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.

Be happy, my hare. Be free.”

Milo Searching Through the Garden

The delights of gouache (and the dangers of not doing opposite illustrations on the same sheet of paper) – when I put these two paintings together for the picture book “The Midnight Hare” I found that in both of them Milo was clutching his chest in a heartfelt manner, so I changed this on the left-hand page, in the process of which I found all sorts of details that I hadn’t finished properly.  I must have scanned it too early. The richness of the colouring on the left-hand page rather bleaches out the other painting, so I may have to add to that too.

Little Angel

“The Midnight Hare” paintings are more or less finished, and over the next two weeks I will be setting up the scans for Martins the Printers, who are over in Spittal, a place which looks out over the faintly coal-tinted North Sea; then as far as this book is concerned it is the business side of things that will be uppermost. I have spent so long on the Hare book that I am timorous of bring the process of creating it to an end.  However, now that it is moving into a new phase, in the background I think perhaps maybe possibly a new book is waiting in the wings. A winter book.  Since the story is not written yet, I shall say nothing about it. But already I am thinking of what form the illustrations will take. The drawing above, an old Christmas card, is in pencil on white paper. I like the grubbiness of the pencil when it is reproduced. But I have been looking at that beautiful painting “Hunters in the Snow”, apparently the first painting of deep winter in western art. I shall start on a text, and say no more, and the text will suggest the technique.

 

Milo Frees the Hare

Milo Looking Over the Gate