May 2023

Printed pages of Coraline by @neilhimself to be bound and published by @lyrasbooks. The illustrations are by @rovinacai and the monochrome ones are printed letterpress with the type. The ones in full colour were digitally printed beforehand by @hurtwoodbooks.

Art! This is one of my favourite paintings from Frozen Hell, it is the frontispiece image of McReady and some of the team seeing the frozen UFO imbedded in ice. It captures the creepy set up that was missing when the editor cut out the first 20% of the story to make ‘Who Goes There?’. I pulled some images from a shot that Greg gave me (which I’ll edit later) of a small movie of him painting. The Thing awaits.

Proof of an illustration by Dave McKean for the forthcoming edition of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button by F Scott Fitzgerald to be published by Arete Editions.

A couple of weeks ago (shee, time goes so fast) I posted photos of the leather numbered edition of Frozen Hell that I said we were going to do some changes with. Here is the revised version. Rich tried a flat spine, (the other had a rounded spine, so we could see how the ornate stitching/construction of the interior would work with the two different bindings) which works pretty well, and the changed designs. It was only one snowflake that went, but so much clearer! We also changed the spine blocking. Getting there!

Frozen Hell. The book is made with metal monotype, each word is cast by the foundry and set by Phil and Robert at Hand and Eye Press, it is a lengthy process, I’ll show you some more clips of the words being set soon. Once we have checked the soft proofs and Phil has set the type, it is then checked with a proof. Here you can see some of the work behind scenes of a couple of the pages being pulled so we can check everything is good before we go ahead!

Art! Here’s a progression of Greg’s work on one of the plates inside the Frozen Hell book, McReady is trying an experiment to see if they can deduce through a test to see whether one who walks amongst the small scientific community is, in fact an alien, The Thing. I love the way that as I work on the book, first choosing the initial sketch and placing the image within the story and then getting each development of the painting, something which is a real surprise and pleasure. I thought you’d like to see these images which ordinarily would never bee seen. They are so cool.

Got the leather numbered dummy version of Frozen Hell from Rich! We are going to change the design and the leather that he used to show us the initial designs. It’s a hefty, big, heavy book! But I thought you’d like to see the different stages.