Well, I’m back from holidays and the boys are at the seaside. I’m home alone to work. Here’s a warm-up birdy sketch. Happy new year all.
This one is a little more how I feel.
Alone and inky
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Category Archives: books and reading
Books read in 2013
I had a few more completed books yet to add. It’s not the end of the year yet is it?? But Goodreads seems to have wrapped it up for me with an email showing me all my listed books from this year in a splendid array. Here they are.
It’s rather lovely to look at them all lined up like that in ‘cover view’. There are some happy highlights that catch my eye, and bring back memories:
• The very first book on the list (at bottom) The King of Slippery Falls – a gentle American coming of age story with a subtle magical element
• Soonchild – a sophisticated swan song from Russell Hoban with illustrations by Alexis Deacon;
• The ACB with Honora Lee – which was shelved at the library as young adult but was really a charming junior fiction novel. (I kept waiting for something gritty to happen. It wasn’t gritty, but nevertheless told some touching truths.)
• The Children of the King – thanks Kezza for this recommendation. Beautiful writing doesn’t come much more beautiful.
• Re-reading the two Alan Garner Tales of Alderley, and then unexpectedly, the new release third book! Golly, that was exciting!
• The Sunday Books – a written narrative for Mervyn Peake’s drawings made for his children.
• Anne Fadiman’s At Large and at Small – grown up literary delight
• Re-reading The Shrinking of Treehorn – subtle irony and social comment in a visual format
• A Boy and a Bear in a Boat – Hugo recommended it. I finally got around to reading it. So glad I did. Life of Pi meets Waiting for Godot as junior fiction.
• Bob Graham soars the heights with A Bus Called Heaven – what a brilliant, positive social comment. So much to think about and discuss. So much to look at.
• Caught up with the boys on Cressida Cowell’s How to Train Your Dragon books. Up to speed. Waiting for the last book to be published! Aaaah!
• Discovered Isabelle Arsenault via Sally Rippin with Jane, the Fox and Me. Lovely!
• Got around to tackling Lloyd Alexander who was languishing on my shelf. What a wonderful experience! Chronicles of Prydain are a tween / young adult delight, and I loved his autobiographical The Fantastical Adventures of the Invisible Boy.
• On a Beam of Light, A story of Albert Einstein – picture book splendour and inspiration for budding young scientists, non-conformists and thinkers.
• Count Karlstein – Phillip Pullman’s novelisation of his own early play written for his students to perform at school. A gothic ripping yarn, brimming with humour, personality, drama and… brimstone!
• Jackie French’s Chook Book – from a woman with a big heart. An Australian guide to keeping chickens with humanity and thoroughness. It’s not easy to find good Australian back-yard poultry keeping books. (Our climate and other particular challenges require local information, not overseas info, and the available breeds are different.) I have since been lucky to be given a new book from ABC Books The Contented Chook. The combination of these two books should clear up most questions about keeping chickens at home. The former is honest and detailed, and the latter is sumptuous, with many lovely photographs and condensed, practical text.
• Some terrific graphic novels, including The Gigantic Beard that was Evil, and Hope Larson’s version of Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time.
• The pleasure of re-reading my old fave, Whispering in the Wind by Alan Marshall.
• And the delight of reading the work of another vintage Marshall – James Marshall’s George and Martha: the Complete Stories of Two Best Friends.
Running Dog
Just a simple one. This is for another teacher who loves dogs. (Imagine that!!)
Run! Christmas is coming!
Puppet Challenged
Hooray! I’m very excited to be participating in the Puppet Challenge, an on-line puppet exhibition scheduled for June 2014. Check out Clive Hicks-Jenkins’ Artlog to see some fabulous posts about puppetry and art. The theme for the puppet challenge is Folk tales, fairy tales, myths and legends. It has been suggested by Peter Slight (curator of the on-line exhibition) that we might like to consider local folk tales or mythology.
The topic ‘local folktales’ in Australia has a very different meaning from local folktales in Europe. Most white Australians of course share the European folktales via their ancestry, but the tales can no longer be called local. Black Australians have a rich array of tales and mythology, but it’s not my culture to intrude upon. So my mind tosses around two possibilities.
The first, find my theme around the topic of river crossings (such as the Three Billy Goats Gruff) because I live in Mordialloc, named after its creek. ‘The name Mordialloc is a corruption of two aboriginal words Murdi or Moordi and Yallock, the latter meaning creek or stream.’ (From the City of Kingston’s historical website).
Or the second, go with an Australian fairy tale. One of my favourite books is Alan Marshall’s fairy tale ‘Whispering in the Wind’ which features a bunyip in place of a dragon and a magical grey kangaroo with a bottomless pouch, so I am leaning in this direction. It offers a lot of possibilities. There is also a wonderful scene fairly early on in the book, featuring the hero and his horse meeting Greyfur the kangaroo for the first time, and it occurs on the banks of a creek, so perhaps this would be a good option… although the bunyip who appears later on is very tempting… He snorts water out of his nostrils, a trick he learned while at Dragon Training School with all the fire-breathing dragons.
Decision-making is not my strong point with regard to artistic pursuits. So many wonderful options, so little time! I’m wondering how I’ll go about deciding on a medium for my puppet, once I’ve decided on the character. Perhaps it will be determined by my limitations. I’ll rule out all forms of puppetry that are beyond my technical ability and what is left after that will be my medium!
Here is Whispering in the Wind by Alan Marshall.
Cover of 1969 hardback edition illustrated by Jack Newnham
Another card. For a very good teacher who has been driven crazy by a neighbour’s rooster all year. But this one is singing her praises.
Swimming again
Swimming again, or rather, watching the swimming. Here were some of my more immediate neighbours on the spectator benches at swimming lessons this week.
My fine-point pens had died of exhaustion, so I enjoyed using a thicker felt tip instead, and later adding a bit of pencil colour at the drawing board was fun.
auburn haired swimmer – this little boy has a spectacular head of flaming orange-red.
blue sibling – she found Ollie the Octopus’s antics amusing
green sibling – same sibling, different colour
Mum with mobile phone – most of the spectators spend a lot of time watching their phones. It’s a funny world we live in now. I do it too sometimes.
Sea Lioness secures future plan
I’m sure they’re not called sea lionesses. But they should be. It’s nice.
Investing in her future – felt tip, indian ink and gouache on book page
sold
This drawing (or is it a painting?) goes with the Bactrian Camel. Both are painted in the same book about financial management. This sea lioness with her pup appears on a page about investment. As with the Bactrian Camel, the photograph that formed the basis of the drawing comes from The Wonder Book of Animals.
There is a second sea lioness on the drawing board. She’ll have to wait until I’ve finished ‘Poppy is the Thunder’, the current page in progress for Thunderstorm Dancing.
The Wonder Book of Animals: drawn in and drawn from. My copy is much more dilapidated than this one taken from an ebay listing.
This painting sprang from two books and a sudden urge to paint something in a mid-century modern way. An urge indeed! It got me up out of bed and I had to clear the drawing board!
I wanted a larger book than a novel format, so I grabbed a delicious weighty tome from the shelf, Raymond Chambers’ book Financial Management. Weighty in two senses.
As the book fell open on a page about Obsolescence, I decided to flick through The Wonder Book of Animals to find a subject who would fit the bill. I was vaguely thinking Dodo until my brain kicked into gear and I realised that the poor Dodo did not in any way become obsolete. Its very desirability (and perhaps amiability) caused its downfall. At any rate these mournful observations ceased when I set eyes on a photo of a lovely, shaggy Bactrian Camel. Not entirely obsolete, I’m pleased to say, for those who do not own a motor vehicle. But his lovely curvy form said ‘draw me!’ So I did.
sold
A cutaway book with temptingly delicious stick buried within!
Update: more mud added! (It was much too neat and tidy for such a muddy topic.)
This book has just flown to Italy to live with David and Fran who own the lovely Jack.
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Judy Watson 