When I saw that Mary Norton’s The Borrowers had been turned into an animation, The Secret World of Arietty, my knee-jerk reaction was a blurted out tweet (a twurt?):

Oh crap, The Borrowers have been Disney-d. Why can’t they make up their own damn stories?

Or is it anime-d? Probably both.

Then I promptly reread the first four books in the series straight through (for the first time in many years),  finishing last night with a satisfied sigh.

But I’ve had to give myself a talking-to about the adaptation. It turns out that there are numerous previous film adaptations, and a new BBC one coming out this Christmas. If I take a step back from the strong imprint the book made on me as a child, I can see that the things that made me love it also make it an irresistibly rich story for others to reinterpret. And while for me the drawings by Diana Stanley

are inextricably part of how I imagine and experience the story of Pod, Homily and Arietty, it seems Americans have an equally strong association and love of the illustrations done by Beth and Joe Krush.

So instead I’m going to welcome the new adaptations, and enjoy some new ways of seeing The Borrowers, and the new stories created from them.  I probably won’t like some of the sentimentality, or the idea of Mild-Eye being redrawn as an evil professor instead of gypsy, but that’s okay, I don’t have to. And maybe those aspects will speak to some who would otherwise never have the pleasure of knowing The Borrowers.

When I was making the seagull skeleton prop recently, a google image search took me to sakurasnow‘s drawing of a seagull skull, and then more generally to her lovely blog. In particular I love her beautiful curiosity cabinet designs. And I think there are some new ones on the way!  Occasionally they are available in her Etsy shop, and she is also working with them on fabric.

At the moment I’m entranced with drawing on my iPhone, mostly playing with the Brushes and Paintbook apps. My full set of iPhone drawings is here.

With Brushes I’m presently evolving some strange creatures in a strange environment. Above you can see the Hedgehogerus surprised,  the Hedgehogerus nest and fairy, the two-toed Chubbachubb, and the double-pouched Schweep.

With Paintbook I’ve been making some very simple two-tone faces of (mostly) imaginary people. Here are a few favourites:

It seems as if there is an exciting new field opening up as people experiment with what can be achieved on such a small screen using just your finger. David Hockney has already had an exhibition of his iPhone drawings, and The New Yorker recently drew attention to the phenomenon by featuring an iPhone drawing by Portuguese artist Jorge Columbo as it’s cover illustration. But you get a better feel for the range, quality and some sense of developing community among artists using iPhone apps, at Flickr, for instance in the Brushes gallery.

But the article did remind me of some lovely images of traditional craftsmen by printmaker Stanley Anderson. Here are three:

Coppicing:

Chairmaking:

Basket weaving:

These are from Country Bazaar, a 1970′s book about country crafts.  (I’m not sure about copyright here – please let me know if it is an issue). You can find a few more if you google, for instance The Violin Maker, but wouldn’t it be cool if it were possible to see the whole series?

I’m really happy – Yiying Lu sent me one of her cool Fail Whale cards! Here it is with my little sculpture. Thanks so much Yiying :)

I get a lot of interest in my photos of Mr. Squiggle and friends, so I thought people might like to see the squiggle that Mr. Squiggle (aka Norman Hetherington) drew for me personally at the Puppet Summit in Melbourne in 2002. I guess over the years he has drawn them for many people!

Some of the things you can do on the iPhone just seem like magic to me. This image is drawn on the iPhone screen with my finger, using the Brushes app. It’s taking me a while to get some finesse, but the Brushes Gallery pool at Flickr is ample proof that it is possible.

(btw, Ocarina has been the most jaw-droppingly magic app for me so far.)

Chris Sickels at Red Nose Studio makes real figures and scenarios that are then photographed to produce cool 3D illustrations for papers, magazines and books.  The 3D illustration above is his cover for Cory Doctorow’s  story The Things That Make Me Weak and Strange Get Engineered Away. Before seeing this I had thought of 3D illustration as more a virtual rendering process.  In this real form it is closely, and interestingly, allied to my work making puppets and props. I recently had a picture of my 3D fail whale published as an illustration in the Japanese computer magazine WEB+DB PRESS. I suppose that is fairly close – the only difference is in your intention when you start making an object?

(via @LolaLulu)

Playing around after discovering the wonderful drawings of Jim Woodring.

Liz Wong, painter and a freelance illustrator, is making a graphic novel of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. It should be fun to see how it progresses. I looked around to see if there have been other Austen graphic novels, and yes there are. Anne Timmons’ Northanger Abbey is included in Gothic Classics: Graphic Classics Volume 14. Here is a sample drawing. And a manga style version of P&P, illustrated by Tintin Pantoja is due to be published in about September 2007. If you take the Sequential Art link on her site you can see her version of the first proposal.

In addition to the decisions on how to break up the page, what to zero in on, how to convey action, and what interpretations are being made through image rather than word, I was interested – but not surprised! – to see the influence of Andrew Davies’ 1996 adaptation of P&P.