Wedding Ritual #1: Tor Freeman

Tor Freeman 

is a prolific children's writer and illustrator from London with a wicked sense of humour, whose cartoon animal characters can very occasionally be found in more adult situations. Her Sister Clawdetta Mystery, 'Murder at the Monastery' - whose pencils she shared on her Instagram - helped see me and hundreds of others through the early weeks of lockdown.

She was made a Sendak Fellow in 2012 and won the Observer/Cape/Comica graphic short story prize in 2017. In 2019 she moved to Florida to study at Gainesville's Sequential Artists' Workshop.

It is an honour to feature Tor as our first ever Wedding Ritual subject, sharing her creative work 'old', 'new', 'borrowed', and 'blue'. In her own words:

Something Old

"I looked back to the oldest files I have in Dropbox, from 2010. This is before I started working digitally, and was using pen and watercolour. But I remember I submitted this to a blog at the time (I think the subject was banjos, but it might have been pigs?) [it was banjos AND pigs! - Wes] and they put it up. A proud moment, and the first time I remember feeling the excitement of having work online, even if only a few people saw it."

Something New

"Still drawing animals, birds and insects today! Nowadays I usually do my line-work in pencil, and then colour digitally. I sometimes ponder going back to physical media, but my ambition is to make as much work as possible, so the speed of the digital works well for me."

Something Borrowed

"A song. I’ve been a Billy Joel fan for pretty much ever, but had somehow not really appreciated Vienna until I saw Ben Platt’s version in the last episode of The Politician. I saw it about eight months ago and have listened to it at least once a week since - I think it’s wonderful. Music is a big part of my work, and the thing I’m most envious of not being able to make. I’m often trying hard in my drawings to evoke the same feelings I get when I listen to some songs."

Something Blue

"I’ve made a lot of fairly silly erotic-light drawings of animals over the years. This character appeared quite a bit - Liza Pigelli, a tribute to the real Liza in Cabaret, of course. Here she is in one of those Victorian peepshow boxes. Hey, why are you looking in there - you pervert!"

To see more of Tor Freeman's work visit torfreeman.com and follow her - @tormalore - on Twitter and Instagram. 

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Wedding Ritual #2 features Alexandra Westwood