Illustrations in June

It's hard to believe I've been here a month already! But we got here on the 3rd of June, and it's now the 3rd of July. As usual, there's been a lot going on, so here's a quick summary of what I've been working on this past month.

Sonya's laying the foundations of an outreach/public archaeology project that she's hoping to start running properly next year. Part of this project - a small part - involves the creation of an informational newsletter to be distributed to the local schoolchildren. To make it more accessible for them, Sonya came up with the idea that the newsletter should be in comic form. So I am now putting together illustrations for that - a big change from drawing obsidian and reconstructions of Neolithic buildings! But it's been great fun getting the look of it right and doing comic versions of all of us here on site.

I've also been completing the series of building reconstruction illustrations from 2004 and 2005. These are standard axonometric projected reconstructions taken from the excavation plans. I've also been working on new views of these buildings as well, these ones done from the same point of view as the final photographs of each building. That way we can sit the reconstruction image right next to the photograph and people who aren't as familiar with the site as we are can still get a good idea of what's being shown and how it's being reconstructed.

And, as ever, I am doing vignette-type illustrations based on evidence of various activities and processes from the excavations. There's a good little obsidian-knapping episode, a strange deposit that might possibly be either an application of decoration or something related to cleaning, and a burial with lots of phytoliths all from Building 56 in the South Area. Meanwhile, in the North Area, there's a massive late-Byzantine structure (possibly a barn or other agricultural building) and a number of interesting Byzantine graves. And from last season I've done a new painting of the wall installation in Building 52, and am working on vignettes of the CH03 and CH04 dog burials with Kathy. In TP, they've got their various building levels related to the old 1960s plans, and so have now been able to connect their buildings to his excavations, which means I'm now able to do reconstructions of those levels in that area and show both the TP buildings and ones excavated in the 1960s.

And then, of course, there are the finds illustrations. We've had a number of relatively intersting pieces come through: fragments of moulded white plaster from the North Area's late building, the usual animal figurines and beads and so on from the middens being excavated in the North, etc. Nothing as amazing as last year... yet.

For the remainder of the week I'll be working on the building reconstructions from CH05, finishing off the comic strip and following developments as Buildings 51 and 58 continue to be excavated. Plus, there's a small box of Clay Objects to draw for Sonya, and a couple of new figurines that just came down from the North to keep me busy on the finds drawing front.