#inkymole

Inkvent 15. I’m no @peterhorridgedesigns, I’ll never have the patience of @seblester. I’m not even a calligrapher. I’ve got no formal training and I don’t really know how I ended up doing 30+ years of lettering professionally and even, one time, getting an award for it. 😅

But I do love cocking around with curlicues and faffing about with flourishes, and today’s Inkvent is clumsily inspired, of course, by the title type of Rob Reiner’s ‘The Princess Bride’, which is among my two sisters’ favourite films, from which this line is taken.

Ink: Frostbite, a dense shimmer.

PS I know I’m behind on posting some others. I’ll post them; I’m just a bit bloody busy 🎄

Sage Francis, (2014), Copper Gone, (Limited Edition 12" Colored Vinyl 2xLP, Digital album), [SFR042], Strange Famous Records, 2025 Edition

Yesterday we spent the whole day at the Winter @efteling which, if you’ve never been, is an illustrator’s imagination come to life in Europe’s oldest theme park (the one Walt Disney visited that inspired him to open one of his own…)

So the day’s Inkvent was a sketch of the breathtaking thatched entrance hall. It’s hard to adequately describe how beautiful and detailed it is, and this sketch almost insults it - but I needed to draw those peaks with the only pen/ink I had to hand.

Hurrah for analogue as Benjamin Alire Sáenz’s much-anticipated new novel ‘When The World Was Happy’ has been announced, with wraparound cover by me. 

I got free rein to create whatever I wanted to for this book, having designed the cover of Ben’s previous three novels, including the multi award-winning bestsellers, the Aristotle and Dante series. I read the manuscript and just got scribbling! Art direction here was by my long-term colleague Chloe Foglia at @simonandschuster 

The entire cover - bar the blurb on the back - was made by hand with fineliners, ink, felt-tips and coloured pencils, to communicate the school setting of the novel. Bold decision by the publishers to go with my white background, too.

Off to a flying start! As the designer of the Inkvent Calendar, I consider it my prerogative to start posting late…ha. 💅🏻 Not really. Life, bloody busy as usual,  got in the way of uploading yesterday, and so here is December 1st, kicking off Inkvent ’25. 

Ink: Celestial Skies, a riotous, multi-personality shimmering turquoise which ALMOST matches the calendar’s box this year.

Words: The beloved Andrea Gibson, who’s been a regular star of my Inkvent pieces (my folio generally, in fact). Having taken up their own place with the rest of the celestial bodies earlier this year, Andrea was the ONLY choice for this piece.

Piece: No plan, no thought at all other than ‘I’m going to send this ink on an assault course and explode a raucous, starry, big  bang of a sky’. That’s it; that was the plan. Of course it went wrong, but that’s half the fun of these, isn’t it? 

Can you walk on the water if I, you and I?

…and in the dark, it’s a danger, who we are;

Gonna be the death of me, it’s a danger

‘Cause our love is a ghost that the others can’t see.”

Inkvent Day 6 is Agnes Obel’s words from her song ‘Familiar’ which I love strongly. This eerie, tinkling, perambulative piece with Agnes duetting with herself was perfect for an ink called ‘Fir and Fog’.

Look how it splits itself all those many parts when shown the water.

One take / one ink / no rehearsal / mistakes + adventuring  encouraged.

- 1 take only, for better or for worse!😬

- Ink on paper, no digital faffing

- Originals go on sale in January

- Prints and digital editions available

- Portion of all sales to food banks.

Today is #krampusnacht and unlike last year, I am not in Munich to drink it in! So today I draw a little Krampus with my ancient Shaeffer bladder fountain pen, tiny brush and the 4th Inkvent ink, Smoky Tobacco (which smells of tobacco).