Time does Fly in the Country

First of all I just want to apologize if I’m not answering questions or responding to everything. It’s all so new to me. I’m not really at all sure of what I’m doing. I have the feeling that every time I click on something I’m going to blow up my computer or wipe all the information. I know that wouldn't really happen but I’m still not confident. Sarah is doing a terrific job of helping me every step of the way and I’ll get there. I have no hope for Brian though.


Well -another week gone! Time does fly in the country. No -really it’s been taken up with just ordinary living -dentist, vet, puzzling out where the mysterious smell is coming from (a hidden dog bone) and trying to take walks on the moor in between rain showers. As I sit here, I can hear through the open window in my studio, the cawing of a raven. Looking out, I can see it wheeling over the trees. We’ve had a pair of them with a young one in the garden for the past six weeks or so. I don’t know how long they stay together but I think the young one is just about to go off on its own. We often see crows but these really are ravens. Quite exciting!


We’ve also had a large herd of ponies wandering the lanes recently. I’ve been trying to catch them on camera but they just seem to disappear when I go back looking for them. The reason I wanted to photograph them to show you is because there are three black spotted ones. Small black spots all over. They look like fairytale ponies. I know they’re out there somewhere and I’m determined to find them again! I couldn’t have imagined it now, could I!?


I have a few new photos for you as well.


First - a photo of my desk and the creature I’m working on at the moment. It’s a large troll woman for the new book we’re working on together. Her name is Mother Leap and sometimes she pricks up her ears and disguises herself as a hare in the meadow. There’s a reason for this but you’ll have to read what it is in the book. I find it so interesting and challenging to work on many different sizes of figures. She is about the size of a chimpanzee. Her head, hands and feet are sculpted in grey polymer clay, which is much more like plasticine in texture than flesh toned polymer clays. It’s quite brittle, which is the only drawback. I tend to mix it with translucent fimo just to give it more strength. The armature wire also has to be much heavier when working on such a large scale. I’d love to teach a class some day in fabricating large creatures. It’s SO different from the little ones!

We will be posing her in various ways for photos so she’ll have to be able to move freely and be strong enough to hold a pose. I think I’m almost there. I haven’t aged her down yet -she needs to look like she’s been around for a few hundred years so I’m going to have to spray her down with a mist of grey and some fullers earth -but she’s getting there. I wish I had a bigger desk!


Here’s Brian’s sketch of the week. He said it would be ok to use a troll sketch so here is one of the new troll sketches for the book. We think it’s going to be a wonderful combination of paintings, drawings and sculpted figures. A lot of work though -but fun.

The last one is a photo I took in our garden at night. There was a tiny garden light just shining on this flower. Looks like a faery to me!