Reflections in the Shed Window

There it is, in the background, my studio, aka The Tardis, and the poles for the runner beans; but what is not reflected is that washing line, high up above the garden, where the clothes are pulled up by ropes, and whip out in the wind. This is, apparently, a form of line constructed from those who have been in the navy. Tony was working in the merchant navy when he was 15, the boat had to be fettled and they were in Venice for a fortnight……

Portsmouth is apparently full of these washing lines..

Mirrors, Water and Reflections 2

When my small studio was built up in the vegetable garden, my husband bought a door. I was imagining a door with much glass, whereas this door just had a decorative strip of cut glass down the middle. Somewhere, a more conventional conservatory-type door existed in the garden, so he held that up to the door space, and then held up this more “door” door, and I could see that it had a better feeling. The design of my octagonal studio was based on a hat box which was on the floor of the room where we eat. Half-way through the build he thought there was not enough room for storage, so he cut into the three back panels half way up, made some cupboards, roofed them. Two ships portholes in the back walls, then two side windows and this door. I sat down in the place when it was finished, hoping it would be a place to work, and within seconds I knew that it was perfect. My son said: “The last place you worked in was hell (an old cow shed) but this is heaven.”

Tony had a catalogue of floor types. We both liked the same one but agreed it was too expensive (he built the studio, with help from a friend, and I paid for the materials, with the proceeds from an illustration job); and then when the floor arrived, he had ordered the one we both agreed was unaffordable. I have never reimbursed him, as we both know. I wanted this piece of floor in the doorway, with “Orient Fruit” printed on it.

Musical Bears, Page 3

Though this is really Page 1 of the story (words not yet added). I kept starting off with these wandering minstrels going down a road, but did not find the road inspiring, , it was kind of dingy, with bushes behind the bears which formed a barrier did not like, and lanky plants in the front to cover up the grey of the road – so I changed the tune and set them free to walk playing across grassland, untrammelled.

This version of the book is ready to be sent out to try and find its way into the world. Rather like the bears themselves.

What shall I do next? All the things I have been putting off, like painting the outside of the studio with a beautiful Farrow and Ball deep scabious blue. Wonder of wonders, outside paint that is silk not gloss. Oh the horrors of that ancient sticky drippy smelly gloss paint. This blue paint is genius. But still, I have been putting off the task….

Abracazebra R

For seven years all my possessions were in store. For some years before that I was in a state of flux. These 26 drawings and 2 paintings must have been done about 20 years ago, when I had studio in an old animal shed in Berwick upon Tweed. Others thought it was forbidding, but I felt all right there, through some strange times. I had a fiddle which I played upon now and then, and my music, and no money, which was just as well as the electricity board never managed to read the meter, in spite of being told about it, several times, and in spite of them installing a new meter; not a pipsqueak of a bill! For five years! Apparently I was living at no known abode, which defeated the computer of the electricity board. Anyway, whilst trawling through the mass of paper possessions that eventually came out of store I recently found a little book called Abracazebra, which is an alphabet story of a boy’s journey through the night, and through the letters of the alphabet, accompanied by his cat. All I have found are print-outs, but the originals must be somewhere.

However, Abracazebra has solved a problem. Knowing I was coming to the end of work on Musical Bears, and absolutely needing a project to keep me occupied, this is something that is already more than half there. These days I don’t have to scrimp and scrabble, so I can take my time. Do some walks with my camera. Do some painting. Draw from life. Examine the world around me. But working on this little book will provide me with something I can start on, as soon as the bears go travelling out into the world, hopefully playing their music to some appreciative listeners; though I’m not holding my breath, as these things can take a long long while. But I shall persist.

Common Ground 2

I have no idea whatsoever where this painting is, I cannot remember painting it, but it is obviously a companion to a blue-violet painting of a moor at night. This is the landscape that is in my heart, out there in the central Borders, where I once saw, sitting hunched in a tree, a bird so large I still cannot believe it was not an eagle. These paintings contain emptiness. So different to illustrations, which are full of things – bears, banjos, outraged mayors, butterflies, mean fishmongers, canny seagulls, signposts, dancing children….The moors in the picture book I am creating are seen as places of hunger and desolation, except in the case of the blithe wee bear who chases a butterfly. The illustrations are nearly finished, the story is complete… I think I am spinning it all out, up there in my studio, aka the Tardis, which itself needs painting and patching. It always feels disorientating to finish something a project, so maybe I am putting it off. there will then be the hassle of trying to find a publisher, as there is no way I am going down the self-publishing line again; but being fond of the story, I will not be discouraged.

Soon, perhaps. I will make some more paintings, which I will lose track of – some get sold, some get given, a few are in the attic, where I don’t dare to go very often because it is eminently fall-out-of, having a door which does not fasten from the inside, and stuff and stuff, you have to cling on to the rafters and tippy-toe to avoid the stuff.

Onward…

Silver Water

A long time since I went out and stood on the edge of the Lees, and gazed at the river. The river that has been described, possibly by Burns, as “the silvery Tweed”. There is something about being under the strictures of this virus that has altered the way I inhabit the world around me. There is some curtailment of freedom that gets into one’s marrow. People being up near each other looks somehow strange. So however lucky we are in our own landscape, in our relative lack of stress compared to so many, all the same, something burrows into the mind. When I am out in my studio, there I don’t feel it. The birds come and go. The blackbird, who flew into our window at night several years ago, and looked so peaky last year I thought she was dying, with all her feathers fallen out where she had hit herself, and her bare back of skull this strange bent shape, almost like the head of a snake, and a miserable ambience about her – well, this autumn, she is back, with a new quite pretty ruff of grey feathers round the back of her neck, and is her usual, sprightly, somewhat forceful self. She is so tame, she never flies off when I open the studio door, but just stays where she is. She knows her name, she comes when I call: Miss Ruche, Miss Ruche.

The Midnight Hare, page 25

It is useful for me to put these images on line, as it distances me from them, and I can apply a more critical eye. The next stage is to print out what I have done and assemble the pages opposite each other. I am working on small sheets of paper, and keeping the paintings within a pad, of pastel paper, actually; so I cannot truthfully gauge the effect until I put them together.  In the past, when working on white paper, I did the pictures that were on opposite each other on the same sheet of paper, as I could get books of  watercolour paper that were big enough. I don’t know why I don’t work on a drawing board, I have always preferred to work with books of paper; though now, the studio I work in is too small for a drawing board, when you take into account the box of crayons, the box of gouache, the two paintboxes, the  bamboo serving tray I use for my watercolour tubes, and the box of neocolor crayons, and the waterpots and the brush pot and the pencils etc etc. that have to share the smallish table (which originally was a breakfast table from a bed and breakfast next door in Berwick which closed down) and the two tiny tables which cower in its small shadow. I do have about five blocks of papers on the go with this story, so can offer up images opposite each other; but there will  have to be adjustments.  I seem to have started to work to a specific hardish edge in a lot of the recent paintings, so think I will deliberately loosen this up, though when there are two images on a single page, as above, then a hardish edge is necessary for coherence.  Next week I start work on the four double-page spreads, having ordered some large sheets of paper, and having cut down the cardboard from a large block of watercolour paper to serve as a base. I may work these so that they do not have any kind of a margin.  The paintings are on different coloured papers, though all within a certain range.  This is a bit of an odd way of doing a book, but I can’t see anything wrong with some oddness here and there.

Sunlight on the Studio Wall

Studio II

3 Stages and a Lighting Effect

I started off painting this very roughly, and then took a photograph in the afternoon, when (by chance, not design) the light from the window lay over the canvas.  When I looked at the photograph I liked the effect of the window and its shadow, so decided to incorporate this effect in the final picture. I am used to painting illustrations flat on the table, but with this larger painting I propped up the canvas on a chair with two sturdy arms.  I am going to get a piece of wood and balance it on the chair to use as an easel.  The studio is small, and though I have an ornate, gold painted metal easel, this is used to hold many sheets of watercolour paper and big books of expensive artistico fabriano paper which I use for illustration. I also have a table easel which I think I bought in Lidl, or Aldi maybe: but for larger bits of canvas, the chair and the bit of wood will do very well.  It is fun to do something larger and freer after the small pages of illustration: though in a sense this is still an illustration, as it is a painting based on a poem which I wrote many years ago. I have incorporated the words of the poem in the painting.  I admire very much the use that some artists make of words, I haven’t explored this enough, and need to widen the range of my lettering. However, it is fun to realise that there are ways of expanding one’s range. I went to an exhibition of illustration at the Granary Gallery in Berwick upon Tweed (where some of my illustrations were on show among those of other people) and was very interested in one or two paintings which had incorporated words beautifully in their work. Rather a delightful exhibition, connected with Berwick’s first Book Festival, which takes place next weekend, and which it is hoped will be a yearly fixture. The picture above (final version) I delivered today to the Berwick Watchtower Gallery, for their Open Exhibition, which also opens next weekend.