Friday 4 May 2018

Ms Blackbird's Home For Peculiar Children


In deciding what to do as I'm trying to get Cloudbusting published, I've decided to test out a few ideas for possible new comics. 

I've spent a heck of a lot of time thinking about various ideas, and my adversity to the fine art world. Which isn't particularly coming from my part, I still consider myself a fine artist - just unable to continue working for free, voluntarily, or applying for arts council grants to be able to work.
The same still applies as an illustrator, I just feel that I'm not ready to make any new fine art work in the current economically abusive climate.

I've been thinking a lot about Bird Therapy, and also my experiences with my son's depression - something that hasn't yet been approached, and my own feminist aspirations. 
So as a test, an experiment, something a little bit Steampunk, I'm developing some characters, and going back to Ms Blackbird's Home For Peculiar Children.
If I were a Steampunk character, this would definitely be it. 
I'd be a wealthy Victorian lady, I'd buy the old Johnson Hospital building, which is a beautiful gothic hospital donated to Spalding, and it'd be our home, but also studios, and all kinds of people with mental health conditions would come for residencies, so it'd be like Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children, but not quite. So I've taken the Photoshop images I made for World Book Day and illustrated them digitally.
The top would possibly be one of the first images for a comic. The second is just a Photoshop filter, which gives it a lino print effect.




Other characters in development are going to be my son, whose peculiarity is the fact that he turned into a Kafkaesque beetle, and spends most of his time n his back, and the evil Nurse Cuckoo, who tries to kidnap teenagers like Jareth out of the Labyrinth. 

Nurse Cuckoo is an abusive ymbryne

Finn Blackbird

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