Windsongs... and a Wordhoard to unlock...

 I took all my finished double page spreads, sketchbook of thumbnails and the finished dummy book itself over to my illustration tutor Jan Nesbitt today! I will wait for her professional critique before I go ahead and reproduce proofs of it all to put to editors...

(Sorry about the dingy photos!)

The next stage will be the most daunting, making sure I get my approaches to editors dead right and then just hoping its all up to standard enough to try and make a good impression! 

Meanwhile I'm starting to try and capture in words the bee-humming, fire-dancing song that's been whispering an elusive trail through the story-threaded part of my mind... I just need to wait quietly for a time and listen...

A Dragon, a Singer and a Fish... or remembering how to paint!

A friend of ours offered to have the children for a bit today so I made an attempt to get on with finishing my three spreads for my dummy book which has been taking far, far too long... wish I could fix that darn time stasis machine!
I don't currently have my own work space in the new house, so I took possesion of our tiny dining room for the day and just, only just, squeezed my drawing boards onto the teeny weeny table!

A great impetous for getting on with chiselling off the old crumbly mortar from the walls of what will become my eventual studio!
I found myself terrified of putting brush to these paintings again after such a long time away from them. I don't usually leave a painting until its finished and never come back to finished pieces to meddle, but events just got in the way of progress on these.
I moved them on and the dragon spread on the easel is now finished, but am having somewhat of a crisis of confidence in the quality of any of them.
I think really this has more to do with the fact that these paintings will have to try to sell my story to a potential publisher, and this being my first shot at it I'm finding it hugely intimidating. Still its a learning curve and you don't know if you don't try it. I'll just brace for those rejection letters and dig around for some self-belief!
Here's a bit of work-in-progress on one of the spreads anyway...


I'm looking forward to getting this whole project wrapped up and putting it all together in its 'promo package' as it were, but actually I'm itching to get started on my next story which right now I have so much more confidence in, I'm really excited about the whole feeling of it.
I'll just give myself a little time to get settled and wait for the words to unravel from the images that have been tucked away in my mind all this time.
The natural rhythm of my creative wanderings seem to be leaning back towards language and writing at the moment, so I feel its almost time to begin!

Easter Dragons and Raven Prophets....

Here's a very happy Easter Dragon for you by Elora age 7...
It seems the Easter bunny still managed to find us at our new house which is great because we love Easter Egg Hunts!

I hope you've all enjoyed a Happy Easter Day! Signs of Spring are gathering every day, the Blackthorn blossoms in the hedgerows are flowering, birds nesting, trees are budding new green leaves... will it be Ash or Oak this year I wonder?

Oak before Ash we're in for a splash,
Ash before Oak we're in for a soak!

Though with hose pipe bans already and hard cracked earth we could do with a soak even though the early sunshine has been lovely...

April Oaks and Ash

Here's a picture of the Badger tracks Elora found last week on one of our spring walks, if you look closely there seem to be big badger tracks and small badger tracks here going in different directions...

And finally the temptations that come of running your own gallery got the better of me this weekend with this wonderful creature, made by local Bath ceramicist David Craddock...
This particular sculpture came in to our shop just when I was in the midst of my Huginn & Munnin Raven series of paintings, and has been whispering to me to take him home ever since!

So home he came to keep watch over his Crystal Hoard and to gaze enigmatically out over the woods where the Buzzards roost....


I feel he needs a name but have a feeling he will choose his own when the time is right... meanwhile the shadow-rustle of dusky feathers and wry taunting croak of glitter-eyed prophets fill my imagination with omens and half-heard mythologies, a whisper of wingbeats in the half-light...

Of Golden Moonrise and Wolfish Tales...

I couldn't resist trying to get a picture of the Moonrise earlier this evening - she was huge, full and very golden, swathed in soft trailing gossamer scarfs of cloud (though the Moon comes out white in my photo) She seemed a gentle Moon tonight in a soft, still sky, gentling the shadows that are so often hard etched and chill when mooncast.
It seems a good image to bring the day full circle... I am still trying to find that elusive day to tie up my three unfinished paintings, when it will come I still don't know. But today I started clearing the outbuilding that will eventually become my studio, before heading off with the children for a picnic across the fields beyond our earthen 'Badger Lane' where the neighbourhood of diggers have turned out all their winter bedding all down the bank.

With my eldest whose mind is wonderfully enrapt by mythologies,we began to discuss Fenris, or Fenrir the Wolf, how he was tricked by the Gods into magical chains and how Tyr lost his hand. And then how Fenris eventually was to devour the sun when Ragnarok descended, plunging the World into Darkness and Ice.

As we walked home we talked on how Elora might outwit such a Wolf as Fenris if she were to meet him, and between us came up with a story I might one day try to write that has much to do with the Moon and explains why wolves seem (in stories) to howl for the Moon! I will keep the rest under my hat until I manage to tame the story with words on a page! Tee hee!

So, Wolves and Moons and then such a beautiful moonrise to end the day, what could be better...? I'll tell you, as we were saying goodbye to some dear friends who had come to play this afternoon what should glide low overhead out of the pale and empty sky, right over our house... A Red Kite! Unmistakeable V-shaped tail and long, broad splayed wings, huge and magnificent! I have only ever seen them in Wales and although I know they are increasing in numbers down in Exmoor, I never imagined we'd see a Kite in Somerset. I was so thrilled, I do hope he visits us again!


I will leave you with a powerful Wolfish poem by my favourite poet Ted Hughes that I have always loved called:

'Amulet'

Inside the Wolf's fang, the mountain of heather.
Inside the mountain of heather, the Wolf's fur.
Inside the Wolf's fur, the ragged forest.
Inside the ragged forest, the Wolf's foot.
Inside the Wolf's foot, the stony horizon.
Inside the stony horizon, the Wolf's tongue.
Inside the Wolf's tongue, the Doe's tears.
Inside the Doe's tears, the frozen swamp.
Inside the frozen swamp, the Wolf's blood.
Inside the Wolf's blood, the snow wind.
Inside the snow wind, the Wolf's eye.
Inside the Wolf's eye, the North Star.
Inside the North Star, the Wolf's fang.

By Ted Hughes.