Towards the end of last year I was approached by writer Caroline Greville, who asked me if I’d like to design a cover for her book, a memoir called Badger Clan. Caroline had found me via Twitter and we also both had pieces of writing published in the Seasons anthologies by Elliot and Thompson in 2016.
I was very happy to design a cover and had a strong image in mind when Caroline told me what the book was about and what she’d like. I’ve also been drawing badgers quite a lot recently too – badgers are never far away!
The book has just become available on Amazon as a paperback. Below is the front cover:
Badger Clan front cover.
Here’s the blurb from the back cover:
Discovering badgers isn’t hard when you know where to look.‘The only badgers I ever get to see are dead ones.’ ‘Well, if you keep seeing dead ones, their family can’t be far away.’This throwaway conversation niggled, leading Caroline Greville to seek out her own neighbourhood badgers near her Kent home. She found them and was soon well-acquainted – so too were most of her family. A sense of interconnectedness developed as they had more badger contact than they could have hoped for. Badger Clan charts a simple quest that turns into a full-blown obsession. From loitering near a sett to working as local contact for a regional badger group, this memoir tells of wild encounters and gradual, intimate knowledge of the local clan. The story is rooted in rural village life, while the family are honestly depicted and relatable. A feel-good read in which enthusiast and elusive creature become inextricably bound.
The murmuration over the West Pier in Brighton is fairly well known. Whenever I go down to see it in the autumn and winter, there is always a crowd of people. Nevertheless, I chose to write about it for this month’s Preston Pages and the other free magazines such as The Post and The 7 Directory.
Here is a photo of my article with an illustration, Murmuration 1 (not exactly an inspired title, but still!):
Murmuration in The Preston Pages
Apparently the illustration is on the cover of The 7 Directory :)
Murmuration 1
The original illustration has now sold along with another similar one, Murmuration 2. But I now have digital prints for sale in my website shop. They’ll be ready to go out next week if anyone’s interested.
I can’t help including a photo of the pier in the 1990s before it completely crumbled into the sea and later went up in flames, wonderfully derelict :)
The West Pier Brighton in the 1990s
The West Pier today:
The West Pier, Brighton at Sunset
Chris Watson did a great radio programme of sounds and memories of the West Pier, Ghost Roost, that really brings it to life. It’s well worth a listen.
Time of the deer,
Wind and swirling dream,
Heavy, brooding skies,
Amber light,
And the coming of night,
So early.
I feel it in my bones,
I feel it in the river, swollen now with autumn rains.
In the honey and copper forest,
Glimpsed in the woodland ride,
A presence drifts,
Scattering pennies to the earth,
The accepting, gathering, honest earth,
Where all the animals hide.
I feel it in my bones,
I feel it in the river, swollen now with autumn rains.
Time of the deer,
Wind and swirling dream.
I’m a bit of a tea addict and certainly get through tea. So recently I put aside a few empty tea packets with the idea of turning them into something instead of recycling them.
Empty tea boxes waiting to be made into something.
In need of distraction at a very busy time, I started making a little box of ‘forest’ by first cutting a rectangle out of the front of one of the tea packets and covering it with some printouts of my Memory Tree book inside cover. I then created layers of a forest scene in the same way as I do for altered books and box frames (but a little more hastily as this was just a prototype to see if it would work. If it worked – who knows, perhaps printed card boxes to self assemble for fun :))
Here’s the result, a deer forest in a tea box!
A Forest in a Tea Box
I cut up more printouts of my Memory Tree book inside cover and stuck it on card. Then I cut around the images of the girl and trees to create layers. I stuck these inside another tea packet. Then I covered the tea packet with the leftover printouts and put inside some small, battery-powered LED lights. The result looks like a sunny day in the woods or a forest fire!
Tea Packet Light Box
I think I’d better get back to doing something more useful!
I’ve written and illustrated three more pieces for my local Preston Pages magazine, Fox Hour for April, Sparrowhawk for May and Swifts for June.
Preston Pages – Wildlife ReflectionsFox HourSparrowhawk over Brighton.Swifts
As I write in the Swifts article, I’m doing a swift survey in my neighbourhood. It’s made me much more aware of all the activity happening in the skies above the city. Swifts are declining and the RSPB is monitoring them and encouraging people to put up swift boxes. To learn more, and see how you can help, go to the RSPB website.
Towards to end of last year a friend on Facebook, Meryl of Black Cat Floral Designs, suggested that I create some wedding invitations with woodland, wildlife or Goddess themes. It’s taken me some time to work out quite what’s required as there seem to be so many variations out there, I’m a bit in the dark about the whole subject.
Anyway, I’ve created some designs and had a few samples printed to see how they look.
Woodland Wedding Invitations
They include Woodland Wildlife – with rabbits;
Woodland Wildlife Wedding Invitation
A springtime leafy one;
Spring Woodland Wedding Invitationn
A ‘Goddess’ one;
Goddess Wedding invitation
and Two Deer one which might work best for an autumn wedding;
Two Deer Wedding Invitation
They are currently simple and unfolded on stiff white card but I plan to make some ivory ones on folded card.
Based in Chester, Meryl creates wonderful things with flowers for any occasion. See below and check out the galleries on her website.
There’s an owl theme going on at the moment. First I’ve been out looking for urban owls recently to write about for my book. So far, no luck, but I’ll keep trying.
Then I discovered a lovely post about my altered books on the website My Owl Barn and was very pleased to sell my Owl Altered book on Etsy:
Owl Altered Book (click on image to enlarge).
Yesterday I completed a commissioned Owl at Dusk Box Frame, similar to the one featured below:
Owl at Dusk Boxframe
With the box frame I decided to hide a poem, Nature by Mary Oliver, written on parchment paper at the back of the box frame behind the final picture. I like the idea of hiding messages and hidden art for anyone who can’t resist opening up the back of the picture.
Below are some images of the box frame process including the back page of the box frame. From the front all you can see of this layer is a bit of sky and moon, but it’s a complete picture that features more trees and a badger.
Owl Box Frame in ProcessNature Poem by Mary OliverBack Picture of Boxframe
Here is another tawny owl picture that I might make into a card:
I’m having my first solo art exhibition at the Sustainability Centre in Hampshire. It starts today, 6th July and goes on until 30th September.
Screen shot of the Exhibition at The Sustainability Centre webpage.
Yesterday I drove with my partner and a car full of artworks to the centre near East Meon. We spent a few hours putting ropes and hooks on pictures and hanging them in the Beech Cafe under the supervision of Lyn, the curator.
I took a few photos.
Five A3 IllustrationsPutting up Altered BooksThrough the Forest Altered BookA4 Illustrations – A Fragment of Forest (Blue), and H(e)art Tree.Steps to the LightTriptych of Three Dryads
The exhibition features some old illustrations and new box frames and altered books and the theme is ‘Into the Forest’. In the shop I have cards, books and badges for sale too.
At the beginning of June I spent a week in a little forest studio at the edge of King’s Wood in Kent. The idea was to take some time out to experience the wood at dawn, dusk and day, time to get inspiration for the book I’m writing. I was doing another mini immersion in nature.
The Forest Studio
I spent some time wandering in the nearby beech wood plantation, listening to the silence or gentle moan of the wind through the branches. It was like being within a giant underwater forest:
Beech Wood Plantation
There was such a contrast between the dark interior and the light exterior:
Edge of the Beech Wood
Wandering and looking at the beech wood trees made me think about the way I create woodland and tree altered books. So I have been making an “In the Beech Wood” altered book:
The Start of an Altered BookBeech Wood Altered Book
At dusk I went out to see if I could see nightjars in the chestnut coppiced area. I was lucky. For several evenings I heard their uncanny churring song and saw the dark shape of the males flying against the sky clapping their wings as they do to display to the female or ward off any other males encroaching on their territory. They were too fast and it was too dark to photograph them but I can picture them in my mind’s eye.
Nightjar
Nightjars are mysterious birds, birds which have attracted superstition and folklore down the ages. They’ve had many names including the name ‘goatsucker’, which stems from their Latin name Caprimulgus which means to milk nanny goats. The myth arose as nightjars were drawn to the insects surrounding livestock.
Dusk Night Dawn Writing Book
I wandered into the chestnut coppice by day getting to know nighjar territory and was surprised to find an old nest site with a couple of hatched eggshells!
They were close by, perhaps watching us through the trees, through the dim blue morning twilight – bears!
On the first morning we set off early, leaving our hostel at 5.30am. The streets were dark and wet with snow piled up the kerbs and covering the pavements in the town of Zarnesti. Romania was experiencing freak April weather – below zero temperatures and snowfall. Ramon, our expert guide and tracker, drove quickly and effortlessly into the white landscape on the edge of Piatra Mare Mountains, winter tyres proving their worth.
The bears had returned to their dens – so we searched for wolves instead as wolves don’t mind the cold and snow. But the blanketed slopes and meadows were empty.
Snowy Scene – by Jurj Ramon
Come dusk we went out again. The temperature was minus 4 and the breeze was coming from the north so Ramon took us up the side of the valley into the forest to stay downwind. The snow was two feet thick in places and as we walked in single file, I stepped in the footprints of Ramon and Kevin who were ahead of me. This made it easier to walk. Every-so-often Ramon pointed out tracks – a trough in the snow where bears had dragged their bellies or the arched prints of red deer.
We came to a stream, a dark, trickling ribbon flowing through banks of snow and beneath omenous windows of ice.
Snowy River – by Jurj Ramon
Then the valley slopes steepened and we climbed a snowy corridor up through the trees – Norway spruce, beech and silver birch. My heart felt as if it would burst with the exertion as I sweated beneath my numerous coats and jumpers. At last we reached a viewpoint from where we could see the opposite side of the valley, a rock ridge of mountain with a belt of forest on it’s lower slopes above open fields of snow. There we waited and watched, waited and watched scanning the fields with binoculars or with just the naked eye.
Some animal was moving on the edge of the trees far off. It was not a bear but a red deer, identifiable by its fawn rump. Then we saw three of them. One kept a lookout while the others browsed on tree buds. I have only glimpsed red deer in Scotland so it was good to see them.
Red Deer in the Snow – by Jurj Ramon
On our way back down we saw fresh tracks of a family of boar that had crossed our own. We looked about and listened but the animals themselves remained elusive. Further on Ramon stopped and whispered that a bear was close by; there was a change in the smell of the forest and even I noticed a slight hint of animal nearby – not like fox, but a dense, animal smell.
On our second morning we returned to our valley viewpoint. Dawn broke with a wonderful rosy light illuminating the mountain before us. The air was crisp, cold and clear. Ramon pointed out a scratched triangle of trees, the territory of the only lynx in the valley.
Dawn over the Postavarul Mountains – by Jurj Ramon.
Up the hillside again Ramon noticed fresh bear tracks disappearing into an enclave of rocks and bushes. He said that he saw a bear there and told us to move further down the slope as a bear cornered in the area could be dangerous. Earlier he had told us that a bear on its hind legs was looking about to assess the situation. A bear crouching close to the ground was a dangerous bear, an animal ready to charge. We trusted he knew what he was doing as he’d spent years tracking and researching bear behaviour. From a distance Ramon clapped in the hope that the bear would show itself, but no bear emerged.
Wildlife was so close and nowhere to be seen; it was as though the bears were teasing us. The snowy hillside remained full of their presence and absence at the same time. Despite not seeing bears it was a wonderful experience being out in the snowy wilds at dawn and dusk and knowing that we were so close to some of the top predators in Europe.
Bear Back and Fore Prints – by Jurj Ramon.Bear Tracks – by Alexi Francis
The photos above – apart from the last – were taken by our bear tracker and expert, Jurj Ramon.
I can’t help thinking about Spirit bears. I’ve drawn a bear image. Perhaps this is a Spirit Bear drawn to evoke the wild bears when we return to Romania in the future.
