Flower Moon Dispatch
A new episode and visiting a haunted house
Hello! Spring is in full bloom here, sitting on the cusp of summer. I hope you are enjoying the flowers where you live. If you’re anything like me, you’re enjoying the dandelions, cow parsley and other weeds as much as the roses, foxgloves and everything else cultivated.
Please enjoy this little dispatch of my current work and findings, and let me know which spring flower is your favourite.
Episode 101 of ill fame was released earlier on in May, utilising a epistolary format to give a recap of the (five years!) of plot before we get to the big finale. What I love about the letter-writing format in novels is the utilisation of bias, the opportunity to get right within a characters head and watch them try to be sincere to a trusted friend, while also telling that friend what they think the friend wants to hear. And a conflicted character such as our butterfly-man Saer is a great character to do this with.
This episode also capitalises on one of my favourite weather condidtions - delicious, obfuscating fog - as well as the more dreamy memory panels. Lot’s more photo references from my trip to Portchester Castle used in this episode, as well.
Episode 102 of ill fame is out on Monday 26th. Here’s a little sneak peak:
The sketching for episode 106 is already half-way through, nearly ready for the inks (then the colour, then the dialogue). This is a fun episode, back to our old theme of scrying, and at one point had me with my head in my hands thinking “I absolutely do not know how to write this.”
Episode 102 is up now on the Goats tier on Patreon, too, along with episodes 103, 104, and 105. Support is greatly appreciated and helps me keep making the comic.
My sketchbook has also seen a resurgence after years and years of acting more like a commonplace book and repository for the scrappiest of comic ideas. I’ve been trying to paint more in them, exploring colour palettes and different materials, as well as drawing from imagination (like the picture above), and from my own observations (below). It’s really invigorated my practice, and, I don’t know, maybe I’ve been reading too many books about witchcraft for research, but it feels kinda cunning to develop an art practice based on what you have available to you right now - right in this instance - as opposed to what you could do if only you had the right models, the right settings, the right references, all the skills, and all the time in the world.
~~and all the artists from all of history collectively groan in embarressment~~
To round this off, I want to just mention a new source of inspiration that is fuelling my next comic, but not in the way I expected. A few weeks ago, my family and I made a trip to Hinton Ampner, a country estate near Arlesford, Hampshire. You expect country estates to be fancy, pretty, full of prestige, but Hinton Ampner was different: it was depressing. Admittedly, it was a bank holiday; there were little kids running through the tight hallways, and it was raining, and the early spring flowers had died-off, leaving their shrivelled remains in the overly weeded gardens. There was just something so off about the place. Disappointing compared to expectations. A bad vibe.
But a bad vibe can be just as potent as a good one.
The rooms had sickly yellow wallpaper, stained red by wine thrown at the walls. The decorations were excessive, Victorian kitch, Georgian flamboyance, a little bit naff. It was strange walking through the house; it looks large on the outside, but inside was cramped, narrow hallways, everything partitioned off into specialist rooms like old houses were, and there was a sneaking suspicion that a big chunk of Hinton Ampner was cut off for visitors. Centuries, decades seemed to melt together, and by design; a fire destroyed most of the house in the 1960s, and so old pieces from other stately homes were used to refurbish it into it’s *proper* manner. But the bathrooms are decidedly ‘60’s (even reminded me a little bit of The Shining), leaving this rather uncanny air to the place.
A sign in the first floor master bedroom talks about the beautiful views over the South Downs. The blinds are down though, to protect the room from the sunlight.
Most interesting, however, was the church and it’s graves. Inside the church in a crypt lays a long line of Hinton Ampner’s residents. On the left, the grave plaque of Charles Stewkeley Esq., who died 1692. On the right, the grave of Ralph Stawell Dutton, 8th Baron Sherborne of Hinton Amper House, died 20th April 1985; the ominous phrase “The last of his line” is etched underneath.
A house that has lived multiple lives through 500 years, living beyond the families that put so much prestige into it, hanging on to it’s tragic and eerie atmosphere for curious visitors to experience.
What can I say? Maybe I caught Hinton Ampner on a bad day, but I was feeling it. I enjoyed the aura of discomfort, even if no one else did.
So I hope you like haunted houses, because the next comics gonna have one.
That is all for today, thank you for your time.
P.S. May is #mermay and I have been creating a post-ill fame compendium of sea witches, which I will share here soon (and also, hopefully, print as a zine).