Progress

A few more washes to do, and the drawing touches to one last page of my graphic novel and then it is scanning and computer clean-up. Estimate how long it will take you to do something then times it by three, and there is your answer, (not mentioning juggling other work).

It seems a long time ago when I was at the phase of initiating the story, and I am having to remind myself of these simple reasons as I work through this more technical stage. 

The next step is satisfying and a change from the kind of focus that I have been applying for the last year or so. I have to bleed substantially into April. Concentration when composing something takes up a considerably different and larger amount of energy and focus than does the latter half of the process. I find that the early compositional phase highly private and vulnerable, and have to be careful not to snap at various friends and loved ones. It will also be satisfying to have some pages to blog once I have scanned them. I am going to compose a synopsis for Bliss at some stage.

It will be nice to have thoughts about other ideas, and to get back into other stuff too. I stumbled into writing poems over the last few years (but these fell upon an angry and lost phase...). I have an expanse of photo journalism stretching from the mid nineties through until now, and other general creative photography. I have journals dating back to the late 90's. The journals that I wrote on my M.A. and the ones now are probably of particular freshness. Getting some of my wandering thoughts and prose into some form. I am looking forward to this.

A Graphic-film novel

An autonomous film.

Horse Drawn Cart or Cart Drawn Horse?

Gone and balked at my own deadlines! It is that spring air...I can smell it. I am like that horse that just won't drink that dam water! 
Right...lay off any DEAD line talk....keep it at just LIFE line...I prefer that. I am enjoying running about outside at the moment, like a spring released freak! a rebel even to myself!

Easy does it...

Illustration inspiration (Zeidler: "Fabelwessen")

I am looking through a wonderfully illustrated book that my brother and his girlfriend Anna kindly sent me from Berlin: Zeidler, Fabelwessen (I don't speak German) but these illustrations certainly speak to me today, they are great. Above, I share one illustration that I particularly like...

To quote Anna: "Zeidler has published a lot and is well known in Germany. "Fabelwesen" is a term I cannot easily translate. It describes creatures who sprang from imagination or whose existence is (so far at least) debatable. Mythological creatures, "half-creatures" like unicorns, monsters, goblins and so on. It is a rather old-fashioned term, reminiscent of fairy tales. Traditionally, you would find illustrations of these in a so-called "Bestiarum". We have some beautiful examples of illuminated manuscripts (in the Berlin collection of prints and drawings (Kupferstichkabinett)".

Anna Schultz currently works at Kupferstichkabinett in Berlin, and when in England; The Paragon Press with Charles Booth Clibborn, and The British Museum. My brother Simon Turner is a specialist in both the etcher and print maker Hollar, and previously van Dyck, a leading English court painter, both of whom lived during the 17^th century. He is Compiler and editor at Holstein, and also has a history at The British Museum.

To see all pictures at their larger original size, click on the image once for the light-box viewer.

Muses for me

Fourth post of the day...Sunday. I remember a quote from a Biography that I read about Beatrix Potter:

"A silent power is slowly working it's way towards good, mind your own business, behave yourself and never mind the rest". (Beatrix Potter was the main subject of my written assignment during my studies).

I was reading this wonderful book (by Linda Lear) when I went on a pilgrimage to The Lake District two years ago come end of April. I virtually fled there for oxygen, it was a very beautiful week. There were lambs everywhere, and I did wonder lonely as a cloud to where Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy also lived. Quiet walks on my own contemplating... sitting on rocks and just looking. There were some amazing thunder storms too, those "silent hills" (Beatrix Potter) looked so ancient and wild.
Image: from Google image search.

I filmed on my camera, this mum with her lamb...hopefully not invasive on purely grounds that I was unable to ask her permission...we witness sweet moments like this without the need to capture it, and let it fall to the uncharted reservoirs of being...but this is a while after the lamb was born and is just stumbling to it's feet.

To behold

I thirst for a solution. I grab at anything I see outside...out there in the world. I thirst for a solution that can only come from within me.

Spring

The Daffodils are coming, I can feel it...must not panic and throw an adult version of a tantrum, it feels horrible, (but not really too bad). The night is darkest just before the dawn...spring is nearly here!

Resort to the page...

Well, here is one that I did earlier...yesterday in fact. It quite aptly illustrates how I felt this morning as I woke up. It is for another project that I am doing for someone else, but still I was quite pleased with it.

I am at the stage with this project where you realise that there are..."one million"... tiny little bits to do still but your enthusiasm is draining from you. I have that bloated feel that I imagine a pregnant woman feels after nine months, I just want this out, this has brewed for long enough, I am not enjoying this now!

There is a positive reason for that I know, (so not to sign off on a downer!) I have to just sit firm within the process, and not rush to the goal prematurely. The desired effect: the desire itself, to effect, can kill the effect. A trick I find is, not to think about a goal (just a faint one), and through it all ("she offers me protection, a lot of"......no, oops, wrong one), I have learnt to like being at my drawing board. It took a while, but I am there, and that is enough reward for me today. 


Insert Feb 2011: On good days, during the composing of the sequences, there is a palpable sense of your own discovery, unhindered by any expectation or outside pressure and this is probably one of the most satisfying feelings. Just the act of having a dialogue with yourself is enough to make the whole thing, simply enjoyable rather than worrying about receivership...first and foremost in any case, it takes the edge off of "product".

Publishing my graphic novel

I will distribute the first episode of my graphic novel as a self publisher, I want to get it about a bit as soon as it is finished! The web is now great for this.
Clerkenwell Tales, is an independent book shop that has just opened up near my studio, set up by Peter Ho, and he said that he would be happy to take some and try and sell them for me...there are a lot of places in fact.
Today, I reviewed what is left to do (whilst listening to The Proclaimers strangely enough). As spring comes (what a devil of a winter)...the mornings and evenings are lighter, I can now see the finish line and I am feeling that something has got out of my system, at last.
Pace, pace and I should be there by the end of March.