Making piggy pictures
I searched out a couple of new photos of myself from Ilan’s vast photo archive, in which I actually look okay, to use for promotional purposes.
I don’t think anyone would want to use the photo below in an article about my book, but I borrowed it anyway. >:(:))
Making piggy pictures at Wildpark Schorfheide …
TUNGUSTKAN’
I like sewing – clothes, household items and plush piggies, for example. Often I tend to break out in sewing madness when I’m stuck with one of my comic projects. However, one problem is that there are few patterned fabrics that are even remotely badass. It’s all just flowers and (in the best cases) cutesy little animals in pastel colours.
There are some borderline cases of “slightly badass” patterns, like a some of the fabrics designed by Tula Pink or the ‘Mendocino’ line by Heather Ross. Especially Tula Pink is really inspiring. As a designer she has a background in the music industry, so she knows her way around skulls and monsters, and her fabric designs are, in her own words, “soft and sweet but still cool and interesting”. And she lives in a farmhouse way out in the countryside. (In other words, part of me would secretly like to be her :3 …)
This summer I spent one month in the countryside outside Bonn looking after my doggie friend Henry while his parents went on vacation. With the change of scenery (and being stuck in a book project) I got a rush of inspiration to design my first fabric pattern …
The wild boar, death’s-head hawkmoth, dung beetle, black slug and withered brambles can all be found in the forests of Germany. I didn’t personally see any wild boars and death’s head hawkmoths during my month in Bonn, but the other three elements I saw daily in great masses.
An even more badass steel blue colour scheme:
The lovely Spoonflower allows anyone to upload their own patterns and order prints in small quantities without ruining yourself. They ship worldwide, too. Here is my profile on the site.
After some testing I got the two above colour schemes to look like I wanted them to in print. And yesterday I made a slightly less natural scheme — here you can also se how the pattern repeats:
And here is a variation that I made recently, with diagonally distributed boars.
I still have to get a test swatch of the “cherry” colour scheme to see how it really looks in print. :3
I’m sure there will be more fabric patterns from TungusTkan’ (TungusCloth). And maybe TungusTkan’ will even sell the fabrics some day …
Blutch font
I lettered Blotch by Blutch for avant-verlag a while ago. The book, about a bunch of insanely petty and arrogant cartoonists at a fictional Parisian humour magazine in the 1930’s, is really funny and wonderfully drawn, and the German translation is very good, so it was a joy to work with this project.
I learned some new French phrases from this book. My favourite is “Tu vas voir mon cochon!”, “You will see my pig!”, which means something like “I’ll show you!”
Blutch has a very lively handwriting, so it took some effort to not entirely lose that in the digital font. Click the image below to see a sample of it:
© Blutch/Audie — Fluide Glacial and avant-verlag
WILDPARK SCHORFHEIDE
We made another photo excursion to the wild game park north of Berlin, more commonly known as “the piggy park”. And we got really lucky, because one mangalitza sow has just had babies!
One of the boars doing a domination show with another boar across the path.
A mangalitza sow who fell over with ecstacy every time I scratched her back …
See the rest of my photos here, while Ilan’s excellent photos from this trip are here, and the pictures from my first visit are here.
