Pushing individual Patreon accounts here at BF is something that we rarely do simply because there are so many talented folk out there and time is limited. But we’re going to make an exception today to promote the work of Gareth Brookes, our 2013 Broken Frontier Best Graphic Novel Award winner (and, of course, the 2012 Myriad First Graphic Novel Competition winner as well for The Black Project!).
Gareth’s second graphic novel A Thousand Coloured Castles from Myriad Editions was so well-received here on the site that I said of the artists work at the time ” Gareth Brookes (alongside Karrie Fransman) is undoubtedly one of the two most important creators currently working in UK indie comics.”
Brookes is known for his constant experimentation with presentation, form and narrative. The Black Project was set in a familiar everyday British suburbia in the early 1990s and followed schoolboy Richard as he sought to create the girl of his dreams for himself from household and found objects. Aside from its darkly humorous coming-of-age story it was notable for being told in linocut and embroidered images.
A Thousand Coloured Castles – also published by Myriad Editions – focuses on the lives of Myriam and Fred, an elderly couple living in quiet domesticity until strange goings-on in the house next door begin to impinge upon their everyday lives. Combining neighbourhood mystery and graphic medicine, Brookes’s triumphant longer-form second offering used a clever crayoned illustrative technique (above) to allow the readerf to perceive the world through the eyes of Myriam, a sufferer of the hallucination-inducing Charles Bonnet Syndrome.
From his collaboration with Steven Tillotson on the satirical Manly Boys and Comely Girls Annuals from Avery Hill to his self-published autobio offerings like Can I Borrow Your Toilet? through to his anthology contributions for outfits like kuš! and Tiny Pencil, Brookes constantly pushes the boundaries of the form in his practice. So when we heard he had set up a Patreon account to help fund his continuing experimentation with the medium we felt it deserved special recognition here on the site.
You can become a patron for Gareth Brookes here. What do you get? In the words of Brookes himself: “As a reward for your patronage you can get exclusive behind the scenes access to my process pictures and videos, see finished pages before anyone else, get free PDF downloads and receive original lino prints and drawings. There will also be opportunities to buy the original works of art you watch being made at special discounted prices.”
Give Gareth your support and help him to bring more exciting self-published work to life in 2018! You can read a 2017 interview with Gareth here at BF.
For more on the work of Gareth Brookes don’t forget to check out his website here and follow him on Twitter here. You can visit his online store here.
