The Book Thief

IT'S JUST a small story really, about among other things: a girl, some words, an accordionist, some fanatical Germans, a Jewish fist-fighter, and quite a lot of thievery...

This wonderful book The Book Thief is in bookshops and on posters here and there and everywhere at the moment and since Tui sneakily bought it for me for Christmas it has been sitting there on the shelf like a delicious thing savoured but not yet begun. I have just finished reading it. Of course the mention of accordions and books ensnared me as did the lovely front cover illustration of Death and a young girl by Finn Campbell-Notman. (some more of his illustrations below)

Author Markus Zusak was inspired to write this book by the stories his mother used to tell about her childhood in Munich, and about how she saw one day a line of Jews being marched through the town to Dachau, there was an old man at the back of the line, stumbling, emaciated and unable to keep up ... and a teenage boy came forward and gave him bread. The old man fell at the boy's feet and kissed his knees until a soldier noticed, took the bread away and whipped the boy. Zusak saw in this moment two extremes of humanity - kindness and cruelty - which was for him a perfect description of how humans are.

Set during World War II in Germany, The Book Thief is the story of Liesel Meminger, a foster girl living outside of Munich. Liesel scratches out a meagre existence for herself by stealing when she encounters something she can’t resist – books. With the help of her accordion-playing foster father, she learns to read and shares her stolen books with her neighbors during bombing raids as well as with the Jewish man hidden in her basement before he is marched to Dachau.

This book is described as a life changing tale of the cruel twists of fate and the coincidences on which all our lives hinge as well as a joyous and unforgettable look at the power of words and the ability of books to nourish the soul.

It is narrated by Death.

Kneeling Goats and Mossy Kettles

THESE BRIGHT DAYS have called us outdoors into the hills ... We have walked lots of miles carrying just a camera and a bag of raisins, and not met a soul ... and we have looked in the sunny haze across these beautiful hills. I take this scenery a little for granted nowadays, but remember happily my openmouthed delight at this landscape when I arrived here from London nearly a year ago. I longed then for this kind of wild and find now it is strange how accustomed I have become to it. Nevertheless we do live in a wonderful corner of Scotland don't we?

So we walked and we walked and one day we found a old kettle full of moss, and we wondered how it got there and who the people were who last made tea in it. Perhaps they were lead mining up in these hills and had stopped for some lunch?
Today we came across some kneeling goats and they let me draw them for a while. I don't know why they were kneeling, but it meant they stayed nicely in the same position for some time. I am out of practice and the results aren't great, despite the muddy addition of pawprints placed there by a wagging rabbit-chasing little dog on his way past, but I spent a lovely while with the goats who nibbled me and chewed their cud, blinking at each other in the evening sun.

Kakuarshuk

KAKUARSHUK'S TALE speaks of a time long ago when women got their children by digging in the earth. The would pry children loose from the very ground itself. They did not have to go far to unearth little girls, but boys were harder to find, and often buried deep underground. Thus strong women had many children and weaker women very few or none at all.

Kakuarshuk was one of these barren women, and despite overturning half the earth she could find no child. She was at last told to go to a certain place and dig there... which she did, until she came to the other side of the earth. On the other side everything seemed to be in reverse, there was no snow or ice and babies were much bigger than adults.

She was adopted by two of these, a girl baby and a boy baby who carried her around in an amaut sack and suckled her. They cared for her very much. One day her baby mother said to her "Is there anything you want Dear Little One?" and her baby-mother replied "I would like to have a baby of my own".

So the girl baby then tells Kakuarshuk to go to a certain place and dig... and there follows much tunneling and strange adventures and meetings with Scourge Trolls and little foxes until she finds her self home holding a boy baby in her arms.


This story is an Inuit tale and can be read in full in Angela Carter's Book of Fairy Tales, which I heartily recommend to anyone who likes fairy tales that weren't meant for children; it is "a celebration of strong minds, low cunning, black arts and dirty tricks".

A while before I read this story, I saw the lovely film Atanarjuat - The Fast Runner, an Inuit tale written, produced, directed, and acted by Inuit. It is set in ancient Igloolik and unfolds as a life-threatening struggle between powerful natural and supernatural characters.


In this film I saw that Inuit women have enormous hoods in which they carry their babies...

Kakuarshuk's tale and these Inuit women's hoods inspired my latest painting, below, in watercolour and pencil.

Kakuarshuk
Prints for sale here

Stones & Bones

RABBIT SKULLS with long curled hollow grass-chomping teeth and little delicate snap-whispers of leg bones can be found lying all over the mossy grassy heather hills here. Our walk today took us three miles over and round and back again... in the sun past sitting grouse who lumber-flap and chatter out of the heather as we pass. And these below are what I put in my pocket to take home.

Sun on the chimbleys

THE SMELL OF SPRING is here and has brought a wonderful uplifting sunshine with it. We have walked around the hills scarf-and-gloveless and dawdled to look ... and pick up little crystal stones that glint in the sun without icy winds whipping round our gills and hurrying us indoors again. We've sat on the wet spongy moss grass and noticed frost still lurking in the shadows. And we've sat drinking cups of tea on the front wall listening to playing children on half term holidays .
A little bit of sun makes a big difference and we are busying away with our work with a new vigour. Of course there's more rain predicted by the end of the week but hey-ho... it's lovely for now... and so blue.

Honey and Klezmer

A SWARM of bees for you .. a little detail from the album cover I have beeeen busy with. Following the doldrums with the first attempt, I decided to begin again... and am thankfully much happier with this version, which I have drawn in pencilly detail and which is quite different from the first. I was newly inspired by an old folk custom that the band have based their name on and I was lucky in having plenty of time to do this work again, but isn't it just horrible when you hate your own work?
I would like to raise a glass to the tremendous Propelling Pencil which has enabled me to endulge my finicky nature in my drawings lately and dispense with a sharpener!
As I write, Tui is coaxing the fire into life with some kindling cut from some abandoned old fence posts we came across a while ago, whilst we debate what we can muster up for dinner from a few lentils and some brussels sprouts at the bottom of the fridge and listen to the frankly brilliant Amsterdam Klezmer Band...

A Button House for a Button Mouse

A Button House for a Button Mouse.

A quick pencil drawing made today to bring me out of the doldrums of painting anguish ...
I think the Button Mouse came to cheer me up.
He is also for sale here ...
And thanks to Tui again for his antiquery-wizardry .. I think we might be onto something! The Smudge fly has sold to four lovely people already. Thank yous to them too.
Aren't the painting doldrums horrible?

Bees in a Blizzard & Dripping Pianos

TODAY I SIT at my desk looking out at a blizzard of wild sideways-swirling-snows and paint bees and gnarled trees for an album cover commission ...

Meanwhile Tui has been sneaking into the village hall across the way where they keep an old piano in the men's toilets ... he hid his recording device inside the back of the piano whilst he played to the sound of cisterns refilling and dripping taps.

The Smudge Fly

A NEW DRAWING of mine ...
merged skilfully by Tui into an old cracked photograph ...
The Smudge Fly ... for sale here ...

Moving still pictures

WHILST EMBROILED in storyboarding the animation, I came across a review in the sunday paper about a book just published by Scholastic - The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick. So intrigued was I that I ordered it from amazon and have just finished "reading" it. It has a most unusual format ~ sections of the text have been replaced by sequential images - soft pencil drawings, which move the plot onwards until a few pages of words are called for. The pages are all edged in black which gives you a feeling of being let into a great secret when opening it.
The story, which is based in 1930s Paris, follows a young orphan boy and thief - Hugo - and tells of clockmakers, trains, magicians, mysterious drawings and, to my great delight, an automaton. Selznick was much influenced by early cinema and indeed includes Georges Méliès - French filmmaker and special effects pioneer - in the story. I was particularly interested in this method of storytelling because the laying out of images in a sequence to tell a tale without words is something I must learn more about in my making of animations ...

This book led me to another exquisite book without words ~
The Arrival a Hodder publication by Australian illustrator Shaun Tan. This is told entirely with lovely sepia pencil drawings and conjures a strange yet not strange other world. I've not known much of Shaun Tan's work until now .. so will investigate his other books further. Any other recommendations and suggestions of similar books would be most welcome.




Automata spark my imagination no end so the tale of the automaton in The Invention of Hugo Cabret was a treat... Selznick based his automaton on a wonderful creation built by Henri Maillardet in 1800 which could write and draw. It was a marvellous feat of engineering that was restored to its former glory after being damaged in a fire:

Well... thus inspired I go to my drawing desk... the rain is relentless outside and the fire just lit...


NB: all images from the books are nicked off the web and copyright Brian Selznick & Shaun Tan - hope they don't mind :)

Some brown parcel tape & the beginnings of a tale ...

THE orla wren animation is begun!
The story is gently beginning to tell itself with pencil drawings that will be moved very small distances, remote shorelines and, of course, beautiful music in the autumn of its completion.
I have rigged up the most Heath-Robinsonian affair ever known which is supposed to be an animation studio .. this involves a video camera attached with brown parcel tape to some bits of damp kindling that never made it to the fire, which are screwed together and clamped to an old Singer sewing machine table flap... with bits of cardboard box between the clamp jaws to protect it. The lighting consists of an Ikea lamp balanced on a wooden stool balanced on some breadboards balanced on a box of drawing equipment. And the imagery is taped onto the top of a low shelf and encircled with shiny white card to bounce light back onto the scene.

I am using different stop frame animation software this time ~ Animator DV ~ which is designed for use with digital video cameras. We have managed to set the camera up so that it just "sees" the scene under the lens and then I can use the program to grab stills. Goodness knows whether I will be able to get to grips with it. Today there have been many grittings-of-teeth-ings whilst trying to animate the most minuscule paper character, as well as trippings-over-of-wirings and breakings-of-lampings and a little bit of cursing!

My last (and first!) animation was a rougher beast with characters and scenery painted onto cardboard.. and a tight deadline to work to. This time I am drawing the tale with a very fine pencil and the piece will be slower moving in subtle colours and with tender sounds.

After many thousands of frames and a good few months you will see and hear the delightful result!

I must be the luckiest of animators to be sat in the room animating to a beautiful track whilst it is being created. This ~ The Fish and The Doll ~ will become the first track of the new orla wren album ~ to be released later this year.

Naomi & The Devil of Darkling Green

TODAY'S TALE takes us into the mind of a young girl who is not like the others, into forests and derelict mental asylums, into a village plagued by Strange Goings On and

a murder of crows,
a caucus of crows,
an alibi of crows,
a hover of crows,
a congress of crows,
a storytelling of crows,
a horde of crows,
a muster of crows,
a parcel of crows,
a cowardice of crows,
a cauldron of crows *

arriving in ever growing numbers to take roost on the roofs.

I am very pleased to announce that I was happened upon this winter by Danny Rhodes, a Kent author whose new book Naomi & The Devil of Darkling Green is to be published by Scott Pack of The Friday Project in spring 2009. I have been set the task of bringing Darkling Green and all its inhabitants to life with my pencil and paintbrush and I am very excited indeed...


*some collective nouns for crows ... aren't they wonderful!

A nOrsebox!

FRIENDS, take a look at our new home ... a true house on wheels! A 1976 Bedford TK Horsebox, bought purely with earnings from picture sales. So thank yous to all those people who supported us by buying pictures before Christmas and thank yous to the lovely people who sold us our new home and who didn't really want to part with it.

Once it is kitted out with stove and bookshelves and nicknacks and pictures and pots and pans and hanging things and carpets and teapots and paintbrushes and laptops and instruments and brooms and pillows and plants and ...
Well ... then we'll be off on the wander for a while with our work and spend days parked in Scandinavian forests.

A house, a tree and two birds

HERE IS my latest painting .. a gift for my brother and his girlfriend who have just bought their first house together. It is painted with oils on an old slice of wood found last year on one of our walks in these Scottish hills. I have left the uneven cracked and sawn surface, because I like that sort if thing...

A Busy Nest

THE HERMITAGE nest is very busy at the moment ...

there are sketchings and paintings
and musical arrangings
and animation-plannings
and drivings in van-ings
and recordings of soundings
and coffee aboundings
and readings and writings
and staying-up-all-nightings

So while we are busy with all that, I leave you with yet another black-and-whitey snowy picture!

House on Wheels

WHEELS ON HOUSES are one of the Best Things.
Here's one I made.
Inside is a tale about a king who journeys to find What Really Matters. As the wheels turn, they move wooden cogs underneath which in turn turn the scroll inside and the words of the tale move past the windows.

Friday, the day for...

Snow in the Village

Snegurochka

SNEGUROCHKA, the Russian Snow Maiden is the daughter of Father Frost and Mother Spring. The legend tells that she became more beautiful with each day she grew, and her parents realised that she was becoming a young woman who they could not keep secluded from the world for ever.

Snegurochka is allowed to explore the world and comes to meet new people and young men who fall in love with her. However, as long as she remains in the forest, its spirit protects her from Yarilo, the sun god, and her suitors cannot find her. Eventually, Mother Spring gives her a Love Wreath made from flowers, knowing with both sadness and delight that it would warm up her cold heart. Snegurochka is then able to fall in love and spends one happy evening with her sweetheart, singing and dancing. But she knows that with the first rays of the sun god in the morning she will melt away and be gone.

Illustration: drypoint etching

Father Frost

FATHER FROST or Dedt Moroz is a Siberian ice spirit who hides in fir trees deep in the forest and as he snaps his fingers, he splits and shatters the trees.

Legend tells a similar story to that of Mother Holle, involving a Husband and his second wife, each with a daughter from their first marriages. The wife’s daughter was spoiled and mean, whereas the husband’s daughter was very gentle and kind. The wife only loved her daughter and made the other girl work very hard. The poor girl cleaned and cooked for her stepmother, and was often beaten as the wife’s hatred for her grew.

One day, in the middle of a terrible winter, the wife decided that the girl should be taken deep into the woods and left there to die. The husband of course did not want to agree to this, but himself also afraid of the woman, he reluctantly took his daughter into the forest where he left her. The girl sat helpless and alone under a tree. Soon she heard the breaking and snapping of twigs and branches, and then a voice spoke. “Are you warm my child?” It asked. The girl recognized the ominous voice as that of Father Frost and replied, “Yes Father Frost, I'm quite warm.” Father Frost repeated his question several times, each time coming closer to the girl. The girl always answered that she was warm, and then thanked him. Feeling pity for the poor creature, Father Frost wrapped her in a beautiful coat, showered her with gifts, and kept her warm throughout the night.

Returning the next day to retrieve his daughter's body, the husband was happily surprised to find her not only alive, but dressed warmly and covered with riches. Upon their return home, the jealous wife then insisted that her own daughter be left in the forest overnight, hoping that she too would return wealthy.

Again the husband travelled deep into the woods, this time leaving his step daughter there. As the night grew long she too heard the voice of Father Frost. “Are you warm my child?” he asked. The girl was annoyed with his question and replied, “Of course not, now leave me alone!” Father Frost was enraged with her reply and sent the coldest frost that there had ever been.

When the husband went into the woods the next day, he returned not with the girl showered in riches, but with her cold frozen body instead. Upon his return home he took his daughter and left his evil wife. The husband and his daughter lived happily ever after.

Illustration: drypoint etching