Okay folks it’s news-breaking time! We are finally able to announce the winning entries from our #DrawAThon – held with Atlantic Press and 64 Killigrew Street and featuring PRIZES from Derwent Pencils!
But first, A HUGE CONGRATULATIONS and THANK YOU to everyone who joined us. We were blown away by all the gorgeous art and the sheer joy of sharing pencil love and had an enormously hard time trying to choose final “winners”! (And we put “winners” in quotes here ‘cos you are all winners in our eyes. ‘Tis true pencil friends, ’tis true. Anyone and everyone who has ever put themselves to paper knows picking up the pencil is half the battle.)
Nevertheless, we are excited to show you what we came up with for the winning entries! Joining us on the selection committee was Amber Hsu from Tiny Pencil, John Kilburn (Tiny Pencil & Atlantic Press), Catrin Morgan from Atlantic Press and tutor on the Falmouth Illustration MA, and 64 Killigrew’s very own Vincent Larkin. It truly was a difficult process and in the end we decided to forego any particular order of the winning entries with all three winners jointly winning the top prizes.
Check out our three winners and their entries below!
James Lipnickas – It Arrived Early no.9 & The Gloaming
We love the graphite subtleties of James Lipnickas’s work. So strangely sweet and suggestive. John Kilburn from Atlantic Press summed it up perfectly:
James’ work for the drawathon is very beautiful, a bit weird, very atmospheric and slightly menacing. The style in which it is drawn has a childlike quality, cartoonish but well drawn and not overworked. This mix of childish and frightening imagery creates a strange dreamlike aura, like a half forgotten nightmare or nursery rhyme gone wrong. It reminds me of some of my favourite artwork from the first Tiny Pencil and would have worked really well with the Forest theme. The sensations of remoteness and absurdity, combined with clear references to unworldly things feel like a perfect fit both above and below.
Having delved a little further into James work it is clear that he is a true pencil lover, creating beautiful vignettes and portraits of strange characters, animals, adventurers and a few personal heroes. James monochrome drawings, to different degrees, all retain a slightly unnerving and highly satisfying aesthetic that hints at the darker side of things we usually consider familiar or friendly.
Fuzzy night, Ramona Feathergrove and Stranded by James Lipnickas.
Find more of James’s work here: www.jameslipnickas.com / www.jlipnickas.blogspot.co.uk / www.jameslipnickas.tumblr.com / @JamesLipnickas
Our next winner is comics artist and illustrator Rebecca K. Jones with her fabulous comic featuring Cornish myths, owlmen and beasts! We absolutely loved the intuitive energy of Rebecca’s drawings and her quirky perspective.
Vincent Larkin from 64 Killigrew Street added spot-on: “I chose to highlight Rebecca’s work because this work is ‘Raw and Good’… Rebecca’s skill never gets lost at the surface. Rebecca works inside the drawings, bringing us, the audience, along with her, not just inside a frame to frame narrative but within and in every twist and turn, at the point every object and figure is created. In the art we make and the stories we tell there are moments that we are waiting for, that we do not realise that we are waiting for. These moments are very hard to capture. These are the moments when the owl man enters the room and says: ‘Hi’.”
Amy managed to perfectly capture Cornwall and that mystical sense of an in-between place — neither above nor below but in a ripple of space and time all its own. The panels are both delicate and graphic, starry and solid all at the same time. Every shape and textural surface work together throughout the panels to create a subtle, but irresistible narrative pull.
Amy is currently studying for an Illustration MA at Falmouth University (twitter @Auth_Practice). More details on the MA final show can be found here: http://www.falmouth.ac.uk/content/ma-show-2014.
Amy will receive a full year of monthly art supplies from Derwent through their Sponsor Me scheme! You can find Amy on Twitter (well just about!) at @AmyChalmers89.
Well done to our three winners! And congratulations again to everyone who drew along with us! Seriously folks there were so many amazing works we really did have a tough time trying to pick just a few. Here’s just a few more entries below that caught our eye…We don’t have enough space in one blog post for all of our favourites but don’t forget you can see more of the entries on the showblog at asabovesobelowshow.tumblr.com! And look out for more posts in the near future – including our Comics Marathon roundup of what went down in Cornwall during the “As Above, So Below” show!
A skeletal story by Anna Dowsland @AnitosAnna
Mermaid whimsy from @MaiaFjord!
A Giant Cormoran from Antonio Zeoli!
Tiny Pencil artist Joshua Goymer! (Joshua features in Issue IV which is available for pre-order HERE: shop.tinypencil.com! :0))
Triptych by Chris Chillii Ciliberti (check out his instagram @chillibeandesigns for pictures of the work in progress!):
Spherical symmetry by Instagram @annajanesearle
and Raf Banzuela (Instagram @tritieks)!
Graphic and sinister by Che Chen! Instagram @ceremony99 http://killklara.tumblr.com
Another great Owlman piece by Laura Guglielmo:
Also don’t think we forgot that we also have 10 RANDOM winners to select! Stay tuned for more prize winner announcements in the next couple weeks!
Prizes yo. (Courtesy Derwent Pencils!)
