Musicians in the Forest

Looking through my files, wondering when I will have time to cull all the imagery on my computer (which will have to be done) I come across this painting, now sold, and from quite a time ago, and I notice two things: firstly, my attraction to wandering musicians, which is the subject of my new story, goes way back; and secondly, I have made a very serious mistake in the shape of the guitar case, which I will now have to carefully rectify in about fifteen illustrations at least. I got so involved with the story I didn’t check the details. I had forgotten about this painting – it is strange how ideas and imagery recur. It’s much more orange than my usual work, which tends towards blue and mauve and deep red, with a fair smattering of brown (sepia being one of my favourite colours) and naples yellow (ditto); but it certainly has the feel of what I am working on now. Glad I came across it, almost by accident, it has proved useful.

Old Photographs

I seem to have been presented with some new elements by WordPress which I certainly didn’t mean to ask for. I like everything staying the same! How do I get back to my old trusty way of doing things? (Oh go on, read the book, not just the first two chapters). I spent yesterday looking through a chest of papers that I haven’t seen for about ten years, and I find photographs from long ago. Two things I thought I had lost in transit: a photograph of Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes, taken by a photographer who worked for Faber and who gave me this copy as a present, which photograph somehow seems to have detached itself from its frame; and a photograph of myself, my grandfather, my grandmother, mother, father and little brother in romper suit in the porch of a faraway house near Chailey Common, a photograph I included in a painting but then could not find as I gave it to someone to look at and now don’t know where it is; this is a near equivalent, taken at more or less the same moment, it has always meant a lot to me, I am the little girl half-leaning against my Granny’s skirts. I also found a box of slides from 1984 which I have never seen before. And there is a letter to my mother which I cannot remember writing, saying how my young son used to call Sigmund Freud Sycamore Fraud. I never throw anything away. I don’t know why the old photograph means so much to me, it is imprinted in my heart. I look a tad dour, all the same, and was even more morose in the photograph I used for the painting. The painting is about the people in the photograph. A bientot.

River Tweed Alphabet Postcard

 

Happy New Year

Seasons Greetings

Peace and love.

 

(Illustration for “Brigit & the Cailleach”, a story by Dawn Casey)

The Spirit of Winter and the Animals

Margaret and the Wolf

An illustration from “The Fierce and Gentle Wolf”, published by Serafina Press. My mind is much on snow.

Hare, Moth, Candle

The scans for The Midnight Hare have been sent over the Internet to the printer, I shall now have to wait until they have a space to do the proofs. I have over-run considerably the time I originally projected having the scans ready, so now need to fit in with the schedule of the printers. When I have the proofs I shall decide on an official publication day. I have now set myself to tidy my workroom, and my studio, which are in chaos, and look forward to the next batch of work. The small town of Coldstream has been deprived of bread, milk, paper, post and buses, let alone fresh fruit and vegetables, for nearly a week, but nothing like as bad as Alston, where I was once going to live, which has been cut off for five days and has had supplies dropped from a Chinook. I have a fibreglass hare outside my studio, and for days all I could see were the tips of his ears. Gradually he appeared, and the iris that was coming up so early is still flowering, despite being buried under snow for days.

The Midnight Hare

The book will be ready to go to the printers this week.  Now what?

Milo and the Brown Hare

Interim image: production problems all the time now, still not sure about the margins, but of course with a bigger image, the margins will be wider, which can quite easily be sorted out with a bit more work. The base colour seems to vary, in spite of being taken from the same scan (I think). Meanwhile hard sweat and Photoshop are gradually getting rid of the stripy effects of from using pastel paper – paper which also has its advantages.  This is probably the most difficult project I have done, but also the most involving; I think because the responsibility for all decisions are mine and only mine. I have done a pictorial map of Berwick upon Tweed (which is still being used  nearly 20 years later) and this was horrendously difficult, but it was a question of application and decision making, it was not emotionally involving, and was a commission. Unlike this book.

Next week, or the week after, all the scans will be done, and then it is a question of putting on the text, in Acrobat, and then going down to the printers for a pre-print meeting.

What I am pleased with is that the illustrations and the words now feel that they go together, the atmosphere of the book is what it is, the faults are just faults, I don’t feel that I should have made the book in another way.

My next entry will probably be on my site Moonwuzo Books, where I am making entries that are very specifically to do with the process of self-publishing. Less of a meander, maybe.