Art in the Blood: a Beekeeper’s Gallery
“Art in the blood is liable to take the strangest of forms…”
Feeling artistic? For this spring’s Twenty Weeks of Buzz, we held four contests to help you express yourself: the Beekeeper’s Gallery, the Mary Russell Colouring Book, the Illuminated MyStory, and the Russellscape. The contests are closed now, but you can still see the results and get ideas for next year’s contests!
You can also revisit the Beekeeper’s cover art through the years.
Art Contest One: Beekeeper’s Gallery
Here’s the place for all the visions of Russell, Holmes, and their world that don’t fit within the frames of a Russellscape. We’d particularly love to see what you make of the Green Man, but any image, from past or present stories, will do fine.
You may find some of the Russellscapes helpful, or wander through the individual book pages for photos and ideas. You can also head over to the VBC gallery for inspiration. And anything you can photograph or scan is great: not just paintings, but etchings, wall frescoes, rooms converted into Russell’s World spaces, soft sculpture, you in a Russell costume, YouTube videos, you name it. (Fanfiction? That goes elsewhere.)
Then let your imagination loose on the world of Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes, and send us a picture of the result. (Make sure to include a copy of the permission form too, so we know that you want us to use it.) You can also snail-mail your submissions, or if you want to hang onto the original, a color copy of your submission, to:
PO Box 1152
Freedom, CA
95019
2010 Entries
Previous Entries
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| Bret Herholz, portrait of Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes | Marisa Fife, Russell and Holmes in Wales (8/9/96) | A fan dressed as Mary Russell |
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| The winner’s edition of the Venomous Death broadside, whose name was drawn from among Independent Bookseller receipts. | By Elina Kivimäki from Finland | Kerry Kilburn, based on Locked Rooms; digital collage |
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| Painting by Rori Shapiro. | A version of The Language of Bees cover by Sonja Lodder, from Rotterdam. | Mistress of the Hounds, by Bret Herholz |
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| Kerry Kilburn, based on Locked Rooms; digital collage | Kerry Kilburn, based on The Game; collage. | Alice Wright, based on Letter of Mary; collage. |
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| Lauren Bahr, based on Holmes’s rescue scene in O, Jerusalem. Ink outline, colored pencils | Roxanne Lucchesi, photoshop and photographs. |
Art Contest Two: Mary Russell Colo(u)ring Book
By popular acclaim, we’re adding a project to the Beekeeper’s Gallery: The Mary Russell Colouring Book. For this, we need a simple ink drawing that depicts a scene from one of the books–Kim’s picture of Russell at the American Colony (from O Jerusalem) is an example (click to enlarge):
If we get enough, we’ll put them together as a colo(u)ring book. So send us your coloring book drawing, and we’ll need the permission form from you, so we know that you want us to use it.
Let the colo(u)ring begin!
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| Holmes and Russell, by Tamra Arnold | Russell reading, by Tamra Arnold |
Art Contest Three: Illuminated MyStory
In the spring of 2009, as part of the online celebration called “Fifteen Weeks of Bees,” Ms Mary Russell posted a series of fifteen blogs on her MySpace page telling how she had come to send her memoirs to one Laurie King. At the end, the fifteen episodes were arranged for printing into a booklet called “MyStory”: here.
To mark the 2010 celebration—“Twenty Weeks of Buzz,” which led up to the April publication of The God of the Hive—we turned “MyStory” into an illuminated manuscript. For instructions, details, and inspiration, visit the Illuminated MyStory page, or download the PDF.
Once you’ve illuminated Russell’s words, you can either scan the pages and email them to Bees[at]LaurieRKing.com, or post them to PO Box 1152, Freedom, CA 95019.
Art Contest Four: Russellscape
The Russellscape is an endless landscape of Russell and Holmes-related images, set to unroll across the screen like landscape from a train window. In spring 2009, we held a contest for the best Russellscape panel as part of the Fifteen Weeks of Bees, with the winning design made into a T-shirt at the LRK Cafepress store.
We did a similar contest in the spring of 2010, so head over to the Russellscape 2010 page for more details on how to submit your own.
Cover Art
Even before The Beekeeper’s Apprentice was published in January of 1994, the book wore some interesting cover art. Below are a few examples, including one that St Martin’s Press proposed some months before. Fortunately they listened to their author’s plaintive cries and changed it to one of greater dignity.
Click on a cover to view a larger image.
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| The original proposed St Martin’s Press cover | Japan | United Kingdom | France |
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| US trade paperback | US mass market (1) | US mass market (2) | UK mass market |
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| Germany | Holland | Poland | Denmark |
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| Sweden |
