#non fiction illustration

[denisloughlin]

Illustration - Cell Phone Masts

[beebeedibapbeediboop]

It's almost Halloween! 🎃

Michael has the most beautiful pumpkin patch around...'wonder why

[sarielsnowings]

After 10 years or so, I'm back, now with proper skills and a shitton of drawings to show you. HELLO WORLD 👁️

[ottosbigtop]

II

[sassafrasmoonshine]

Robert Ayton, illustrator (British, 1915-1985), Mary T. Bruck, author • Ladybird Book - The Night Sky • Hills and Hepworth LTD, publisher • 1965

[nooskadraws]

the non-fiction books i read in 2023

[averyghe]

Not the gods, however someone could call them that, just because of how ancient the times of their existence were…

Star-travelers, all around the universe, traveled the space, and the neighbouring realities for the millions of years, and here is a glimpse at an earlier ones of them.

To begin, I will mention the incorporeal means of traveling used by some, in those ancient eras – the travelers, who used those means of transportation, tend to place their consciousness into the ghost, or astral projection, which than travelled space, like a comet or a ray of light. However the magic utilised in a ritual of creation for such a projection was lost to the time…

Pale ones were, and still are the species of an obscure origin. The only thing which is known, about it, is that on their homeplanet they achieved quite a success in a genetic modifications, which led to a development of biopsionics and telepathy. As well as losing natural means of procreation – pale ones, are born as the embrioids, inside of the artificial wombs on their mother-ships. The interesting detail about their physiology, is the fact that their mouths located on the tops of their heads, are actually are entrances to their BRAINS, or Stomach-Brains, to be clear. The complex neurological structures, which needs a nutritional supplementation, in order for it to function properly…

Pale ones, are rumored to be the kind of demiurges who brought life on several worlds, Hovewer, nobody knows for sure, as even if it is true, it was so long ago, even the Pales themselves are already forgot…

Yulakai or stellar gardeners were native to the planet of Uta, located in the now non existent system in a constellation of Hummingbird. These kind, peaceful creatures, carried in themselves a sources of premordial magic that allowed them to be channels for a weaving itself, and by utilising eat creating a groves, of a strange glowing planets. Those plants that translates a viewing in their glow, allowed Yulakai to travel the universe… By merging with a grow in one place, they were able to appear in another with a bright glow, of a wonderful flowers…

Unfortunately majority of them were killed by a purifiers of a species known as Tsu-Tsurians, or well… Mad Mollusks. In the early days of their civilzation their priests, got a vision, about their civilisation coming to its end, because of the threat coming from a distant stars. Being a species of warriors, cruel and ruthless, they marched in a krussade across the galaxy, obliterating everything which stood in their way. They destroyed civilisation after civilisation, right until their empire collapsed, as the region far from its core world of Tsu-Tsur, started a civil war which led to the species extinction. The interesting detail about Tsu-Tsurians, is their Tentahands – tentacles with the nearly humanoid hand-palms on their ends - quite useful for operating their horrible machinery and the electric blasters capable of burning a creature three times larger than the average tsu-tsurian alive…

Angmu. Whisperers of the ages, masters of illusion. These species of the gigantic octopus-like telepaths, was known for their struggle for accumulqting as much knowledge in their possession as they were able to. In their gigantic libraries, they gathered collections of experience from the thousands of different societies– from the horned apes, that enhabited kingdoms, of the swamp moon of G’naa, to the order of Mafa, sages of ancient Mars, hundreds of millions years ago. From the earliest of Hunter gatherers, from the godlike entities that fight over the Lizard Eyes nebula, to the hunter gatherers from the burned wastelands of planet Guahar. They have valued the first hand experiences, and that’s where their illusions came in handy. By impersonating members of societies they gathered information from, Angmu, often lived whole lives by pretending to be a members of other species. However there is not much of them left now, as they have died out of some unknown decease, that ravaged the galaxy about five million years ago… however some of them are still walking around the halls of their library worlds. And, who knows. Maybe some, are leaving among us, in disguise…

[fightingwithallreality]

Yi Ma (2008) written and illustrated by Mao Xiao

[chuckbbirdsjunk]

[ijustkindalikebooks]

From: The USA by Terry Deary (Horrible Histories Specials).

[stargazer-sims]

The Art of Redemption

(Part 1)

// next // story index

———

Beth-Anne Jones gasps for breath as she awakes from yet another nightmare. It's been nearly a month — a whole goddamned month — and she still can't seem to erase the awful visions from her head entirely. The dreams are always more horrible than the real event had been, but her feelings are always the same.

There's a dull pain in her chest, and it's as if the entire Earth is falling away beneath her. She wants to scream or cry, or both, but she can do neither. She is frozen, powerless, and all she can do is watch the scene through her mind's eye as the boy she loves like a son lies motionless on the unforgiving ice.

The sound of her breathing is raspy and loud in the dark stillness of her bedroom. She passes a hand across her eyes, blinks twice, and then peers at the softly glowing numbers of the digital clock on her bedside table.

12:43 a.m.

Well, she supposes, two hours of uninterrupted sleep is better than no sleep at all. She'd gone to bed at half-past ten, hopeful for more than two hours, even though she's a realist and knows that sort of thing is entirely beyond her control.

She lies there for a minute, stilling her breath, calming her body. Should she try to go back to sleep? Maybe she should just get up, go to the kitchen and get a drink.

Water, she tells herself. A drink of water.

The self-directive is deliberate, because she understands if she doesn't make a conscious effort to control herself, she'll drink something else; something far more potent than water and that she knows full well she shouldn't even have in the house. She bought it on impulse a month ago, almost as soon as she'd gotten back from the Four Continents Championship. She'd wanted something to dull her emotions, but by the time she'd driven from the liquor store back to her house, she was having second thoughts and couldn't bring herself to open it. All she ended up doing was sitting on her living room floor, letting tears stream down her face and clutching the bottle so hard that her fingers ached.

The worst part was, she didn't even know why she was crying. What had happened wasn't her fault. It was no one's fault, and there wouldn't have been any way to prevent it. And it wasn't her athletic career that was ruined, was it? It wasn't her legacy as a world champion skater that'd been stolen by fate in the space of mere heartbeats. Was she even entitled to feel so much pain when it was Nikolai who was suffering?

She still asks herself that question, because it still hurts. Every time she closes her eyes, her mind replays the moment when she saw him crumple onto the ice. In the split second before that, she'd known he wasn't going to land that jump, and she was sure he'd realized it too. He'd tried to recover, but in the end, the only thing he'd achieved was to twist his knee in an even more catastrophic way that he probably would have if he'd just let himself fall.

The noise that came out of him when he hit the ice barely sounded human. The only way Beth-Anne can think of to describe it is a howl. It was pain and fear and anger, all formed into a devastating point that plunged itself straight into Beth-Anne's heart.

She was the first to get to him, far more confident on the slick surface of the rink than the on-call doctor and athletic trainer, who picked their way across the ice like gangling colts just discovering the purpose of their legs. For a few precious seconds, it was just the two of them. She could see how scared he was, and she reached for his hand to comfort him.

"I'm sorry," he said, and Beth-Anne could've sworn she felt the very core of her consciousness shattering into a million pieces.

She wanted to reassure him, to tell him there was nothing he needed to apologize for, but when she tried to speak, the only word she could get out was his name. She squeezed his hand, and he squeezed back weakly, and then the medical staff started to arrive.

She could see that he didn't want them to touch him, but they couldn't examine him without touching, so she did what she could to soothe him. Finding her voice at last, she told him, "It's all right, Nik. They're here to help. Let them tend to you. It'll be okay."

He stared up at her, eyes wide and tear-filled. "Don't leave me."

"I'm right here," she said. "I'm not going anywhere."

While the medical staff assessed the damage, Beth-Anne didn't let go of Nikolai's hand. She only took her eyes off him once, to make a quick survey of the people and the activity taking place around them.

The spectators in the stands were eerily quiet, and Beth-Anne knew that every gaze was fixed on the unfolding drama at ice level. She saw people with video cameras — of course the fucking sports journalists were documenting everything — and she was momentarily startled when she saw the bright flash of an honest-to-god still camera. The lens was so long, it was probably powerful enough to capture a pimple on a rat's ass in high definition from half a kilometre away.

Beth-Anne swore internally. Journalists had never been her favourite. If she could, she'd make every single one of these people delete their footage from the last few minutes. She didn't want this to be in the top stories on every sports network around the globe; last season's World Championship gold medallist crying on the ice. Her beautiful, talented, brave Nik did not deserve to be remembered that way.

She scanned the crowd quickly, looking for the faces she expected to see. Ah yes... there they were. Standing by the gate that led out to the corridor where the locker rooms were located, she spotted Nikolai's wife Anya and his best friend Ginger. The two women, also competitive skaters, were clinging to each other like disaster survivors. Ginger looked just as terrified as Nikolai did, and Anya's expression gave every indication that she might be sick. Ginger's coach, Stanislav, was with them. Stan had a hand on Ginger's shoulder. His expression was grim.

One person Beth-Anne didn't see was Anya's coach, Isabelle, not that she was particularly worried about whether Isabelle was there. The woman was insufferable, and Beth-Anne was not the least bit shy to admit she did not like her. They may have worked out of the same rink, but in no way did that mean they were required to be friends.

Beth-Anne returned her attention to Nikolai just as one of the medical staff was saying they would need to take him to the nearest hospital for x-rays. Incongruously, she wanted to compliment the man on his English. She still doesn't know why such a thought would come to her at a time like that, and feels a twinge of embarrassment every time she recalls it.

"I understand," she said, cutting herself off and ducking her head before she got out the words running through her brain. I understand your English perfectly.

Beth-Anne had momentarily forgotten which one of the two Taiwanese men down on the ice with her and Nikolai was the doctor and which was the sports therapist, but the one who wasn't speaking to them was talking on his phone to somebody in what she assumed was Mandarin. Asking for a stretcher, she surmised, because Nikolai couldn't skate or walk on his own. There was no way in hell Beth-Anne would've let him try anyway, even if he thought he could.

"I can't go by myself," Nikolai was saying. "Beth-Anne, you have to come too. Please."

"I'm not going to leave you alone in a foreign country," she said. "I'd like to see anybody try to stop me from coming with you."

One of the medical personnel helped Nikolai sit up while they waited for whoever was coming with the stretcher. Nikolai leaned into Beth-Anne and hid his face against her shoulder. He was still crying, and Beth-Anne's heart ached for him. She wrapped her arms around him, heedless of the thousands of pairs of eyes on them.

"I'm scared," he said, and it came out so quietly that she was sure she was the only one who heard it.

"Everything's going to be okay," she said.

They both knew that wasn't true, but Beth-Anne guessed it was a lie he wanted to hear. He started taking deep breaths, trying to calm himself. Beth-Anne rubbed his back. The sequins on his costume were rough against her palm and the skin beneath the thin fabric was freezing cold. She wished someone would bring his jacket for him.

"Beth-Anne?"

"I'm here," she said.

"I don't want this to be the end." Nikolai was still sniffling slightly, but she noticed that his tears had mostly subsided. "I... I don't know what I'll do without..." he paused, and drew in another long, shaky breath. "Without skating. Without... you."

She was too stressed to pay much attention to this in the moment, but when she thought about it later, it surprised her a little that he hadn't asked for his wife to come with him to the hospital for his x-rays. In fact, he hadn't mentioned Anya at all, only seeming to want to cling to Beth-Anne like a child to his mother.

It seemed odd to her then, his wanting her with him instead of his wife. Now, in hindsight, she understands why it'd been her that he'd wanted. Things were not good between Nikolai and Anya. Perhaps they hadn't been great for some time before the Four Continents, but they'd been doing their best to keep it quiet Since then, however, neither of them has made a particular effort to pretend they're all right.

For the past month, Beth-Anne has watched, helpless, as her once-vibrant, bright and energetic Nikolai has receded further and further away from who he used to be, from everyone he knows, and from the world itself. It's as if he's fading away before her eyes.

When they'd first returned from Taiwan, she visited him every day. For the first few days she thought he seemed hopeful, but it soon occurred to her that he was putting on a show for her benefit. When she asked him gently to tell her the truth, he broke down.

"I don't see the point," he told her through tears.

"The point of what?" she asked.

"Of... anything," he said.

It wasn't too many days after that when Anya asked Beth-Anne not to come back to see Nikolai any more.

No, not asked. That would be too generous.

What really happened was that Anya had gotten in her face and demanded that she never cross the threshold of their home again, citing the allegation that Beth-Anne's visits only served to upset Nikolai. Beth-Anne found it more likely that it wasn't her presence causing him to be upset, but the fact that she had to leave. More than once, he'd begged her to stay longer, and she knows for certain Anya witnessed that.

Never one to back down from anything, Beth-Anne pointed this out to Anya. She should've known it wouldn't go over well. Far from convincing Anya of anything, all it did was cause her to launch into a screaming tirade about how she'd never liked Beth-Anne, how Beth-Anne was damaging her and Nikolai's marriage, and how it was all Beth-Anne's fault that Nikolai would never skate again.

It took every shred of willpower Beth-Anne possessed not to react. She wanted nothing more than to grab the younger woman and shake her. Maybe shove her against a wall and tell her that she was a stupid, selfish bitch. Not for the first time, she was grateful to be sober because she always had anger management issues when she was drinking. Self-control issues. Human decency issues.

Instead, she decided to leave, not because she wanted to, but because it was clear the situation would only deteriorate if she didn’t. The last thing she heard as she went out the door was Nikolai's voice, angry and tearful, yelling from where she'd left him in the living room, "Anna-Valentina, why the hell did you do that? I don't want her to not come back! I need her!"

Beth-Anne hadn't returned to the house while Anya was there, but that didn't mean she lost touch altogether. She promised Nikolai she wouldn’t leave him, and she’d be damned if she abandoned him completely. They talk every day on the phone at least once, but usually more than once, and sometimes she sneaks by for a few minutes with a coffee and his favourite giant peanut butter cookie from a local bakery when she knows Anya is at the rink.

I haven't been there in a few days, she realizes. I should go tomorrow.

She glances at the clock again. Now it's 12:46. How the hell had she lost those three minutes? At the same time, she wonders how three minutes could feel so damned long.

She pushes back the blankets and swings her legs out of bed. Her hip protests a little — probably going to snow tomorrow — but it's not enough to cause her more than momentary discomfort as her feet touch the floor and she gets out of bed. She makes her way downstairs to the kitchen.

Her cat, Elvis, is asleep on top of the fridge, but wakes when she enters the room. After a squeaky, querying meow, he leaps to the floor to weave himself around her legs as she walks to the cupboard for a glass.

She'd momentarily forgotten that's where she put the bottle.

The sight of it confronts her the instant she opens the cupboard door, sitting there on the shelf above the glassware. The irony is, she's seen it there dozens of times over the past few weeks and barely gave it a thought. But, in this moment, it's as if the dark golden liquid is calling to her, willing her to reach for it.

And she does. God help her, she takes it in her hand.

Glass in one hand and bottle in the other, she turns toward the table. She makes it there, sets the glass down, and then stares at the bottle's familiar black and white label.

"What the fuck am I doing?" she says aloud.

Elvis hops onto the table, curious.

Beth-Anne glances at him. She shakes her head. "No, we're not doing this tonight. We're not doing it ever. I should pour the damn thing out, shouldn't I? Get rid of it and pretend I never even bought—"

Her monologue is cut off abruptly by the sudden ringing of her phone. It's in the pocket of her pyjama pants. When did I put that in there?

The sound startles her, and she lets go of the bottle. It bounces off the edge of the table and plunges toward the ceramic tile of the kitchen floor, slick and hard and white as ice.

The bottle shatters.

Elvis lets out an almightly yowl, flies off the table and dashes out of the room. Beth-Anne screams, "Goddammit!"

She takes a wobbly step back from the pool of liquor and shards of glass and reaches into her pocket for the phone. The caller ID says 'Nikolai Pavlenko'. Her fingers tremble as she touches the 'answer' button.

"Beth-Anne Jones." Just like in Taiwan, her voice sounds far calmer than it should. Always with the game face, Beth-Anne. She wants to laugh at herself, maybe hysterically.

The only thing she hears for a second or two is the sound of Nikolai sobbing. It's not normal crying; she can hear him fighting to regain his breath. Then, he practically whispers, "Beth-Anne... I'm scared."

"Where are you?" she demands.

He sniffles loudly. "At home. I... I don't know what to do."

"About what?" she asks.

"About... anything," he says. "I can't do this any more, Beth-Anne. It's all meaningless, and I... I don't..." He pauses, as if making up his mind whether or not he should confess aloud what he’s thinking. He whispers, "I don't want to be here."

"Do you need me?" she asks. It’s a fucking stupid question. Why would he be calling her if he didn’t need her? “Do you want me to come over?”

Even though she already knows the answer, she’s slightly relieved to hear the shaky reply. "Y-yeah. Please. Can you come?"

"Are you home alone?"

"Yeah."

"Okay," she says. "Give me about ten minutes, fifteen max. I need to put some clothes on, and then I'll be right there. Can you unlock the front door for me?"

"Yes," he says.

"All right. You unlock the front door and don't you dare do anything else until I get there. You hear me?"

He says he understands, and then they hang up. She'd briefly debated with herself whether or not to stay on the phone with him, but ultimately decided she'd probably be too distracted to drive if she could hear him crying on speakerphone. She needed to get there. She didn't need the potential of wrapping her truck around a power pole on the way because his tears were triggering her own and causing her to be unable to see properly.

She shakes her head again as she sweeps one more look across the mess on the floor. That can wait, she tells herself. If she stops to clean up the broken glass, that'll cause too much of a delay. She thinks Nikolai will be all right for ten or fifteen minutes, but she doesn't want to play around with time, because she could be wrong, and every minute she wastes could alter the chances of a safe outcome.

She skirts around the glass and dashes back upstairs to throw on some jeans and a sweatshirt and pull her hair into a ponytail. She grabs Elvis and shuts him in the upstairs bathroom where his litter box and water bowl are. He won't starve to death without access to his food until morning, she reasons, and she'd rather have him angry and confined than free to wander through the hazard in the kitchen and inadvertently cut himself.

The next thing she does is text Stan: « No need to reply to this immediately. Can you please call my students and cancel my ice time for tomorrow? Emergency - will explain in the morning. Love you & thanks! »

Reasonably satisfied that she's done all she can do at home, she scoops up her purse and the keys to her truck, and races out the door.

She's glad it's the middle of the night and hardly anyone is on the street because she runs every red light on the way across town.

[chocolatepot]

I've been so stressed today and yesterday that my whole body hurts. 😩 Not even over anything special, half of it is just my brain telling me things are going to go badly down the line, probably. Hurts so much I might take a covid test just in case.

[savannah-storm-illustration]

My new comic / zine about coffee is finally finished! It’s risograph printed in 3 colours & tells the story of how coffee is grown, roasted and brewed. Perfect reading material whilst you drink your fave coffee ☕ copies are for sale in my etsy shop here!

[j4m3s-b4k3r]

Persistence of Vision

Wide eyed wonder at the drive-in.

Drive-in theatres are fondly remembered for providing teenagers with both a cover story (a trip to the movies) and a relatively private place (a car) for their furtive, mutual anatomical research. But they were also frequented by families with small children. I remember going to the drive-in to see family films when there were little babies in our family, and I was small myself. In particular I was very affected by seeing Bambi when I was 5 years old.

My brother Jo was still a small baby and provided his own vocal accompaniment from the front seat. Where he was attended to by my mother, already pregnant with next brother, Rob, who’d be along to help out with the yodeling chores in a few months. Despite the occasional noise, and being treated to moments of SENSE-AROUND when baby-bro had his underthings changed right there in front of me, I was very much engrossed in what was going on up on the screen.

Before the ages of video, DVD and streaming media, a drive-in theatre was where parents could see movies without having to feel self-conscious about their bawling kids. No need for a baby sitter for the tiny ones, just bring them along. Sealed off in your more or less soundproof bubble, you weren’t likely to bother the other patrons. They were probably families themselves. Or teenagers who had more pressing things (ie; the pressing of “things”) on their minds. But you could easily bother each other, cooped up in there during a double bill of Blue-Beard’s Ghost and Herbie the Love Bug. With all the bickering and crying and spilled drinks and whatnot, there was often as much tragedy and comedy and drama in the car as on the screen.

The death of Bambi’s mother affected me very deeply and I’m absolutely sure that I added my own blubbering to the general commotion within our car at that point. Parents sometimes like to shield their kids from such raw emotions, but this moment of tragedy is a big part of one of my most powerful early-childhood memories.

Apart from the inevitable tears, Bambi was about to affect me in perhaps an even more powerful way. It was while at the drive-in watching Bambi that I realised that this film was somehow different from other movies. IT WAS DRAWINGS. Moving and talking and seeming to be alive. And then seeming to be killed. Drawings making me feel both happy, and then sad.

The tears of anguish were barely even dry on my face before I started to wonder how this could be so. I could not grasp how it was possible for these drawings to be alive. It was a singular moment — I was both pulled into and popped out of the movie at the same time. Mum and Dad now had their hands full. Crying baby on the one hand and on the other, a 5-year-old who needed some answers. My parents did their best to explain the rudiments of the animation process, but it seemed completely unbelievable.

I wasn’t apt to take their explanations at face value either. I hadn’t forgotten them trying to dupe me with that Santa Claus nonsense, which I never believed for a moment, much to the great disappointment of Mum. You never knew what hokum grown-ups were going to pull next.

Dad took me to the back of the drive-in behind our car where, in the same building as the snack bar, there was a window allowing patrons to peek into the projection booth. This is one of those memories that is still vivid inside my head but I’m not sure if it actually happened at that moment in 1969. Instead, perhaps this impression formed over time, as the childhood-me began to understand the filmmaking process. Becoming attached to this real movie-watching memory retroactively? Memory is. not always as immutable as we would like to think.

However and whenever it got there, the memory I now see projected inside my head is of Dad lifting me up high enough to peer through a tiny observation window on the drive-in projection booth. He attempted to convey the truth of the animation process to me, as I watched a machine spool out a long shiny ribbon that passed through a ray of light. Sending a flickering beam out through the main window and onto the huge screen, in front of which our family car was parked, under the night sky.

I was told that there were thousands of hand-drawn little pictures on that strip of film and, through a process beyond my ability to comprehend, they looked alive when put through the projector, and light went through them.

Tiny drawings? ALIVE? How? What kind of magic was this? I’d always liked cartoons, but never thought about how they were made. Until this moment watching Bambi at the drive-in theatre in Hobart.

If I had thought about it at all, I probably thought that ALL films were documentaries and that the events on-screen were really happening (“Reality TV” in today’s parlance) but the realisation that this film was made of drawings made that an impossibility. Animation sounded like some kind of magic to me. Even if it wasn’t “real” magic, then it was clearly the next best thing.

The sense of wonder from that night stayed with me for quite some time. Certainly long enough to get me into the animation industry, and sustain me throughout my long career. I can still conjure up a ghost of those feelings of childhood awe at the man-made magic show even now, after working at studios all around the world for decades.

These days of course, people don’t go to drive-in movies. They just go ahead and take their tiny kids to the multiplex, or else watch whatever they like, and whenever they like, at home on groovy big-screen home entertainment centres, with thousands of channels and streaming video to choose from. But I’ll always have a soft spot in my heart for drive-in movie theatres, because of formative memories made there, like this one.

First published on www.James-Baker.com

[sassafrasmoonshine]

Sean Qualls • American picture book illustrator

Sean Qualls has illustrated many non-fiction books for children. Pictred above is a sampler of illustrations for: Grandad Mandela, Lullaby ( based on a poem by Langston Hughes); Lower right: an untitled painting; lower left, illustration for the book Why am I Me?

[shahabartprojects]

How Old Is Your Umbrella? 

Lots of things that we use today were actually invented by people a very long time ago. Find out about ancient Egyptian toothpaste, kites from thousands of years ago, and what the Ancient Greek recipe for cheesecake is!

How Old Is Your Umbrella?

This book is from Readerful's Independent Library. It is for children aged 7 to 8 to read without support.

by Abbie Rushton

Publisher ‏ : ‎ OUP Oxford