Post-Haste

          I've got to be brief this week, as I'm the middle of various work deadlines, and also, am not feeling too well. Like a lot of other people, I've a bit of a cold, a bit of sore throat, bit of headache... And it's Davy's birthday meal-out this weekend, too, so I'm saving myself for that.
          First, I'd like to share this short film with you. I've copied it from YouTube, where it was posted by the BBC Wildlife Trust, but it was filmed and sent to the BBC by a friend of mine. I'm not saying where it was filmed, for fear that government sharp-shooters get to hear of it, but it was somewhere in the deep, dark depths of the West Midlands concrete wilderness.

So there's hope that even if the government stupidly persist in killing one of our oldest native species, despite very little evidence that doing so will stop the spread of TB in cattle, badgers will simply join foxes in our backgardens. This one already co-exists with a family of foxes and several cats.

          And then there's this lad:- 

 Not the best photo, I admit. He now has a frost nibbled maple leaf in his crown - an English maple, Joan, sorry - and oak leaves sprouting from the corners of his mouth in best Green Man style. A bird of a species unknown to science has built a nest against his right cheek. There will be eggs in it, but at the moment the glue's still drying and I don't want to add extra weight.

          I spend as much time looking at him and thinking as I do adding anything. I'm thinking: apple-blossom above the nest, and an apple against his left cheek, opposite the nest. Too obvious? Maybe. But then, the seasons are pretty obvious. Not much point trying to be original about them.

          As soon as I get my hands on some paint - couldn't find any in my local poundstore, Madwippet - I'll add some colour, just to make it easier to tell what I'm doing.

 

 

Clowns and Green Men

         Did nothing this week, except the usual noodling around with blogs, emails and so on. Well, did write the beginning of a new story that I promised my agent.
          I thought I'd put up the clown mask I've been playing around with. I partly painted it with white acrylic, but as I don't have much paint and no brush (I used my fingers) things haven't gone very far. The lips are coloured with a felt-tipped pen, but I'm not happy with them. Acrylic would be better, but I was so overwhelmed with the choice of paints that I ended up not buying any. The clown is based on portraits of Grimaldi - I wanted to avoid the Ronald MacDonald look - and his hair should be blue. There should be bright red triangles painted on his cheeks too. I don't know if I'll bother to finish him.
          I started playing around with the Green Man too. My 'studio is one corner of my kitchen table, and while I'm waiting for the kettle to boil, I seize bits of paper and card and work on it for ten minutes at a time.  It started like this - 

A cheap plastic mask of tragedy, which I coated with vaseline. After lots of paste and torn paper, it turned into this - 

This detail of the top left hand corner shows the cardboard holly leaves, and a crumpled paper sycamore leaf,

It's all made out of old newspapers, cardboard boxes, unwanted junk mail. At the moment I'm trying to make a small bird's nest by layering paper around a small (greased) measuring cup. As I want to keep the whole thing light, I'll have to find something I can model acorns and hazel-nuts around. I am looking at household objects and bits of rubbish with a speculative eye.

          From Green Men to Blue Cats...

As He Would Draw It

 '...He falls to such perusal of my face

As he would draw it.'

The mask former

          Starting with a quote from 'Hamlet', eh? Sure to knock 'em dead.
          I was very struck by those lines when I first read 'Hamlet' as a teenager.
          I spent a lot of time drawing then, often from life. I knew that, although you might think you were closely observing something, you never really looked at anything until you tried to draw it. The relationships of one part to another, the density of a shadow, the texture, the angles, the precise delination of a curve...
         The curves of the Oseberg or Gokstad ships will break your heart. I know: I've tried to draw them.

The Oseberg Ship

          Was Shakespeare an artist, then, as well as a playwright?
          But what really brings on these thoughts is my Green Man project. I wrote here some months ago that I'd woken up one morning - without ever having any such thought before in my life as far as I can remember - thinking: 'You should make a Green Man mask out of papier-mache.' And then my brother posted that he'd had much the same thought at about the same time.
          Those sort of things tend to stick in your head.
           I've been busy, and haven't actually ripped up one bit of paper for the Green Man, but I have been thinking about him a lot. A lot. And one happy side-effect of this has been an increase in the intensity of my observation. When I go out for a walk now, it's not just a bit of exercise in the fresh air - it's research.
          I'm perusing things as I would make them.
          I'm noticing the different veinings and textures of leaves. Some have plump, pillowy leaves with grooves between the veins. Others are flatter and smoother, but grained. There are pinked edges and smooth edges. Hazel leaves are almost circular, not 'leaf-shaped' at all.
          I'm noticing the different ways they spring from their twig or stem; how they grow in rosettes or spirals.

          I'm studying, with great interest, the dead stalks and seed-heads standing in the hedgerows. I've always enjoyed the brilliant red berries, but now I'm seeing how many different shapes of them there are.
         I imagine botanists and gardeners enjoy this pleasure in just looking all the time. Perhaps people fascinated by other things do too - people who're enthralled, say, by the study of beetles and other small cattle. But it's a pleasure I'd mislaid somewhat since, all those years ago, I used to stare at things, pencil in hand, hard enough to bore a hole in them.
          Whether or not I can reproduce any of these leaves and things remains to be seen - but even if I can't, I'll still have enjoyed this renewed pleasure in just looking. Dying leaves, lemon yellow with splotches and spots of green. Bramble leaves of a deep, glowing maroon red, that you'd think could never be natural, but is.

          In the meantime, I'm approaching the Green Man with due caution, by having a trial run at something else, just to see what I can learn. I'm using a cheap plastic mask (top) as a form. Can you tell what it is yet?

          The big news of the week, as far as I'm concerned, is that my agent says that she's enjoying Sterkarm 3, and will be in touch soon, with notes.

          She also says she found it confusing, in parts. It's not just me, then. I'm hoping she'll figure it out, and explain it to me.

          And Blott's back! So's Ashteroth...

The Dogs of Papier Mache

        

    The photo is of a whippet sculpture, made by my friend and frequent commentator on this blog, Madwippit, aka author Karen Bush.  (Not only an author, but an expert horsewoman and riding teacher, a dog-trainer, and now we see, also a pretty nifty sculptress.)

         Karen says:

Karen Bush

Here's a picture of a papier mache greyhound I made of Maxi for her owner, who won it in a charity auction.

           Karen sent me the photo because of my post last week, about my persistent brain-worm that pestered me to make a Green Man mask.  I woke up with the idea in my head of making one out of papier-mache – I suppose simply because we used to make paper-mache things when we were kids.  I seem to remember the older of my brothers setting out to make a brontosaurus (he was mad about dinosaurs).  The thing ended up looking more like a cat, so he painted it black and called it 'Tiddles.'

          Karen has knowledgeable tips about papier-mache (as well as horse-riding on a budget, and planting dog-friendly gardens.)  She says:

          It's fun - have a go. It's also cheap - newspaper torn (not cut) into strips is perfect (tissue paper is good for the finishing layers) - wallpaper paste is easy to use and keeps for weeks and weeks - make up a small batch and keep it in a tupperware type container with a lid. If you want to sculpt more you can make your own papier mache pulp but it's a bit of a faff and much easier to buy it in dried form which you add water to - use an electric hand mixer to whizz it and add some PVA glue to make it a little more plastic and stop it from drying too quickly. The pulp sets like rock when it's dry. I prefer using just newspaper, but pulp is handy for detail like toes or the coats of shaggy dogs.

          Look forward to seeing your Green (Wo)Man! 

                   Karen :-)

          This is quite encouraging.  I can feel the call of papier-mache pulp and PVA.  But I must resist!  I have the Sterkarm book to finish; I have an outline to work up for my agent (which I haven’t even starting thinking about, but which I have Davy researching.  That is, he's reading a book he wanted to read anyway, and reporting back to me on it.)  And next week it’s the Scattered Authors' Society's four-day conference, and I haven’t even started to begin to think about organising myself for it…

         But just look at that lovely whippet.  Could I make something as good as that?  Could I?

         If you want to see more whippets, have a look at Karen's blog here. 

         And if you're interested in ghostly Black Dogs, you might like my contribution to Lucy Coats' Fantabulous Fridays blog here.


         And a review of mine is up on the Awfully Big Blog Adventure's review wing here.