January Wolves Calendar

It's a whole new year, and to celebrate I created this desktop wallpaper calendar featuring my Winter Wolves illustration.

January is the month of the wolf, the Saxon term Wulf-monath (meaning "wolf month") and also named for the ancient Roman god Janus, who represents beginnings and endings. He is often depicted with two faces, one looking forward and one looking back. I chose to combine these two elements into this illustration for this the most wintry month of the year.

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Swans

Seven Swans

Swan Song

For me swans have always been strongly associated with fairy tales. Swan princesses, fairy maidens disguised as swans and brothers cursed to live as swans filled the pages of the books I loved growing up. Before I moved to England three years ago I had little opportunity to see swans in the feathered flesh. One of the many things I adore about living here is being able to have fairy tale encounters every day. I can step down a wooded path to a quiet park and spend hours watching and sketching the local swans. These creatures are a perfect mix of beauty and danger, which of course makes them ideal for fairy tales and folklore. 

Sunday Reading

My husband and I are in the midst of house hunting, and while finding the right house can be a bit tricky and time consuming, one benefit of all this driving around the countryside is finding wonderful little bookstores and charity shops full of natural history treasures. If I can find an old book with illustrations of birds or woodland creatures I consider it a successful outing.

Over the weekend I found this little gem about the trials and tribulations of John James Audubon and his struggle to get his beautiful paintings of birds published. He's a bit of a romantic and controversial subject (he shot many birds in order to study them for his work) and though I am very familiar with his art, I don't know much about the man himself.  I look forward to learning more about the stories behind some of the most well known images of birds.

“Night is purer than day; it is better for thinking and loving and dreaming. At night everything is more intense, more true. The echo of words that have been spoken during the day takes on a new and deeper meaning. The tragedy of man is that he doesn't know how to distinguish between day and night. He says things at night that should only be said by day.”

                                                                                                                                       ―Elie Wiesel, Dawn

Sparks and Notions

It can happen at any time of the day or night. There you are, minding your own business, when suddenly it hits you! Inspiration strikes and your mind is flooded with images and ideas and without thinking you grab your sketchbook and your hand tries desperately to keep pace with your mind. This is how it often works for me. I always make sure to have sketchbooks and little notebooks with me no matter where I go, because those little lightning bugs of inspiration can zap without warning at any moment.

I love every stage of the illustration process, but I especially love the research and concept sketch stage. It can often be a wonderful excuse to learn about a new subject. I can spend hours pouring through books and exploring new websites while developing an idea. Folklore, history, biology, fairy tales and even google images and Pinterest are all valuable research tools for me.

Here are a few peeks at some rough scratchings and scribbles I've been working on for a new piece.

Sketchbook: Deer

I've been working on some ideas for new pieces lately and my sketchbook has been filling with drawings of deer.

Bold Nature

I've been a huge fan of the Glasgow-based textile design studio Timorous Beasties for a number of years. So imagine my delight to find they have teamed up with Vintage Books to create these gorgeous book designs on some of my favourite natural history autobiographies. I stumbled across them as I was searching for Mark Cocker's Crow Country, one of the five titles in the series and couldn't resist getting them all!

*edit: I originally stated that Kate Constable's Crow Country was one of the books in the series. In fact it was Mark Cocker's book Crow Country that is included. I have made the correction.*

Birds and Blooms

A design I created for the Birds-And-Blooms group on Deviantart.com. They are having a contest for a new icon for the group and I thought I'd toss my hat in the ring. Mostly I was looking for excuses to draw more birds and flowers. Any excuse right?

Soft

My illustration for this week's illustrationfriday.com word of inspiration: Soft. What's softer (and cuter!) than a pile of puppies, kittens, baby bunnies, chicks and ducklings?

Watercolour Sketches

 

Some ideas that I've been playing around with and sketching. I'm hoping to develop them more when I head back to the states for a visit this spring.

A Misty Midnight Ramble

For the past couple of days here in the arctic north the weather has been gloomy and wet...which is naturally how I prefer things to be. As a true Oregonian at heart I am always the most comfortable in grey skies and lots of rain. We had another midnight ramble the other night when the weather was just starting to turn stormy and a cold mist was moving slowly in across the fjord. Though the skies are bleak, the land around us has brightened, the verdant landscape dotted with blue and yellow wildflowers and purple lilacs peaking out between the leaves.

 The lilacs are blooming! They look beautiful and smell so sweet.

 All along the river and the fjord the landscape has become verdant and lush, overflowing with vegetation.

The mist rolling across the river on our way into town.

 Down to the fjord.

 This looks a bit like a little hobbit house.

 Back across the bridge and homeward bound.