I did NOT expect to be saying that at dinnertime on launch day. I am so unbelievably thankful.
A HUGE thank you to everyone who has supported this Kickstarter so far. And thanks to all of you who have posted, reposted, liked, shared and what have you.
I was deliberately quite conservative in my targets, having planned on putting a good deal of my own money into printing costs. However, I still thought this month might be a long slow slog to reach the £500 goal.
Let’s keep the momentum going. I have a few stretch goals in mind.
I am extremely excited to be in a position to even consider this, I would like the first stretch goal to – upgrade every physical book ordered to be a hardcover instead of a softcover.
I think this upgrade will really show off the book in it’s best possible light. I’ve done all my costs and estimates on this one already and if we make it to £1500 I’ll make it happen.
Having a physical book was always the end goal of this project but it took FAR longer than I expected to get here. During the making of this book I’ve moved house at least once, if not twice. Got married, had a baby. There have been distractions 😀
It is fairly nerve wracking launching a kickstarter and I apologise up-front about how much I will be talking about this for the next 30 days. If you want to support the project please help spread the word to friends who might be interested. And if you are going to back it with cold hard cash then can I say big, massive THANK YOU! This project means a lot to me and I’d love to see it flourish.
I’m offering a limited number of early bird discounts to encourage early backers. Backing on the first day massively helps the campaign and feeds the almighty algorithms.
Here’s a sneak peek of the early bird reward tiers you’ll want to look for. The one above will be £20 and is essentially just the book but with a 5 postcard art card collection included for free.
And the other early bird offer is an upgrade to the colour sketchcard for the price of a black and white sketch. £35 instead of £50.
Thanks for taking a look and for your ongoing support. Passing on the word to friends who might be interested is super helpful to independent artists. Your support helps me spend more time doing the work I believe in!
I decided to finally read the classic sci-fi novel Dune and try visualising and drawing some scenes from the book.
Dune is a science fiction classic. However, having started to read it once when I was younger, something didn’t click. So I ignored it for many years.
After watching the Documentary Jodorowsky’s Dune, I went on a journey down the rabbit hole exploring things mentioned in and related to that film. I decided it was time to give it another shot, and I honestly don’t know how it didn’t grab me before!
The opening chapter of the book is one of the best opening scenes of any book I’ve ever read. It completely sucked me in and I was along for the ride.
I was having a discussion with a few people about visualising stories as they read books.
Weirdly I’d never really thought about it before. As an artist my training has been very animation focused rather than illustrative. So this is not something I’ve ever tried to do. However I really see the value in practicing this to train your visual imagination through drawing.
I’ve come to the conclusion that I do sort of visualise what I’m reading, but it is quite vague. When I start drawing I am exploring with shapes and visual language. I’m not just translating a vivid picture in my head onto the page. For this reason, I will usually go through several rough iterations of drawing before I find something that actually reflects what I imagine.
It is a very good exercise and one that I think would develop an artist’s drawing skills quite a bit.
I would think the more you practice this, the clearer your imagination would become and you would arrive quicker at a good illustration.
I started doing all this before I realised there is a new Dune film in production. I think that is the other challenge here is finding reading material that has no visual associations for you. I’d never seen any Dune related art or film except a few book covers maybe.
I have to admit it’s not the most relaxing way to read a book but if you’re looking for ways to push your creativity, visualising and drawing skills it is worth a try.
