Still working on ideas for covers.

A book can become very successful with the right cover, sink without trace with the wrong one. I thought I had got the 'knack' of covers but have been struggling with this one. Maybe getting somewhere now but just want to try one more thing I think.

Covers, ideas, thinking aloud and a window.

Seals, sunshine, sketching 2

When I was younger I would draw all the time. Now for the first time I am learning how to look sharper, better. Leaning about how drawing is memory, is seeing, is learning. Simple lines capture shape.

I had many words to write, but wanting to make the most of the time that I have today, instead put only pictures.

One Cheetah, Nine Cherries

When I started this painting, months ago, I thought it was called 'One Cheetah, Eight Cherries'. It lay on the drawing board for a long time, something not quite right, until I picked it up yesterday, moved a paw, added a cherry and then it became 'Mine'. I have seen Elmo look at me like that when he has a mouse by the tail.

Roughs

Cat cover

East of the Sun

Maybe

The thing is, sometimes when you are trying to reach the end of a book and you have been working, all through Christmas ( appart from Christmas day) and you still have quite a lot to do and you are trying to sell a car, buy a van and get a computer fixed and have two teenagers doing exams and another very pressing job and have to contact the school in Paris about what you are doing there and try and remember all the schools you said you would go to at the beginning of March, and three dogs to walk, well, sometimes a picture just doesn't go quite as it should. And maybe this is because it is difficult to find the peace of mind required to concentrate. Or maybe it is just the time of the month that imbalances everything. Or maybe it is the alignment of the stars. But whatever it is, I do not like it and it matters not what anyone else says, time to try again. With a new rough. And not feel just a teeny weeny bit of panic in the heart when publisher says all has to be camera ready by the first of March.

I had a little nut tree......

..and nothing would it bare,

But a sliver nutmeg,

And a golden pear.

The King of Spain's daughter

Came to visit me,

All for the sake

Of my little nut tree.

I skipped over the water,

I skipped over the sea,

And all the birds in the air

Couldn't catch me.

 

Thaw

Someone has stolen the stars from the sky. The wind is rising and the spell of cold has broken. The earth is no longer white.

Outside, sheep and rain, inside, pigs and pipers....

...and cheetahs.

On the beach this morning.

A curlew, lone and calling across the sea.
Sand patterns drawn by the water.
Sun splintered light, fractured by wind and wave.
A pied oystercatcher with a clown bright beak.
Mirror water showing the sky her beautiful face.

A very special offer.

On November 27th, from 5pm, Solva Woollen Mill, Middlemill, Pembrokeshire will be having a book launch for The Ice Bear. I will be there signing books, hopefully with feathers in my hair and pen in hand. During the evening each book bought will have a raffle ticket with it and at the end of the evening a ticket will be pulled out of a box or a hat and the winner will get the drawing seen above. To make this fair for people who live a long long way from Pembrokeshire this will also apply to all books bought from the mill's online shop. All books at the mill are signed, with best wishes. The drawing is an original sketch in pencil of the Ice Bear Mother, on board. The image above is an 'almost finished' as I will probably fiddle a bit with it over the next few days. The offer applies to all of my books at Solva Woollen Mill, not just The Ice Bear and they have most titles there.

On Friday I heard that Tell Me a Dragon had been nominated for the CILIP Kate  Greenaway Medal. All the dragons in the book have their claws crossed that they make it through to the shortlist to be announced in April of next year.

There is no way to spell how this makes me feel inside.

Finally found a way to make it work but the painting is still not sitting right. So have sent another rough to my publishers, much lighter, much more movement and much more representative of what is between the covers.

And you can play 'spot the nursery rhyme' with this one. 

 

Finding cats

Working hard on drawings for I Am Cat and I have had help from the cats, but especialy Pixie who managed to cat-sneak into my studio in order to act as editor and designer, and life model all rolled into one.
Putting the pages together so that they work as a book, illustrate the text, add to the words, is always difficult, especialy when there are so few words.

Small sketches come first, doodling around a design, asking questions. Like dreams, in my head I can see these in colour as finished pieces, the drawings just remind me later, what goes where and how. And sometimes pages change altogether.

The sketch above is for the last but one page and I realised half way through that it needed to change to be more intimate, closer.

Still have a cougar and a leopard to find.  

 

Green light

Early morning sunlight on vegetables made the garden beautiful. Later today I will turn the spinach into bhaji and the courgettes into a prawn and courgette Indian dish. For now they look glorious.

Much to do. In teh garden there is spinach and leeks, courgettes and beetroot, a few roses clinging to the memory of summer and some honeysuckle. Also passionflowers climbing and twisting up the wall and the drain pipe. And ginger cats. The flowers on Kiffer's grave are strong.

1. Sign books for The Mill.

2. Tidy up computer desk and work table. ( I keep buying things, and saying, I will put this on my desk. Soon there will be no room to work. But I have a beautiful Amanda Popham sculpture that needs to sit on a desk, so it needs space.)

3. Draw out and begin to paint KNRT calendar painting. ( Maybe squeeze in a ginger cat and a polar bear?)

4. Roughs for I Am Cat.

5. Blog post. ( Listening to the lovely Karine Polwart singing.)

6. Check that there is an Ice Bear Powerpoint, and dragons and Little Bear for trip away in October.

7. Make list.

8.Walk dogs.

10. Find moments to read The Anatomy of Ghosts by Andrew Taylor. ( This is my book for September from Mr B's Emporium and it will have to be a good one to follow on from the wonderful Hummingbird's Daughter by Luis Alberto Urrea. His book still haunts me. Such a wonderful story so well told.)

11. Work on website and links on blog to website, and hang new work in The House of Golden Dreams.