The Travelling Musical Bears

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The Bears in the Evening Wood

This is a finished illustration, the first one, for Page 5 of “Musical Bears”. The first version was much darker, as it is an evening scene, but up north the summer is light for longer; and besides the first version was far too dreary. I made the mistake of trying to change things in watercolour, which just does not work, as more than a couple of layers and everything goes a murky grey; or at least that is what happened in the first version. The colours of this book should be up-beat; so this is keyed nearer to how I want it. Any extra layer or correction was done with crayon. I have generally gone back to my usual way of illustration, which is sepia ink and watercolour. The image is A4 plus bleed, so my scanner doesn’t quite manage this. I had to scan several times and then cut and paste, which was quite a process; but if I get a publisher and need to produce my own scans then an A3 scanner will be in the offing. The story is about travelling musicians, a kind of person I have a fondness for, though in this case they are bears (bit of trouble with the fiddle bowing arm if you are a bear). A couple of other commissions have cropped up at the beginning of the year, so I will be working on them as well; but it is fun to have got started on finished work; it is such a different process from the original sketching out. Like writing, there are two distinct phases; for me, at any rate.

Happy New Year

Happy Christmas

Happy Christmas, Season’s Greetings, and a peaceful New Year.

We Are Troubadours

Owl and Mirror

Someone put these words on to a painting that I can’t even remember putting on-line. I quite like the words, and I like even more that someone used this image for these words.

The Bears Arrive in Town

Bears in a Red-Sailed Boat

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