tools and methods – Page 2 – Gerry Mooney Illustrating Dickens

How “A Christmas Carol” Ends

Man, I really didn’t want to write this post. I had big plans, as I wrote about in my post of Sept. 10. Create a set of charming scenes from Charles Dickens’s holiday classic as three-color linoleum prints, and do it in time to sell them for this Christmas season in my Etsy shop, which I set up primarily to try selling some of my BLEAK HOUSE prints. Ambitious but doable, I thought.

It actually started out very well. I developed my sketches into imagery that I was very happy with. I enjoyed designing the lettering with a loose but classical sort of letterform, and of course thinking about and drawing the characters was a lot of fun. I was making good progress! The key factor was time, since I was starting maybe a little late for the holidays, due to the complexity and somewhat experimental nature of the project.

How to Scam a Commercial Artist

I’m taking a break from my Dickens projects to talk about a recent attempt to scam me as a commercial artist. While it seemed like a real job at first, there were warning signs along the way that just bemused me until the scam was revealed.

This job was a referral from a former artist acquaintance who I knew too many years ago to count, and we are now Facebook friends. He’s legit, I have no reason to think he was any more than an innocent dupe. But it spiraled pretty quickly!

“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.

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.

Lawrence Boythorn

“You have brought your bird with you, I suppose?” said Mr. Jarndyce.

Research Sketching-Costumes

My favorite part of doing any kind of historical or genre art is researching the appropriate costumes. In my magazine illustration days it didn’t come up much; mostly I was drawing doctors, nurses, businessmen and contemporary kids and grownups of all kinds.

With subject matter like Dickens, costuming the characters not only correctly, but in a way that tells us about their personalities, is part of the job description!

Miss Flite’s Birds

She partly drew aside the curtain of the long, low garret window and called our attention to a number of bird-cages hanging there, some containing several birds. There were larks, linnets, and goldfinches–I should think at least twenty.

“I began to keep the little creatures,” she said, “with an object that the wards will readily comprehend. With the intention of restoring them to liberty. When my judgment should be given. Ye-es! They die in prison, though. Their lives, poor silly things, are so short in comparison with Chancery proceedings that, one by one, the whole collection has died over and over again. I doubt, do you know, whether one of these, though they are all young, will live to be free! Ve-ry mortifying, is it not?”