The Midnight Hare Appears

This was always a difficult picture to do, so I decided to launch the final illustrations with this.  It is half finished, but the main elements are in there.  It is so much more satisfying to work against a coloured background, it has the atmosphere that I have been searching for through so many roughs, so at last this is how the illustrations are going to be done: gouache on Ingres paper.

This was always a project that I meant as a self-publishing venture, but winds having brought down a chimney pot (a chimney pot for which I am unfortunately personally responsible) with damage to the chimney and a neighbour’s roof (though very luckily not to any passers-by, which would have been horrific), and with the insurance refusing to pay up, half my printing money for the book has disappeared in a high gale; so I have decided that I will send out the book as a detailed rough with two or three finished pictures to all the suitable publishers I can think of, as a multiple submission, so I will know by September or so if I can get The Midnight Hare produced in this manner; with self-publishing as an alternative. I am pretty committed to this book, so however things pan out, it will see the light of day (or maybe that should by the moonlight).

Having looked at publishing websites I feel that my work is not at all what is fashionable at the moment, but I don’t really care about that too much, though it might make finding a publisher a bit difficult.  But hey, the luxury of a fallback position should never be under-estimated.

January Floodwater 3

January Floodwater 2

January Floodwater 1

Trace

Convoluted Tree

Flooded Field

Another View of the Little Hill

This is not a lake, this is a field.

Overwintering Swans 2

Overwintering Swans 1