so jam-packed with catastrophic plot twists that you’ll forget all about these once you’re reading the book!

VOLUMNIA FINDS LORD DEDLOCK

Here, Lord Dedlock’s flighty cousin Volumnia, a fairly minor character, stumbles upon his prostrate body in the dark.

The Dedlock town house changes not externally, and hours pass before its exalted dullness is disturbed within. But Volumnia the fair, being subject to the prevalent complaint of boredom and finding that disorder attacking her spirits with some virulence, ventures at length to repair to the library for change of scene. Her gentle tapping at the door producing no response, she opens it and peeps in; seeing no one there, takes possession.

Gustave Doré – Jan. 6, 1832-Jan. 23, 1883

In researching and reading about the art and business of woodcut illustration in the 19th Century, it is almost inevitable to end up with Gustave Doré. More than a master draftsman or illustrator, he possessed a practically supernatural ability to simply draw. He was recognized as a prodigy at age five, was carving in stone at twelve, and by fifteen he was supporting his family by drawing caricatures for French magazine Le journal pour rire.

Although Dickens and Doré never met as far as I can determine, their lifespans overlapped, Dickens being born in 1812 and Doré in 1832. And while Dickens labored in the world of British popular fiction and monthly magazines, the French Doré was producing high-quality illustrated art volumes of what we would call “The Great Books”, e.g., Voltaire, Rabelais, Cervantes, the Bible, Paradise Lost, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, and many, many others, much of it for a British audience.

Inspector Bucket

It has been said that Inspector Bucket, the police detective in BLEAK HOUSE, was the very first fictional detective, pre-dating Sherlock Holmes among others. I don’t know about that, but I do love this great Dickens character!

It’s tempting to compare him to others of the genre, and I often think of Columbo for some reason, but that’s not even close. Bucket is not rumpled and never feigns confusion, but the attribute they share is a totally disarming likability. Bucket’s greatest skill as an investigator is instantly being everyone’s best friend and confidante. He can speak to little children, Lords and Ladies, or street sweepers, and within a sentence or two bond with them like an old friend.

Online Drawing Class

As an artist I’m always looking for ways to keep my skills sharp, and regular life-drawing classes are a must if you’re drawing the human figure. Nude models, of every size, shape and age, are the rule, but let’s face it, in the practice of our art we’re almost never drawing naked people, we’re drawing people with clothes on.