Painting poems, and what happens when it goes wrong

SOMETIMES my paintings take new and unplanned directions, either because I am deliberately trying to break my own rules, or because the project calls for me to step beyond them, as in this case.

These watercolours were done as part of a collaborative project between myself and my good friend, the Scotland-based poet Em Strang. Her poems are wonderful - wild and gentle, quiet and frightening, and I was delighted with the prospect of making images to go with them. 

But here's the thing - illustrating poetry is really hard! A poem, when it really works and has power, makes its images in your imaginal realm, where they can flit and morph as such images should, just beyond the reach of gravity and the crushing weight of collapsing the wave function. Knowing this, it was very hard not to step on the toes of the poem, and to illustrate but still leave space for the unsaid.

Thus I painted outside of my usual edged style, losing myself to the chance happenings in the watercolour, trying to find the hook in each poem that caught my heart.

I ended up with strange images, some of which I really like, and some of which I'm less sure about, but all of which feel very outside my comfort zone.

Having talked it over with Em, we both agreed that these images weren't quite what the poems were asking for, though neither of us know quite what are.

I shall try again one of these days, perhaps, to track down that elusive animal in these beautiful poems, and record its pawprint in paint.

Meanwhile, I continue my learning of what it is to really illustrate words, making companion images that work alongside the poem or story, but do not duplicate it or reveal a mystery that needs to stay hidden.

For now, I have put these little paintings up for sale, along with a few other original paintings and drawings in my shop.

I'd love to hear your thoughts about these images, and about your experiences - both success and failure - of illustrating poetry.

And do sniff out the wonderful work of Em Strang, as well as on her blog, she has a few pieces of writing and poetry at the Dark Mountain site and in the books. In October she will also be running a weekend writing workshop in Cumbria with Susan Richardson ~ Writing Root & Claw.

Drawing

MY SKETCHBOOKS rarely get shown to anyone. For me it is too vulnerable and exposing an experience letting someone else leaf through my unfinished scribbles, personal expressions and thoughts, especially whilst I am there!

I wish I was one of those people who had shelves and shelves of their past sketchbooks and journals, labeled diligently on the spines by year, but I'm not. 

Many of my sketchbooks get abandoned halfway through and left for years at the bottom of a drawer, only to be filled with new scribbles of a (by then quite altered) style when I'm in want of empty pages. 

I'm disorganised and unmethodic in my sketchbookkeeping. Roughs for paintings are often barely more than my own untranslatable hieroglyphic lines.

Populating the pages mostly are the odd vagabonding outcasts of my imagination ...

... as well as Tom sleeping and Macha between expeditions.

I draw in pencil, pen, charcoal ...

I draw from life, whether my subjects are sitting across from me in a cafe or on a train or in the otherworld.

In old sketchbooks I enjoy finding things I'd forgotten I'd drawn

A while ago I made a resolution to draw something in my sketchbook every day. No matter whether or not I felt inspired I forced pen to paper and produced something even if it was rubbish, even if it was just a scribble. I kept this up for a good part of a year and looking back over these pages now, I am pleased with what came out then; the drawings feel like notes from a delicious ongoing conversation with the imaginal world in which I was immersed.

My drawings come and go when they please. Sometimes they get finished, sometimes barely begun.

Sometimes the characters I find peering out from the pages at me are at once familiar and surprising, as if I did not draw them, but might have met them once in a dream.

These drawings shown here are small glimpses of pages from my sketchbooks spanning several years, which I felt (only just) brave enough to show you.

Whilst digging through them, I unearthed some old drawings which I thought someone in the world might like to own. Some will be familiar to you, some have never been shown before. Roll up and grab them if you feel so moved...

Elsie - pencil - available to buy here
(I drew this one a few years ago whilst sitting on the street selling my work,
only to look up and see her walk past!)

The Fish Who Pulled the House - pencil - available to buy here

Greta - pencil - available to buy here

Hiding the Hedgehog - pencil - available to buy here

In the Leshy Forest 1 - pencil - available to buy here
(these two were published in the Tiny Pencil Forests issue)

In the Leshy Forest 2 - pencil - available to buy here
(these two were published in the Tiny Pencil Forests issue)

Joseph - pencil - available to buy here

Who the Owl Said - pencil - available to buy here

The Spoon-Eared Child - pencil - available to buy here

The Unbeknown - pencil - available to buy here

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This post is for Priya Sebastian, a wonderful artist based in Bengaluru, India, who asked me some time ago if I would put up some pages from my sketchbooks. (Though her own are far more interesting.) Thanks to Priya for making me look through my old pages! 

Whilst we are on the subject of drawing... my good friend Nomi McLeod who makes beautiful, delicate, raw and magical drawings in pencil has opened an etsy shop - Air & Parchment - selling prints, cards and originals, where I urge you to scurry, forthwith!

And before I depart, I shall leave you with a small platter of links to a smattering of artists who draw like demons and whose work I follow with great admiration...

Pablo Auladell

Sveta Dorosheva

Joanna Concejo

Phlegm

Hita Hirons (my sister in law)

Martha Vershaffel

Children Blue Sky

Cendrine Rovini

Jack Baumgartner

Cheerio!