Blogrott the Blog Ogre...

Just a quick post today to see if anyone can help me sort out a bit of a blogger glitch! And I have just decided - I'm going to call this fine fellow 'Blogrott' seems to suit him!

Anyway, it seems that for some reason the third (right hand) column of my blog with my profile, archive, followers, blog roll, etc... has gone awol - but only on the main page. If you are on any of the added portfolio pages its all back again. I'm not sure if this is the case for everyone - it's all working fine from my home or work computers...
It seems to have started a few posts back when a couple of people kindly let me know that they couldn't see the 'Shadowplay' post. Although some people evidently could and left comments.
Weird!
I've tried editing and re-publishing to no avail, and re-saved the gadgets in my right hand column but I am a bit baffled.
I'm wondering - can anyone out there see the right hand column or is that random too? And does anyone have any tips for fixing it??
Sorry for a bit of a boring post! Will be back soon (and hopefully so will my missing column!)...
(And don't mind old Blogrott, he's pretty harmless really!!)

Past work part three - the Sun-shaper, Master of the Bronze...

So, another piece of old work...
This is Torvachyll the Ashen-armed of Modhrin'mos... or to give his full naming - Torvachyll son of Maeloryll, son of Tor, son of Tangarach... so it goes on!
He is another character from my long forsaken creative writing project of some years ago and one I was always rather fond of. His story is too long and too dark to go into, but he was the Bronze Master, a Sun Shaper - a sort of spiritual leader of his Clan, which was an isolated bronze-age type society.
I was drawing on the idea that metal workers of the bronze age were believed to be held in high status, feared, perhaps revered for their 'magical' skills and knowledge of ores and smelting.
The Bronze Workers in my stories were few, brethren of a solar cult who worshipped the sun and believed the 'sun metals' - copper and gold were sacred.

There are a few instances of metal working with this character in my writing (if you can bear to read through more of my long winded writing!) and I think maybe there might be at least one blogging friend out there who could point out any glaring inaccuracies in my understanding of bronze age metal working?? See what you think...

Beneath spreading boughs that lowered to the moss kept ground, smothering out the moonlight, dim figures crouched in silence motionless before the dawn. Hidden in the sheltered hollow out of sight of the fires of Modhrin'mos, the Bronze Masters worked their secrets in solemn ritual. These few warriors most revered of the Clan, were its strength and its guidance in the tenuous uncertain years since the exile of the Wyrdteller that had shaken their lives.

Torvachyll of the Ashen-arm opened his golden-shot hazel eyes, emerging from his deep reverie to survey the shadowed faces of his kinsmen around him in the gloom. The night was still, the vast sky beginning to fade towards the grey of pre-dawn, and yet he was uneasy.
The night long he and his smith brothers had worked the bronze, Ar-Dathril the youngest of them stoking the great oily goatskin bellows until the sparks rose in a white frenzy, settling to burn on the backs of their hands and sooted faces. The presise task of the crucible with its measures of tin and copper ores had been the charge of Shadraih the Grave, the eldest of them whose long storm grey hair fell glinting with copper beads clacking in the ends of his tresses.
The bronze workers had used their highly wrought skills to craft the moulds of clay and carved stone, nimble fingers and sharp eye to the arc of arrowheads and the slender curves of blade and spear. And Torvachyll - he was the Shaper, his were the dreams to make real, in the bright white blood of metals, the master of their art.

Torvachyll was also the Caller, when the flames turned to burn white and the new metal was joined in the furnace, he reached out his spirit to summon powers to the metal seething in creation within the fire's heat. Some objects he made held a brighter edge, arrowheads that sang flashing through the air, leaf bladed spears that held a Name and a soul of their own. Quite why he could not explain nor what powers lent themselves to creation, only that some objects when born out of their dark husks of ash were more special than the rest.

Now before the dawn, the time was at hand. The fire fury of the baked clay furnace had slowly died back to a dull red glow that drew their darkened faces from the gloom, though its heat was still strong. Through patient hours of stillness the dark moulds of clay had cooled and they were eager now to see their work born into the world. Without any word they began slowly and reverently to break the bronze from its ashes with pride in eye and touch, but Torvachyll held the brittle ball of clay that was his toil alone, reluctant now to breach its dark shell for fear of sucess or failure.
"Torvachyll, has it worked?" spoke Shadraih at last watching those serious golden eyes.
"I fear to discover Shadraih, we have done nothing like this before." Torvachyll answered softly.

He remembered the fragile detail of the beeswax disk he had crafted, transluscent with the pale light that it held in its misted centre, a form that had come unbidden to his hand and mind. It had been painful to entomb that effort of painstaking detail in a dark shroud of clay and dung and see its pale beauty obliterated and lost. He had attached a wax spout to the disk that protruded alongside a second vent hole from the packed clay, and into that the molten bronze had flowed in a bright cascade of sparks until the liquid wax bubbled and spluttered out.
Nothing was left of that dim luminous waxen image and all the hours of work that had gone into crafting it. Carefully Torvachyll began to break the new bronze from its blackened ashes, almost holding his breath as the cast fell away.

It shone... like the very sun it shone and in his golden eye the awe of reverence answered it. From the smooth fire-held light of of its centre the curvelinear relief of the design radiated outwards, every intricate turning of its convolution unerringly exact to that lost disk of wax, and yet in its metamorphosis it had gained some greater presence, some quality of power. Speechless he gazed into its face, a solar emblem whose dim light glowed gold on the brows of his cult brothers.
"You have crafted a Talsiman," whispered Shadraih in the hush.
"It has crafted itself." replied Torvachyll in wonder.

His story took a tragic turn leaving him the last of his kin, which is what has led him to the ominous gates in this sketch... I hesitated to post the full version of this - I would hate to offend, but if anyone has a problem with me showing this of course I will take it down...


This is about to be a mercy killing - and he has to kill the angel to open the gates to where he must go to avenge his kin... I hoped to have captured compassion in Torvachyll's gaze and acceptance in the angels'....

If you can bear any more here's another (shorter) bit of metal working writing...

.... Torvachyll gave in to weariness, his golden eyes closed and chin rested on chest, lost in the low eerie rhythm of the bellows and waiting to feel the quickening of the flames turn. As the blue vaporous breath faded from the ore's shifting surface to leave no sign of the eagle-blest token infusing the new metal, Torvachyll opened his eyes.

Something felt different, somehow charged and bright. He reached for the crucible, always eager with the awe of reverence. Abandoning the steady roar of the bellows and with sweat beading from his sooted arms, running from his brow and into his eyes, he lifted the fiery vessel from the furnace. The ore-light glowed from his avid face, grim with concentration, the sweat-streaked muscles of his arms stood out, his grip steady and strong upon the antler tongs as he tipped the crucible. He began a deep chant - a dark strong timbre and sparks cascaded, motes of fire streaming over his blackened hands as the white blood of molten metals flowed into the carven stone mould before him.

The orb of the sun rose over the mountain and the flash of sunfire was blinding as the dawn rays struck the cascade of bright flowing metal. Its white-gold fury drank in the blaze and grew, impossibly brighter. The fiery heat slowly travelled up his arms, hotter and brighter as if it would blacken his bones. His muscles trembled and burned, sweat poured from him until at last he fell back, the empty crucible tumbling from his scorched grip as the dazzle of molten Sun's Blood began to fade.

Ok, I promise to lay off the old writing excerpts for a long while now - think I've got that out of my system for now! Hope You'll forgive me the indulgence!


Please respect my copyright of these images and words...

Some past work - part two!

So, here's for the next few embarrassing bits of past work!
These are all rough sketches/ideas for paintings that never happened. They were done about ten or so years ago I think, alongside a massive and very unfinished creative writing project. When I was writing I would visualise strongly the scene, atmosphere, feelings I was trying to convey and found it was often compelling to have to draw it as well. I drew constantly whilst I wrote and re-wrote, drawing my characters over and over until they were almost real to me. Sometimes I had the imagery in my head before the words and so I would draw the scenario before writing it, other times it would happen the other way round.

'Across the pyre' ( drawn about 2000 I think)

In many ways I think writing and illustration have always been a bit of a conjoined process for me, though I know I don't have what it takes to be a 'proper' writer - I get too attached to the language and just can't be ruthless enough to pare it down which makes my writing a bit heavy going (even I will admit!)
Also, although I love writing, trying to do someting novel sized (and highly convoluted) was so, so hard - I didn't have the conviction or the confidence to battle on with it. So although there are passages and characters I love in it, I think it will remain abandoned.
However, attempting the whole process has given me a huge respect for those talented writers who do see their work through to completion despite the struggle. It is much harder than you'd imagine and takes a lot of nerve, determination and hard, hard work as well as clinging on to the shreds of self conviction!

'A tattooing rite'

These all feature the same character, who was a brooding troubled soul... a lot of my writing then was quite dark, probebly a bit uncomfortable to read I imagine - and also probebly not particularly good for me either because I would empathsise so deeply with my characters in order to write about their emotional complexities...

'Sea-stricken'

I managed to find the bit of writing that comes directly from or alongside this particular drawing... its been a bit chopped up and I'm afraid I'm not even going to attempt to put it in context, but anyway here goes...

Brynn awoke from dark dreams with again the same panic of falling on the queasy tilt of the sea, the dreadful pitching of the ship that he could not grow used to...

... The wind was dark and bitter, slicing with vengeful spite across the bows of the ship, harsh with spray and brine. The grey seas heaved, coiling dark wreathed, hollow echoes rising in a deep anguished rage. The chill changeless wastes spanned from everywhere to nowhere spent, dissolving endlessly into distant sky, the world swallowed from all sight...

...Brynn was uneasy, the day felt tenuous, poised upon wrongness. The dim spectres of the winds stirred his sense of omen with a fleet foreboding. He could not grasp it nor explain his restlessness. The dark knot of cloud drawing down over the sea lowered with gathering threat, and still closer some fell sense of danger grew upon him.

"It is a cold treacherous entity, the sea, dark tramelled and vengeful. To think that our lives are held in such a fragile husk of wood against that terrible strength, the cold drowning tides drawing at the timbers so that they shift and groan. So desperate little bark between us and that vast crushing drag of ocean. It could splinter our vessel in a breath and drag us deep into dark tides forvever cold." Brynn muttered faintly.
His gaunt face was distant as he spoke and cast with a brooding dread as he gazed out over the endlessly shifting waves, shuddering as if some fell presence haunted him.
Morak (his companion) sighed. He had no wisdom to answer the Wizard's disquiet, and he had neither patience nor conviction to draw Brynn from dark brooding, no words to stir him from this self inflicted thrall of disaster...

So there you go, a double embarrassment of old artwork and old writing, may you make of it what you will! (sorry if its a bit grim!) :)

Please respect my copyright of these images and words, thankyou.

Some old work - not quite children's illustration! And a grumpy Orc shoot...

'The Wyrdteller's death rites' (painted 1998 I think)

While digging out some old celtica pieces to add to my new pages I discovered some long forgotten old folders full of reams and reams of old illustrations from about twelve or so years back.
Of course I didn't think of them as illustrations then, I was just messing around for the fun of it with odd bits of stories and characters - the compositions and the life drawing are all a bit dodgy the say the least! Here are a few from right at the beginning of it, long before I ever thought about children's illustration as you can probebly see from the subject matter!
These were quite small - 6"x4"

'A wolf curse' (probebly 1998 or 1999)

'The Healer' 1998 or 99

'Awakening the Lich' 1998 0r 99

There are so many odd paintings, sketches, character studies ( and probebly a whole heap more buried at the back of a cupboard somewhere) I might post a few more up over the next few days just for nostalgia's sake! Not sure what you'll all make of them! (And I hope I've improved since then!)

On another note, my Robin Hood obcessed six year old did a spot of grumpy Orc shooting this evening...


She got him right between the eyes!


And evidently thought that was very funny!

Brand new online portfolio...!

I've had a couple of portrait commission enquiries lately so I thought I should probebly have some kind of portfolio for people to look at if they've taken my card and want to check me out...
I've added portfolio pages just underneath my thumbnail bar at the top of the page so you can click to see examples...
I will add more information to go with them soon about materials, sizes and prices. It took me hours of struggling with blogger last night with my limited grasp of how to get a computer to do what you want it to just to get this far!
I will slowly add more images too... this one is a portrait of my neighbour's Grand daughter Joscelyn in coloured pencils.
Any suggestions for improvements (or how to get the better of my computer) more than welcome!

Shadowplay and painted skies....

Finally I've managed to put a post together after a bit of an absense! And hopefully a way back into creative things will follow... I am missing my art and writing.

Work has taken over somewhat these last few weeks and left little time for much else, especially with me and my husband taking it in turns to be ill whilst trying to keep the shop going and keep bouncy children happy too... there has been some catching up to do!
So anyway, I took these pictures last week or so of my youngest Elswyth playing with pegs and string behind a sunlit sheet (the latest den!) The sheet was in constant gentle motion in the breeze, peaceful with the careful gestures of the deeply engrossed little person hidden behind...

It's the first time in what feels like a while that an image has leapt out and inspired me - its like a bolt through mind and body that makes you leap up with the compulsion to record it somehow in some way... Though this arose by chance, I think I'd like to try and set something like this up again, maybe with grasses, clearer profiles of the children etc... Yet in many ways it was the unconscious absorbtion in play that I liked observed in this way, a moment in time, and in childhood... a memory... a feeling... uncontrived.

I have lots of things waiting to be posted about and hopefully soon, but for now I will leave you with some pictures of a stunning sunset from my lovely sky-filled west window the other evening. The sky really looked painted, in broad watercolour washes. It reminded me to take the time to look and truly observe, everyday.....