Tor Freeman

SAW Application

noreply@blogger.com (Tor Freeman) — Thu, 28 Feb 2019 17:58:00 +0000

noreply@blogger.com (Tor Freeman) — Mon, 06 Feb 2017 15:26:00 +0000

Good hair daze

noreply@blogger.com (Tor Freeman) — Mon, 30 Jan 2017 16:13:00 +0000

Sigi

noreply@blogger.com (Tor Freeman) — Wed, 18 Jan 2017 12:35:00 +0000

Observatory cats

noreply@blogger.com (Tor Freeman) — Wed, 11 Jan 2017 17:04:00 +0000

The Wind in the Willows

noreply@blogger.com (Tor Freeman) — Wed, 16 Nov 2016 18:47:00 +0000

I'm really excited to have been asked to do some illustrations for Alma Books's new edition of The Wind in the Willows. The inside drawings are in black and white, and colour for the cover! It was intimidating to begin drawing such well-known characters - EH Shepard's version is so iconic and beautiful, and my style isn't very realistic! I pretended it was a normal, new book, for me, and now I'm happy with how this cover has come out.

Re-reading it I feel much more impatient with Toad than ever before, and much more keen on Ratty!

This edition of The Wind in the Willows will be published by Alma Books in April 2017.

Thought Bubble 2016!

noreply@blogger.com (Tor Freeman) — Thu, 03 Nov 2016 16:20:00 +0000

I'm very excited to be heading up to Leeds tomorrow for the Thought Bubble Festival! This is my second year there - I have half a table and my sister is coming too! I'll be mostly selling copies of my comic, Welcome to Oddleigh, but I'll have some stickers, prints and cards too.

If you are in Leeds this weekend and coming to Thought Bubble, please come and say hello - I'll be in the Royal Armouries Hall, table 56b!

Welcome to Oddleigh

noreply@blogger.com (Tor Freeman) — Sat, 24 Sep 2016 16:53:00 +0000

Hello! I haven't been updating here much as my personal stuff energies have recently been focussed on my comic, Welcome to Oddleigh. I've just finished the second story, The Dentist, and I'm aiming to get a third done in time to make a zine to take up with me to Thought Bubble!

I'll post some of the other non-comic things I've been working on here soon, but until then do please check out Welcome to Oddleigh - Shell and The Dentist.

The next story, Cult, is coming soon!

Draw It! Colour It! Beasts

noreply@blogger.com (Tor Freeman) — Thu, 25 Aug 2016 11:55:00 +0000

The follow up to Draw It! Colour It! Creatures is going to be published in September by Macmillan Children's Books: Draw It! Colour It! Beasts! I'm proud to have been asked by Emily Ford to be part of this wonderful project once again.

Just like the last one, this is beautifully realised activity book, with opportunities for colouring, drawing and inventing. I thought the last book was beautiful, and this can sit proudly next to it. In terms of follow-ups, this is definitely a Last Crusade rather than a Kingdom of the Crystal Skull!

There is such a nice variety of spreads inside...

Add food to Bethan Woollvin's hungry croc!

Draw underground animals in Lydia Coventry's picture!

What are Jools Bentley's monster gang eating?

Help Miss Medusa with her hair on Marta Altés's spread!

Colouring and sheep-completing with Steve Lenton's drawing!

Who is Jim Field's Piuggle's owner? And what will Yasmeen Ismail's Fluffy look like with new hair?

What are Zak Simmonds-Hurn's characters running from in the ice??

Here's my spread! A cat circus, draw in alllll the extra cats!

Here's the one that I've done so far! Alexis Deacon's excellent monster page...

* * * Beasts APLENTY! * * *

Draw It! Colour It! Beasts is published by Macmillan Children's Books this September.

Congratulations Emily and Macmillan!

noreply@blogger.com (Tor Freeman) — Mon, 15 Aug 2016 17:41:00 +0000

Life drawing round-up!

noreply@blogger.com (Tor Freeman) — Tue, 09 Aug 2016 17:11:00 +0000

A couple of Fridays ago was the final day of the three-week Summer Figure Drawing course at Studio Escalier. I thought I would write a little bit about my experience, and put up my drawings to show the progress I made during my three weeks there.

My main experience of figure drawing until taking the course was during my second year at Kingston on the Illustration BA. That was great as it was so concentrated - we had a whole day once a week for a year. I've fallen out of the habit in the years since, attending only the odd evening class, so my skills are pretty rusty to say the least. I was looking for something intensive and a bit academic to throw me back into the way of drawing from life, and Studio Escalier fit the bill perfectly.

We met from 1-7pm every day in a lovely light studio in Montmartre with teacher Tobias Hall. Studio Escalier was set up in 2001, so there is a well-established routine, creating a calm, studious atmosphere for students to learn in.

I've put my drawings in the order I made them below. I won't talk much about the techniques we learned beyond mentioning them, because I wouldn't be able to do a good job of it - but there is a book we spent some time with at the studio by Tony Ryder called The Artist's Complete Guide to Figure Drawing, which explains in detail and which I will certainly be buying!

**WEEK ONE**

Very first drawing on the first day - nervous and self-conscious!

Then we started making drawings based on "movement curves". I found these pretty hard to get into at first.

Then we moved on to "blocking-in" - much more of a natural home to me as it involves the outline! We made an "envelope" to find the composition and where we wanted the figure to go, and from that we'd whittle it down, like carving a block of stone to get to the figure.

By the end of week one I was excited about the block-ins - they felt relatively natural to me, and the emphasis was on trusting our eyes rather than measuring, which I really prefer as I hate measuring and often it seems to get my drawings into trouble before I've begun!

**WEEK TWO**

In this week we got onto "modelling" - "shading" to me, up until then! This has always been a very weak area for me, and something that let my drawings down in the past. We carried on drawing in the same way, using block-ins and movement curves, but now we added in modelling and had longer poses to work from.

I think the above is a good example of my modelling issues - I'm going through the motions, but not making a nice drawing. I was looking what Toby calls locally rather than globally at all the shadows, drawing in tones but without any sense of light falling or coherence. Frustrating!

Toby helped with the one above!

**THIRD WEEK**

I feel like I made a break-through in the last week, finding a way to really blend the areas of tone, and make them work together much more convincingly. And though I don't feel like I'll ever be someone who can see naturally in a tonal way (I'm very keen on line, which has long been my pursuit in illustration too), I do feel less blind to it than I did three weeks ago. I think this was the most exciting development for me. It happened on the third-to-last day! And it was very gratifying indeed.

All in all, this was a fantastic experience. The rigorous atmosphere of the course was just what I needed - I feel like I stretched myself and saw results as a reward. I'm not sure what's next for this side of things - I would like to do another of these courses in the future, but we'll see. But it reaffirmed the skill-based nature of drawing, and that although it often feels like you're coming up against your own inadequacy and nothing will change, it always does! A useful lesson to learn - even if for the hundreth time!

Paris, weeks trois et quatre

noreply@blogger.com (Tor Freeman) — Fri, 29 Jul 2016 07:50:00 +0000

Here's the final batch of my Paris drawings. Three buildings here I drew my last time around, and two from similar angles - the Sorbonne and the view from the Pont des Arts. It was fun to try them again, seven years later.

I leave tomorrow, going home - a few days ago I felt ready, now I'm not so sure!

Paris week deux

noreply@blogger.com (Tor Freeman) — Sun, 17 Jul 2016 17:21:00 +0000

The time is going quickly here, I'm over halfway through and so much more to do! Here is a round-up of the week's drawings. I've given less time to it this week as I've been working on some story ideas too, but the weather is hotting up again and I need to get my 5.99€ worth out of my tripod stool, so should be more this week!

I spent today in the Pompidou Centre which has a great retrospective of Paul Klee on, plus the super permanent collection. Here are two of my favourites from the Klee, partly due to their titles:

Portrait of an Emotional Lady. 1906.

Girl, stooping, followed by a snake-like dachshund. 1906.

A bientôt mes amies!

Tor Eiffel encore!

noreply@blogger.com (Tor Freeman) — Sun, 10 Jul 2016 10:18:00 +0000

Bonjour! I am in Paris for a month, taking a drawing course at the Studio Escalier in Montmartre. I'd like to write about it properly after its three weeks' duration is over and when I have a better overview - but so far, I am loving it. I am staying in a studio flat Airbnb in Montmartre just down the road, which is completely lovely - but boy is it loud. I'm getting used to that now, and feel I'll be able to sleep through anything after this. Tonight will be the biggest test as the revelry will be up to 11 for the France/Portugal match - fingers crossed for France but either way there'll be drunken shouting and I expect the whole of Paris to be engrossed in their gueules de bois tomorrow. Les pauvres!

Anyway, class runs from 1pm till 7pm each day, and in the mornings I've been wandering round remembering old stomping grounds, and doing some building-drawing again. Paris feels remarkably unchanged in the seven years since I've been here - judging by my yardsticks of favourites cafés and art shops at any rate. A fine way to judge! Yesterday I had lunch at Le Reflet, which had the exact same menu of five different types of croques, as far as I could recall them. I also popped into the Pantheon Cinema to see La Tortue Rouge - it being entirely without dialogue, I was able to watch it in "French"!

I thought I would post my building drawings here and hopefully will see progress over the four weeks! At the moment I don't feel I've got my eye in; they feel pretty jumbled. But it's a lovely way to spend time... I think I wrote about this before, but the power of drawings as aides-mémoires is really something. I can still look at the drawings I did seven years ago here, and mostly remember the kind of day it was, my mood, and what we'd been up to. I think photos can do that a bit, but they are different in that they create their own moods and memories...

Anyway, drawing ahoy!

I went to rue Rollin, where we lived for about seven months. Our flat was number seven, up on the right a bit from here.

I realised I'd never tried drawing Shakespeare & Co! This is pretty unfinished as I got hungry for dinner... but I'd like to have another go. Earlier in the afternoon I visited the art shop I'd liked, Dubois in the 5th, hoping to find the sketchbook I'd bought there before. And voila! They had them, in all kinds of lovely colours... I bought two but I'm going back for more. They just feel so pleasingly French.

Stew Magazine

noreply@blogger.com (Tor Freeman) — Tue, 14 Jun 2016 15:17:00 +0000

I did an illustration for the "Two Sentence Story" for Stew Magazine, a bi-monthly magazine with articles and illustrations about science, history, art and more for children aged 8-12. The Two Sentence Story is contributed each issue by a young reader, and the text for this one was:

'After at last managing to swim a whole length, she looked up at her dad in the spectator stand.

He was studying his phone.'

And this is another short comic about Pomona, this time cooking up a storm!

This was really just as I thought it'd be funny to have a panel where characters are having eyeballs thrown at them. And I finished off the Crying Mushie comic too...

Poor lil guy!

noreply@blogger.com (Tor Freeman) — Wed, 08 Jun 2016 14:30:00 +0000

I'm trying to think of stories for this new little witch character, and it seemed a good unblocker to draw some short stories in panels for her - here's a start!

Sleepy witch

noreply@blogger.com (Tor Freeman) — Wed, 18 May 2016 15:39:00 +0000

This is Pomona, a new character I'm working on and trying to think of stories for, in her bedroom.

Cards

noreply@blogger.com (Tor Freeman) — Thu, 12 May 2016 12:03:00 +0000

I'm working on ideas for new Concertini cards, want to print them on more textured paper this time around...

Daunt Books Children's Short Story Competition

noreply@blogger.com (Tor Freeman) — Tue, 10 May 2016 13:00:00 +0000

This was the fourth year of Daunt Books' Children's Short Story Competition, open to children aged between 4 and 15. The 13 winners had their stories published in a book, and this year I had the pleasure of designing the cover. Last night Daunt had organised a prize-giving in the beautiful setting of Burgh House in Hampstead.

I really enjoyed reading the stories, which were wide-ranging and quite anarchic. Ideas included three of the Seven Dwarfs on the psychiatrist's (the brilliantly named Miss Think-It-Through) couch, the death of Prince Albert by carnivorous plant, mermaid dreams and a playground mishap.

I enjoyed the challenge of representing each story on the cover. Daunt did a beautiful job with the printing, and I think the finished book looks great. Hurrah for 2016's winners!

Bits and bobs round up!

noreply@blogger.com (Tor Freeman) — Fri, 06 May 2016 16:38:00 +0000

I found some people sketches from a project that didn't happen for me, and I liked them so I'm giving them some colour love! I've had a few projects with people in them lately, and all practise is good...

And a moonlight serenade!

Palazzo d'Accursio

noreply@blogger.com (Tor Freeman) — Fri, 15 Apr 2016 16:06:00 +0000

This is my friend Ella and me, checking out the art in Bologna's Palazzo d'Accursio in the centre of the town. Well, it's based on that - not very representational perhaps! Apart from the bit where Ella's a croc and I'm a cat, of course.

Bits and Bobs!

noreply@blogger.com (Tor Freeman) — Wed, 13 Apr 2016 19:12:00 +0000

A gif from the fairy godmothers!

noreply@blogger.com (Tor Freeman) — Thu, 17 Mar 2016 17:52:00 +0000

Harping on

noreply@blogger.com (Tor Freeman) — Wed, 16 Mar 2016 15:53:00 +0000

Flower screen printing

noreply@blogger.com (Tor Freeman) — Wed, 09 Mar 2016 16:51:00 +0000

I spent the morning at Bainbridge Studios in south London making this print. It went well in terms of the colours and the registration, AND I managed not to rub my hair on the screen for once, so no hairy prints! Spring flowers - an invocation I hope - it's pretty gross outside today.