The Art of Sauúti

Sauúti is an all-round creative collective, encouraging any manner of creative expression to represent this shared-world we have created.

Check out more on the released Mothersound: The Sauúti Anthology here.

It was great to be able to write as well as create art (including the co-created anthology cover design) for mine and others' stories in the final "Mothersound: The Sauúti Anthology". And the perfect opportunity for me to play with varying styles and techniques.

Impudu-pudu (lightning bird)

The Impudu-pudu lightning bird

Eugen Bacon created an awesome giant lightning bird called the impudu-pudu. At the time, I was playing with my physical rolled ink work (scanned from 2019) and using them digitally. This was the perfect style to try something textural and visceral for this sequence of Eugen's story “Sina, The Child With No Echo”.

Here is the layered illustration.

Layered elements for the Impudu-pudu bird – rolled ink

The Way of Baa’gh

The crab-like creatures of Cheryl S. Ntumy's “The Way of Baa’gh” were something I wanted to try my hand at. Combining original hand drawn ink, and digitally coloured.

The original hand drawn ink

The Full Illustration

Not too sure about what I could do within the Sauúti world as far as illustrating was concerned, the first image I felt compelled (for a number of reasons) to tackle was the VERY technically difficult spiral village Paramikule Zékunekude (the villages are called paramikules, Zékunekude is a specific one in my story) featured in my novella in the "Mothersound: The Sauúti Anthology" titled "Undulation".

Undulation

The final digitally coloured illustration

The original hand drawn ink

I then played with two other scenes within my story – more intimate.

The first is the protagonist – Hmahein – in a "reflective" moment before her auspicious performance as part of the Order of Ruevaagi (the storytellers and historians) initiate.

"Hmahein" – The original hand drawn ink

"Hmahein" – The final digitally coloured piece

The second piece, a close up of a secondary character – Waioke – as he goes about his tailoring of Hmahein's performance garments and most importantly, depicting his magic. Waioke is part of the Order of the Zéhemgwile – the tailors and clothes makers.

"Waioke"– The final digitally coloured piece

"Waioke" – The original hand drawn ink