Junes adventures part 1

a mad couple of weeks, so much happening, no time to do art. Art requires a balance between input & output, that is real life inspiration and interaction going in, and Art development creative output coming out. Masses of the former as we've traveled about recently, none of the later. Also we normally don't see many grown-ups, living so remotely, there is always plenty of time to digest and mull any social interaction, adding it to the pot of inspiration. However this month its been incredible how many amazing people we have been lucky enough to spend time with, my head is brimming with ideas !

Saturday 19th June
Belfast Puppet Picnic and parade. such a riot of music, colour smiles, laughter, dancing creativity community projects dancing their way through Belfast, it bought a lump to my throat, goosebumps, something timeless and magical, international, so many memories of festivals from another lifetime, colour & joy.People coming together in the sunshine, I could have watched them all day.

Sunday 20th June
I read folklore & went over some work while the boys went swimming & played computer games. my head starting to spin with giants, ghosts, seal-folk, tasks in threes, lost worlds and layers of metaphor long lost.

Monday 21st June
Met up with Micheal Carroll of Quantum Prophecy books fame & the brilliant Leonia. Had a fantastic day doing the Antrim coast tour, Torr point, Carrick a Rede rope bridge, Bushmills, the Giants causeway. The weather was idyllic, the sea colours mesmerising. The company wonderful, ideas bouncing around.

 Tuesday 22nd June
a day off, to do more folk stories, fairy stories & celtic tales reading. reminded how much of an early influence tales like Thomas the rhymer and Tam y Linn were.

Wednesday 23rd June
Pearl jam concert in Belfast. had fan club tickets, queued early with the fan club, coralled in pens like sheep, 3 hours people watching, many familiar faces from the London gig last year, admiring lovely tattoos, many people from all over Europe following the tour. got in early, got 3rd row standing position right up near Mike McCreadys side of the stage. Ben Harper and relentless 7 supporting. Ben's voice incredible, the music & guitars are great, prog rocky, folk, blues, lots of influences, but I could listen to his voice alone endlessly.
Then after such a long wait, the stage set, the lights dimmed, the intro music I'd heard at last years concert came on, the tears started, the crowd surged forward wedging us into position no feet or elbow room, 20/30 000 ? people united in song & emotion. Wham. this time wasn't so physically painful, there were no scary moments in the mosh pit, the folks were were wedged against were all lovely, apologies to the guy who had my hair in his face all night. I managed to catch a couple of guitar picks from Mike. The most emotional song was ' amongst the waves '  read the words to work out why. Wonderful night. can't wait for the next tour. can't wait to do some more paintings inspired. Love these guys.

Thursday 24th June
6 am start, ferry, long drive home, un-pack and re-pack for next trip. fire training night first aid refresher until late...

adventure part 2 to follow.

To Russia with Love

for those of you who haven't heard, I'm going to Russia, to the International Arts symposium of Elabuga.
information HERE this should get translated for you by google.
This incredible & exciting opportunity is all thanks to Lynn Bennett-MacKenzie an artist who paints gorgeous dream-like work & lives up the coast. Lynn was invited by the symposium organisers and was good enough to share the contact & information. I leapt at the chance as I have always had a thing about Russia. This 'thing' became focuses into a particular obsession in 1997. I was at the time, running my small pottery from home, a cold wee cottage in a remote glen, a single mum with 3 children & beyond the dogs, cats, hens, ducks & a succession of eccentric pottery customers- I had little human company, no money & life was hard. This Christmas a shy but kind local crofter left a gift for us in by the front door. Some meat from his own sheep and the years National geographic magazines. I have been a vegetarian since I was 18 & had raised the children without meat. However in the spirit of this gift, I roast & ate the mutton and read those magazines. One had an article about a tattooed mummy recently excavated from the Pazyryk region, the Altai mountains of Siberia. This woman who had lived 2000 years before me & carried such incredible artwork on her skin became a revelation & inspiration. I can still remember the feeling that rose as I looked at that artwork, the alien meat in my system, the woman's tomb with the horses, her goblet, the carvings, her last meal. It still blows me away. why ? who knows. I'm not the only one, there's been a few strange articles & books often with a 'new age' twist. whatever, it just hit me and that's enough. To go there and see her, see the artifacts, travel the steppes became my dream. A dream that sustained me through many more difficult years. No matter how bad things got, I could retreat to the back of a horse in my head and gallop across the grasslands, into the Taiga forests, peace was to be had there, and hope of better days.

What was the connection between the pictish animal art and the Scythian/ pazyryk art ? how did the migration of peoples happen, how do the time lines connect ? why had it hit me so ? Why did it just feel so right to take these animal designs, re-work them with a pictish/ Celtic twist and take them as my own tattoos?

In 2000 a Czech professor who had traveled the region, and kindly sent me photocopies of images from the tomb, before all this was available on the Internet- he invited me to join an expedition to Altai, 6 weeks on horse back. Of course at that time, there was no way I could leave my children. family first. But I figured where one opportunity existed, others would follow in the future.

This year my last child left home, of course I miss them all badly. However this means that theres nothing to stop me travelling, except money, work commitments. scary !  I thought that it would take a while to save, to plan, to start dipping my toe into the whole new world of the empty nest. Maybe I would do a VSO ? maybe I wouldn't need to travel, maybe contentment could be found at home? Siberia had already served its purpose by inspiring me so long, there was no point rushing impatiently into a new independent of dependants world...however not a couple of months into the empty nest, up to my eyes in art projects, and this opportunity has come up.

Its not Altai, but it is over half way there. The symposium will have a diverse range of international artists, we will be creating a body of work on the subject of "breath of the Epos"  fairy tales, hero myths, and folk lore. Its all mind goggling !  I shall blog the process, the journey, the art the adventure as it happens. cultures, personal identity, gender roles, language, societies attitude to the arts, theres already a lot of stuff kicking in just through speaking to the organisers & other participants. So exciting !

more soon.

Pearl Jam gig last year

Theres another Pearl Jam competition, this time for a comic strip.. heres my hasty job done today. After next webnesday I'll have to do another one, as we're going to see them again in Belfast. Woo Ha!

sunny California

heres a section of a comic sample page for someone for something. Thought I'd try just painting rather than ink & colouring. NEXT job !

Spinechiller guest slot.

As the lovely Ben F Clark is on paternity leave we were very proud to be asked to provide a guest 'Spinechillers' comic strip for Renegade Arts Entertainment. When I saw We I mean of course the lexical mastery of Jim Cambell on letters, the comedy gold provided my Richmond A Clements, and art humbly by yours truely.
 Created by the BFC, "'The Spine Chillers' relates the little known story about the time the worlds greatest writers shared a small boarding house to create some of the most loved horror stories of all time."

Here be a taster, to read the terrifying conclusion ... read here

another local painting

View of Port Na Cridhe ( spelling ? ), from behind Slum bay Island , lochcarron. around a3 acrylic. this has been on the easel a month or so, really need to up productivity, not sure how...stupid short 24 hour day.

The wind rose up...

This has been bursting to get out for ages, the wee girl was climbing the tree out of curiosity but the wind appears to have carried her off. I wish I had animating software still, I wish I had time to let her out to play more often.
I'm pretty dissatisfied with the watercolour finish, I've been getting spoilt doing colours digitally, so much deeper & richer, but still something on paper is nice. This paper didnt seem to like masking fluid etc though which is weird when I really punish it with acrylics to no ill effect.

I wonder what will happen next, I think the wind is gathering strength....

pen & ink practice

haven't drawn in pen & ink for ages, the temptation to get brushes out & speed things up is usually too great. I used to draw mostly detailed scribbly fine pen drawings, then comic work has required a different approach- one which I've never been happy with..so somewhere between the brush & the scribble, the fantasy & the real I'll keep looking until it all comes together & makes sense.

3, 2, 1, ...shhhhh

Gairloch library, summer reading scheme theme is 'Space Hop' so of course we'll need a space rocket in which to read our books. So armed with 2 and a half hours, cardboard boxes, paint, parcel tape and some 4th year pupils we set to work.

Bio-diversity day at the Smithy

A soggy wet day & back to the Smithy. A quick re-cap for folks, this is the Heritage Centre that I used to run, due to problems with the committee I resigned & walked away. The committee imploded, the building & grounds have been trashed through neglect & I've been having big problems for the last 5 years with this 'charity' as I still own the workshop building on their land. Flash forward > a new committee, a new name, new organisation have taken it over ( some are still the same individuals ), new momentum to fix things up & move forward. 

So to start things of on Saturday 28th a Biodiversity event was planned to kick start a few things, a wild life garden being created . Tom and Leslie Kilbride from north Applecross coast were showing how to create rope, fibres, dye & much more from nettles. The nettle rope was brilliant!

 Paul Swan, our local flora & fauna expert was there with one of his popular 'wildlife' quizzes, " is it a dinosaur bone?".

 Rich and myself were starting off the mosaic panel that will go on the building end wall, there will be three panels showing images from various ages representing History & natural Heritage of the area. We making the mosaic from Glass shards, recycled from the 'Shards' -Stained Glass company based up at Arrina. This techinique is one which I started using many years ago when I had loads of this scrap glass which I also used to melt into my pottery. I ran many workshops in making these mosaics and you see other people now producing them locally.

The event was busy with a steady flow of people coming in out of the rain all day, local and visitors. It certainly shows that the Smithy could be a success again in the future with everyone pulling together.

heritage mosaic

I am doing a large interpretative mosaic for a local project. This is the layout for the first panel of three, I've roughly clumped the content into three ages, ancient ( this one ) , old, and modern. having enough Glass shards in nice colours will be a challenge. each panel is 61cm x 122 cm. Another challenge will be weather proofing it. On Saturday I'm doing a workshop to tie in with a biodiversity thing & will start this one off .

Bristol Comic Expo

Friday 21st May we headed off to The Bristol Comic Expo. We look forward to this event as its the first one on the calender after the burn out that is Hi-Ex...

talking of Hi-Ex we got Dates organised with Eden Court last week - its 26th 27th March 2011, put it in your diary's NOW. I've also taken over web duties for now so, thats going to be fun..

talking of fun, Bristol.. the volcano was behaving itself we tore ourselves away from work, flight no problems, a nice warm Inverness to ...bang! a sauna of bristol- Scorchio! It got to 29 degrees over the weekend. mmm you can imagine how that smelt in a crowded room full of comic fans, yes.

This Con has scaled right down the last couple of years & is now divided into to venues, 'small press' and...'comics stuff' with different sets of organisers. Its great for us to be able to enjoy a con without the hassle of organising it, to stay up all night with the big boys and schmoooze all day. We both had various editors to talk to and projects are flying around. It was lovely for me to go to a discussion panel where one of the projects I'm working on was being talked about, it makes it seem more concrete.

Susanne & Sasha at Time Bomb comics

I'd re jigged my port folio just to show some recent illustrations and colouring work, less is more. All artists are self effacing, so when I say my strip work isn't strong enough, folks think I'm just being modest..trust me guys! compared to the talent thats knocking on the big editors doors I have some work to do yet before I find my niche. Although theres always a wide variety in the small press scene where I could sit... problem is it doesn't pay, so onwards & upwards. Enjoying Colouring though, more my comfort zone!

I attended some other panels out of interest and with my Hi-Ex hat on, we want to cook up some web-cast, digital comics, pod-cast mix for Hi-Ex 2011 so I enjoyed the 'digital comics' and 'podcast' discussions. As always Al Ewing on the 2000ad panel was highly entertaining, although Tharg couldn't make it due to his skin shedding, but Al was able to channel Tharg through his shriveled head skin...thats Thargs head not Al's.

The legendary Pat Mills talks about his work on Requiem & European comics scene

One of the things I love about these events is being able to talk art with other artists, oh joy! what pens to use, what ink, colour inspiration, resources & references and of course the struggles of deadline, freelance time management and being perpetually broke. I think I'm slowly synthesizing all my recent art frustrations into some semblance of a direction...maybe !

info;  The Eagle comic awards are now open for voting ( Richmond's comic Futurequake is up for one again ). I will be on the international judging panel for a new initiative to encourage new talent as part of the 'Eagle initiative' details to follow.

Eddie ( Com.X ) and John Higgins ( Watchmen ) relaxing during a lull 

There is also some great courses happening at Dundee in computer art, concept and comics art, this is the future folks ! they are tutored by friends of ours & highly recommended.

I'm afraid I failed to get any great photos, too much going on.
meanwhile this week;
I have to get a pin up done for Richmonds 'Turning Tiger' collected edition.
Design a LARGE interpretive mosaic panel, which starts at a workshop on Saturday, bio-diversity & heritage.
Crack on with colouring 'Slaughtermans Creed' a comic which will be released on PSP first.
and do some of my own work before I go Maaa-aaa-aaaD !

Angus Puff the book launch.

Angus Puff is a fire safety Dragon. I have worked at ' The Skye & lochalsh Young Carers project' for a few years, a dynamic project which offers real support to Young carers on Skye & in Lochalsh. Wearing both my hats, I created links with the Fire & Rescue service a few years back, this partnership has flourished and with input & ideas from the projects Art worker Caroline Deer, Angus Puff was born. He started off as a garden sculpture & the children wrote a story for him. I was asked to illustrate the book under the children's direction. I had to change the initial design as he looked too ' gay' , yes equality & diversity has yet to reach the Isle of Skye.  The Fire service has published the book which will be given out to Highland schools & may even go much further afield. 

Saturday 15th May was the projects anniversary & the books launch. The Assistant Fire Chief David Gill along with many other speakers "VIP's" gave the book their endorsement and support.

Once all the important people had done their speeches, and had their presentations - I did a drop in 'How to draw dragons' workshop, carried boxes and moved chairs. I'm good at carrying boxes.

One parent came over to comment about how they liked the books illustrations, which I drew, this was very nice of them & cheered me up.

 It was also lovely to eat cakes and to see the Young people I'd worked so intensely with, all growing up a pace.

now I'm busy with the next project, turns out I'll get a creator credit with this one, apparently this happens sometimes.

Eddie and my picture

Those of you who know me might have noticed that I am a bit of a complete Pearl Jam fan-girl. I didnt particularily grown up with them, they were over there doing there thing, and I was out there struggling on in the wilds, often with little in the way of music, means to play music or people to introduce me to music. But then came the internet, and decades to catch up on. Pearl Jam became my allies, my sound track through tough times, Eddie became a role model for someone who can go through a world of blackness & then channel it into a creative force, still hanging onto to life and love, open about it, dealing with it, helping others, with rage and attitude. There is a lyric for everything thats happened to us. Seeing them play for the first time last year with my youngest daughter, london 02, second row mosh pit crush, was an incredible cathartic emotional experience, we both cried a lot...and screamed. and I had a moment with Eddie during the song Alive... a song in particular which has meant a lot and kind of summed up the feeling at a time, when...well... Alive its an important song for Pearl Jam, and for me personally.

So the PJ fan club runs competitions, this one was for up to 3 entrys, on board paintings about PJ songs. The one above is the song 'Given to Fly' which is about not giving up, taking the hardship & " he still gives his love he just gives it away, the keys to the locks on the chains he saw everywhere ". I thought it was pretty crude, that there board is hard to paint on.The 3 winners were announced a while back, but I was just So happy to think that I'd given something back for the music & that maybe Eddie had seen it, its connecting across the barrier of fame & distance. But then today I got this photo in the post, with a letter saying this had been one of his top ten favorites. WOW. emotional.  I think whats important for me is that anything is possible, that one isn't stuck on one side of the fence, we can be who we want to be, get our work out there, make those connections, the barriers can be got around.

 Right next stop, going surfing with the boys, selling the movie rights, and having a holiday some time... okay okay maybe not everything is possible.

3- 2- 1 and SCREAMMMM

This rather Rocking gentleman was to be one of the reinvented Viking God set. I started off with Thor smashing a guitar but he looked more like grandad chewing his own arm off, so I stood him up straight ...this primal howl is what I could happily do after a frustrating few work weeks!  anyway we're going to go back & start again with Thor and a hammer or guitar or something, and I'm looking forward to starting some lovely goddesses...although I'm not sure how to modernise a distaff... those Viking ladies are all a bit too domesticated for my liking.

Birch Trees

Day 6 of the Open Studios Exhibition, busier, election day seems to have bought people out. Not getting much work done as a result. Heres some birch trees, also working on an illustration & landscape painting.

drawing in the dark

day Five of the Open studios week. Things still very quiet compared to last year's event in June. Still lovely to see the visitors that have popped in. While manning the fort I've been playing catch up, this panel is from a sample page which I finished today & sent off to the writer, another page from an earlier chapter to do & then fingers crossed the editor gives it the green light.

Hares and...boats.

some slow progress in the painting room today. Heres a couple of wee things. Sailing boats because they are popular & I'm working up to big canvases. The Hare because I'm in a Hare mood, after digging out some Hare sketches I did last year for an illustration, they are currently hopping about the house ( through the medium of blue tac ) and are asking for me to draw them into a story. They keep reminding me about the viking goddess and local witch stories, its all very spring fertility pagan myths, but they will have to wait- bread & butter art must be done first !

Also today, inked up a comic page , progress with a painted illustration ( creepy ! ) and pondered Thors manly action pose some more. details to follow.

Here be dragons

This Dragon lino print was done when I was around 15, thats nearly 30 years ago folks! The thin paper has yellowed a lot. My parents recently found it, a coincidence as this month see the launch of a childrens book I illustrated for a Young Carer / Fire service project about a Fire Safety Dragon.

meanwhile; Day one of the Highland Open Studios Week , this is when the Artists of Wester Ross are opening their doors to the public. Typically, I got up early to get everything ready and signs out- but got a fire call out instead. No problems though as the first day was a slow starter last year too. Had first visitor and sale though so all is well.

more photos later. details here

Open Studios week.

I've been busy this week setting up for the Open studios week exhibition. Last year was held at the Fire station and was a great success, It tied in nicely with the firefighter theme of most of my work last year and the unusual location drew in plenty of people, and importantly donations for the Firefighters charity. This year I've been painting a variety of subjects, and ironically time spent doing work for the Open Studios committee and designing a trail leaflet for the local artists has left me no time to paint or prepare!

The Fire Station would have been more difficult this year as we have a lot of new equipment, including a new digital communication set up which requires the Fire Appliance to remain on charge at all times, leaving No room for exhibiting. I had provisionally organised another venue, but realised at the last minute that I simply have too much work on to up sticks for a week, and no time to prepare the venue. So this year I am exhibiting at home, its far from ideal as there is no parking space and no access for people with mobility difficulties, and of course my boisterous dog. Hopefully we can work around these things & some folks will pop by. Its always great to see the work out of bubble wrap and on a wall, it helps make sense of it all seeing it together. I am also looking forward to being stuck at home manning this exhibition for the week and hope to get caught up on lots of work. My Framers, Geoff & Ann did an amazing job at turning around lots of frames in 3 days this week, they are Brilliant !

Happy Beltaine ! XX  Hope to see some of you this week.