Ahaaaarrrr me Hearties....

What fun we had last night at the debut gig of my husband's latest new band 'Mutineers'!
With a name like that of course there was a strong pirate theme going on with most of the audience dressed as pirates too, and lots of Aaaars!
The name comes from the fact that the drummer's great, great Grandfather was hanged for piracy during the American War of Independance for smuggling sheep, if I have all my facts right!

I thought I'd do the proud wifey bit and show you some (very bad blurry) photos.... My husband Tony is the lead guitarist (the one dressed as a pirate... oh hang on!)

Pirate Dad and his two piratey rascals!

The acoustic set - Tony, Ju and Wendy

The second set was good loud rock with everyone up dancing till the end...

Little Pirate Elswyth

This ones very blurry but gives a closer impression of the energy of the show... Tony in all his bands does a lot of larking around and daft dancing, which is great fun to watch!

Till the next time... Ahaaarrrrrr!

A blog award...! And the fantastic adventures of Mr Fox....

Mr Fox by my daughter Elora Age 7

First of all I'd like to thank Lynn of Beneath the Bracken , who does wonderful evocative paintings and mixed media art, for sending me a blog award! I've not had one of these before, but it was lovely to be thought of, so after a quick study up of the rules I will certainly have a go at joining in!

So what I gather is that this award is to be passed on to five blogs you enjoy, each with fewer than 200 followers. Upon receiving one the idea is to:

1. Thank the giver and link back to the blogger who gave it to you .
2. Reveal your top 5 picks and let them know by leaving a comment on their blog.
3. Copy and paste the award on your blog.
4. Hope that the people you’ve sent the award to forward it to their five favourite bloggers.


Hmmm, so who to pick, there are so many great creative blogs out there and many more yet to be discovered. I've chosen some writerly ones and some arty ones that I really enjoy, so please do check them out!

The Twirling Dragon - The wonderful art of Kim Kincaid who is always so generous in sharing her learning curves, new directions and works in progress... I admire and learn!

WOL's River of Stones - This is my favourite of WOL's three lovely blogs (her others are to be found here at The Owl Underground and WOL's Poetry Place ) Some lovely Wordcraft going on here which I really enjoy, thanks WOL!

The Studio Window - I love wood cuts and engravings and Cornish Printmaker Sue has a lovely blog here where she shares the fascinating journey, stage by stage from sketch through to the final proofs... always makes me itch to have a go myself!

Seven Miles of Steel Thistles - There is such a wealth of fascinating literary knowledge, of mythology, story and language here on Katherine Langrish's brilliant blog... I could get lost here for hours! A treasure trove for any writer, or reader for that matter!

The Golden Fish - This is a really inspiring blog I discovered a little while back combining beautiful images and words. I've been really enjoying these poems and stunning photography!


And so, now for a bit of prouid Mumness! To continue from the lovely Mr Fox picture done by my daughter Elora above, here's the rest of the series of drawings she was doing that I was rather taken by! She has a big thing for foxes and I thought these were so full of fun and action, great characters...!


Hope you enjoyed them as much as I did!

Caislean Oir..... A Contest of Beauties...

I've been giving some thought to Jackie Morris' recent post of 'A Contest of Beauties' - please do go and have a look at what its all about and see some of the links to beautiful things that are growing there...
I may post some more considered thoughts later if I can untangle what it is I would try to express about this, but lately having been focussed on the dark, turbulant and difficult, to be reminded and to take notice anew of all these things of beauty, and to think on what it is we perceive as beautiful has been good for me...
For now, because beauty to me in all its forms must provoke an emotional response or connection, a moving of the soul, a welling up of feeling, a filling up of the heart, I will share this song by Clannad which always stops me in my tracks... music is a great conduit to the soul...

(There is also a rough translation of the Gaelic in the comments just under the youtube clip which is lovely to understand as you listen to that beautiful language)

A spark in the dark.... or unlocking writers block!

I'm not quite sure what you will make of this post... There is a story waiting, but for a long time with writing I have felt disconnected, seized up, dashing as I do between running a business full time whilst still trying to be a good mum, so my creative headspace is all cramped and smothered by everyday demands.
I need to try and think.., no, live like a writer again with open senses, noticing, feeling and listening even if there's no time to actually write. Even that thought helped to unlock a few words earlier on...

Where have my Words gone
Winging away over
Wastelands of worry

How shall I find them
with a numb gaze
My very soul muffled
caged within my bones
that will not wake

Hmmmm, well its better than nothing at all! The story is all there, I have the feeling of it, the imagery. I can almost hear the rhythm and timbre of the characters' voices just beyond hearing, I can see the shape and colour of the illustrations, but just yet as through a running stream in ripples and eddies ravelling and unravelling.
But I can't force the words to shape themselves, I have to wait, let them rise to the surface clear and fresh when shade, sound and colour all come into focus.

In the meantime I can work on regaining my writing mind, finding a flow of language again. So I took up a notebook and thought ok, I will just write words down until something, anything comes out! It turned out to be quite an interesting excersise so I thought I'd show you what happened...
I wrote very quickly (as you can see by my scrawl) just as random words popped into my head without time to think too much, probebly no more than 20 seconds a page... just to see what happened...
These pages are not to any ends, just to excersise my mind and try to break the deadlock! I'd be very interested to hear if any other writerly types of you out there have any excercises or prompts that you get going with?? It can be a bit of an uphill struggle sometimes!

So, after all those words how about some pictures! I'll leave you with a few photos of our Bonfire Night the other week which was great fun.... I just love being around fires out of doors with the incense of woodsmoke and the breath of night air... A spark in the Autumn dark...

Pumpkins and Pirates...!

Halloween can be an exciting time for little folk, I thought I might show you some of the fun my two had over the weekend...

We spent the day carving Jack O Lanterns, decorating spooky cakes, with pumpkin soup for lunch and dressing up ready for a little party later on at our good friend's old cottage...
(You can see our lovely hand pulled woodcut of 'Rebel of Ravens' by Julia Manning on the wall behind that we only recently bought from her wonderful studio nearby... it fits the scene quite well doesn't it! I love her work!)

They can Raaah really, really loud too!! That one shook the windows!


Arrival at the spooky cottage by the river that flows darkly in eerie echoes under the old stone bridge... there were little pumpkin lanterns all up the path...



Lots of spooky food... my clever friend made these brilliant orange jellies...

After lots of fun and a scary walk in the dark down the lane and over the footbridge where the water trolls creep, we made our way home to find our own lanterns guarding our back steps...

(My older daughter Elora told me that at school they had said that they do not celebrate Halloween because they only celebrate 'good' things.... Hmmmm, I could say a rather lot about that concerning certain types of schools' blinkered approach to teaching theology and shallow views of other traditions... I better not get started!!)


On a slightly different subject, just for fun here are a couple of quick projects I've just finished... a poster for my husbands new band's first gig...

My beloved Tony is the guitarist on the left... he really does have a beard exactly like that, just right for a band called the 'Mutineers' really! They ended up with a pirate theme because the drummer's great, great, great (I think) Grandfather was actually hanged for piracy - for smuggling... wait for it... sheep, yes sheep, across the Atlantic! The dog is called Scooby Doo and is the drummers pride and joy, he's a really beautiful dog!

And finally I'll leave you with a little (badly photographed) painting for an old friend of mine... he writes short stories and every so often he will ask me for an illustration, usually with quite a lot of specific and bizarre things in them! I am more than happy for him to have these as gifts but he insists on paying me in whisky and chocolate... don't knock a good thing!

Meet Stompin Dave....

Last night we went to see this very clever chap, 'Stompin Dave Allen' at a tiny pub in Pilton. He was fantastic fun to watch and we were quite flabbergasted at how he could sing, play fiddle, guitar or banjo and flatfoot all at the same time! I was very impressed!
He even did a stint of banjo playing behind the head whilst flatfooting, and throwing and catching his fiddle and bow mid reel without missing a step... excellent stuff!!

More Life Drawing at Bath Artists Studios...

5 minute pose

Firstly, thankyou to all who left such encouraging comments on my Dragon spread, its really great to get feedback and I really appreciate your words and thoughts! I haven't put the silver leaf on that one yet but I have started the 2nd spread... I'm only doing three, just enough to give an impression of what the finished book would be like because I know editors are likely to want things changed!

So anyway, yesterday I went to another six hour life drawing workshop, this time at Bath Artist Studios which I hadn't been to before. It was great, a big life room but with a friendly, relaxed kind of atmosphere, lots of private artists studios as well and a big common room with comfy sofas and a kettle!
I haven't done any proper drawing since Salisbury back in August so I was quite rusty as usual and it took a while to get back up to speed!
We started with some 5 minute warm ups (though I prefer to start with even quicker gestures of one or two minutes usually) here's some of them...

This is my usual approach of line, gesture and frantic measuring, which means I don't get a great deal down in the 5 minutes especially before I've found my stride!
The tutor suggested an approach I hadn't tried before which was to use a broad flat edge of charcoal to 'block in' the mass or shape of the whole form very quickly and loosely and then work in with line afterwards...
Heres a couple of 2 minute examples, quite interesting...

So I thought I'd try starting with this approach on a longer pose and see how it went... it certainly got me a lot further on a lot quicker and simplified the measuring to some extent. And it did leave me more time for rendering and enjoying the shadows... this pose below was 40 minutes...

The last part if the afternoon was one long pose, so I started with some very quick rough prelims to find all the lines through the form...

Then worked in charcoal trying to remember all of the various techniques I have learned over the last few years, but still had a great deal of trouble with the bent knee!

This one (above) was about an hour and a half, (I think her head and right arm are a little out of proportion though!) Finally I decided to have a bit of a play with dip pen and ink, with some white gouche highlights for the last 10 minutes - its great fun, but I find you have to be bold, and just go for it! All in all a very enjoyable day!