Catching the sparks from the wild wind...

 Time has once again seized me in its inexorable current and its true that its less frustrating to go with its flow rather than fight the tide...! Despite that feeling that life streams through our fingers like skeins of mists unravelled in the wind, I do love that wind!
Tonight outside the window you would think it was the gales of autumn blasting the sky not a wild summer storm riding past all trumpets blowing! But anyway, time tossed or wind tossed, I have somehow managed to keep a few creative sparks kindling!
Above is another page of what I have decided will be a sketchbook purely for pen and ink... I enjoyed this drawing, exploring the textures and experimenting with the beautiful glass pen my parents got me for my birthday a while back. Owls are always good fun to draw!

Words too have been wending their way onto the page... right in the middle of another story I was supposed to be working on, an entirely different story barged its way past and took hold of my pen! Its a bit wild and capricious and probably the most quickly completed tale I have written, yet it was all there waiting and full of life... I think I rather like it!
Now to start thumbnailing the images and begin work on turning it into a dummy picture book...

 The only thing is I will have to learn to draw wolves... canines of any kind I am not confident drawing, but I felt that way about dragons too, hopefully it will come if I keep sketching... here's a first attempt...

I've also been putting together some flyers to print for an exhibition.... I've not exhibited my work before - there's not that much of it that's good enough! But I will not be alone... it is to be a bit of a family collaboration, an exhibition of three generations - and that is what I've called it!
I've always been a bit too embarrassed to put my own work up in my own gallery, too much like blowing my own trumpet perhaps, but then I thought - I put so much work into putting on shows for other people, why not? It could be fun!
So it will be my Mum with her wonderful big oils on canvas of gardens and landscapes, myself with some children's illustration, life drawings and ravens, and my two bright little daughters just beginning their journey full of enthusiasm and children's innate creativity.
I think it will be a lovely way to appreciate the thread that runs through us as close family and as artists and to show each of us on our various stages of our creative paths.
Here's a quote from my press release:
 “Growing up with an Artist for a mother meant that drawing was almost like breathing for me, I could not imagine life without a sketchbook! It will be lovely to share an exhibition with my mother and also with my children, almost like passing the paintbrush on down the line...”

And here's a sneak preview of the double sided flyer..

(back)

(front)

Its a little way off just yet though... I will show you some pictures when the time comes and let you know how it went!

Finally I must MUST show you these wonderful animations I found the other night on youtube... I've always loved 'real' animation as opposed to CGI which is very clever yet leaves me a bit cold... The Russian animators to me always seemed to have something quite special, and these by Yuri Norstein have such beautiful depth of emotion, spirit and sense of wonderment, I really love them...
(sorry couldn't find one without the advert)



and here's another by the same chap, hope you enjoy them:

A creative circle, a creative life.... of music, ink and oaks...

 I was inspired today to finally break open a new sketchbook and take up pen and ink by my lovely husband Tony... I'm always frustrated by how little time and energy remain to me for anything creative after the needs of work and children have have run their course for the day... but it is very easy to say 'I'm too tired, I'm not feeling focussed, I'm stressed, maybe tomorrow...' and then let the frustration mount.
I have felt more and more out of touch with my creative self as I let these things dis-empower me until I feel seized up and disconnected. I seem to live frustration. But this is the way my life is set out right now and there is no use waiting for time that will not come...
Tony showed me today that living a creative life need not be pushed aside by what we are obliged to do and bound by from day to day, that it is up to me to stop bemoaning my lack of time and energy and to make the most of the moments and hours I do have in the fullest way...

 I sent him home from work today - he's not been well and our air compressor bust a valve at the workshop so we could not underpin any frames anyway until its fixed. By the time I got home I found that even dosed up on antibiotics and feeling rotten, he had written another really brilliant new song on his 12 string, and I thought... if he can compose music and lyrics whilst feeling like that, then what really is stopping me from getting on with some drawing and writing? Answer of course, only myself.
Unfortunately by the time we returned home again from collecting the children he had forgotten
 precisely how the rhythm went, but hopefully it will come back, it was a good one!


This is a pen and ink sketch of my favourite Oak tree in the woods behind our house, and I really enjoyed drawing it, to have only ink and twisting patterns of bark flowing through my thoughts and watch it grow from the blank white page...

I went walking in our woods a few days ago in the dappled sunlight with a cool breeze that smoothed the lines from my brow as I walked and soothed my cares away.

The meadowsweet smelled as sweet as its name...

And a special treasure waited for me to find it in the field on my return. I'd been watching a big pale buzzard quartering the field this week now the hay has been finally cut, and she left me this fine feather. Beautiful isn't it - a gift from a Sky-dweller...

Hopefully I have broken the creative deadlock and I will make efforts to do something creative everyday, whether words or images, or even just ways of thinking.... to remind me, here is a poem I have on the first page of one of my sketchbooks that I like (I think I may have posted this before somewhere maybe?):

Remember

That just to have the eyes of an artist,

that can be enough.

The ear of a poet,

that can be enough.

The soul of a human

just pointed in the direction of the divine,

that can be more than enough.

I tell you this to remind myself,

Every gesture is an act of creation

Even empty spaces and silences

can be the wings and voices of Angels.

- By Michele Linfante

Huginn & Muninn II ...

Hello folks, hope your New Year has started well, and thankyou all so much for visiting me here during 2011 and for all your kind words, encouragement and friendship along the way!
Lets hope 2012 will be a healthy and a happy one for everybody!

So here is the first painting of 2012 and the second in the series of Raven paintings I've been planning to do! For want of a better title it is for the moment called 'Huginn & Muninn II'
It is funny how its worked out - when I was working on the first Ravens painting there was a wild winter storm blowing and howling around the house, and again for this second painting the winds were furiously rattling the sash windows and stirring up the skies.
To add to the wild lament of the Stormsong outside, next doors dogs were howling mournful accompaniment, as if the wind's ghostly song were calling to some deep ancestral wild-wolfish memory! Very atmospheric!

(Closeup detail)

I painted this larger than the first which gave me more room for expression in the penwork on the Ravens which I like, but as yet I am undecided whether the sky is working or whether there's too much going on in this one. I want it to be dramatic and full of movement, but not too fussy either... one to sleep on maybe...
Although there are parts of the wet-on-wet and salt that I really like just for their own sake...




I did enjoy these two fellows though, and think they're better drawn than the first pair. There is something rather magnificent about a Raven... I wonder which should be Huginn - or Thought, and which one Muninn - Memory?


Here are the two so far together, I think I prefer the sky in the first and the Ravens in the second! Oh well, tonight I think I might stretch some more paper ready for a third, slightly different this time... (Sorry about the slightly murky photo in the second one!) Hope you like them! Bye for now...