Publishing, painting, and pots
Good things are still happening, in spite of the tone of my previous blog!
The first is that Tilda and the Dragons of Nargan is fast approaching publication! BInk are working hard (after a move that has involved numerous dragons taking up residence in the new office!) to get the final edits typeset and ready for printing. I thought I’d share a snippet from the book to get you fired up…
A wide-nostrilled black snout. Two bulbous eyes, shining white underneath a thick ridged brow. An opaque frill of leathery skin framing the face. Hints of purple light glinting on black scales. A long body, supported on four stumpy legs with widespread toes that ended in claws as long as a man’s fingers. A thickened tail, almost as long as the body, dragging on the ground.
Tilda saw it all in a split second, and whimpered.
Dragon.
I’m excited for you to share in the next of Tilda’s adventures, because in this one, the trouble keeps on coming! I’ll keep you posted as to definite dates.
The second thing is that I recently went to a fused glass workshop, run by SmARTsy Fused Glass. We were going to make an organic bowl - one of a number of one-off special project workshops that are run from time to time. I’ve done a little fused glass work before, so I knew roughly what to do, but I had forgotten how difficult it is to a) score glass and b) cut in a straight line! Here are the pics of the process, and a few to show you what a glorious workshop we were in.
Now, as I can’t work out how to give each photo a title (!!) here’s a brief description working left to right across each row;
The workshop is full of colour, and the glass comes in sheets, strips, shards, granules and sand in a kaleidoscope of colour. As you can see from the rainbow window… The pots made me feel as though I could’ve been in Granny Rainbow’s potion-making room! There was book wallpaper in the loo!
The process began with colours; I chose turquoise, orange, and pink, as they seem to have been the colours of my summer. As mentioned, I couldn’t cut straight or even, so I went for an uneven look out of necessity, glueing my strips onto the base glass and adding granules and sand in between. The orange and white is my sister’s bowl - she was much better at cutting the glass! And as I had a bit of time over, I made a rainbow coaster too. Each ‘flat’ bowl is apparently fired on a textured setting, then re-fired over a beaker on a slump setting which is the true ‘organic’ phase.
The finished pieces all came out very differently! My own bowl came out irregularly square - it had four sides, but not where I thought they would be, and not of the same length. My sister’s bowl came out the squarest, with lovely even stripes, and her friend’s came out triangular! But they are definitely organic, as there’s no guarantee of how they’ll react in the slump firing phase. And my coaster is gorgeous - when the sun shines on it, the reflected colour adds a depth to it that doesn’t appear otherwise.
SmARTsy’s next special workshop is on the morning of Tuesday November 8th, and is a beautiful birch tree themed event. Amazing, what you can do with glass, isn’t it?
The third - and final thing - is that I have started a watercolour painting class! The tutor is a friend of mine (we were in an ante-natal group together) and she is a very talented artist and teacher. I’ve dabbled with watercolour before, but not seriously, so even the first week was an experience! I’m having to learn to let go of my desire to control the paint, and embrace the ‘happy accidents’ that occur.
We began with painting skies and creating landscapes. I won’t post any pics - yet - as I’ll write a dedicated blog later on when I’m feeling a bit more confident to share what I’ve painted. I think it’s going to be rather addictive. So much so, I’ve already ordered a part-used set of paints from ebay to increase my limited range of twelve colours to potentially thirty-six (some colours I guess will be repeated or not have much left in the tubes) for future dabbling…
Maybe all this creative activity will pay off when I’m writing Tilda 5 - I’m definitely not ‘myself’ when I’m not creating something, but sometimes I need to give my brain a rest from the written word…