And more doodles...

More old work

I was having a root around in my plan chest drawers again today as there were workmen hammering all around me and it was impossible to concentrate.  Again these are just photos taken with my iPhone using the Instagram app.

These are doodles and sketches from old scrapbooks.  I think my default setting as an artists is doodler and I have never yet managed to find a way of illustrating, or a vehicle that properly reflects that.  I get far more pleasure from looking at these things than I do from most of my finished illustration work.

New life for old illustrations

I took some photos of old illustrations on Instagram today.  They are black and white line drawings I did for books I wrote for Hodder (Jail-breaker Jack) and for Random House (Death and the Arrow, The White Rider and Redwulf's Curse) many years ago.  I used a blurring tool that adds a 3D effect.  It gives them a depth that the line drawings alone could not have.  Interesting, I think...

Loser (continued)

Having just recovered from the face slapping of losing the Angus Book Award, I had the long walk of shame to pick up my two tree

paintings from the Royal Academy having failed to get them in to the Summer exhibition.

I had a look round the show and saw some nice things - there are always nice things at the Summer Exhibition - but I also saw a lot of horrible things (and there are always those, too, at the Summer Exhibition).  For that is the nature of the beast - what is horrible to me, is presumably work of immense charm and vitality to the judges.  Or at least I have to believe so, given that the work was preferred to mine.

The hang was even more perverse than last year with paintings inexplicably hoisted twenty feet up in the air with nothing beneath them but open wall or open door.  There seemed even more open wall than last year - but maybe that is another effect of not getting work accepted: the bare wall taunts.  Even bare wall was preferable to your dull and derivative daub, it seems to say.

I groaned inwardly when I encountered the first large photograph because photography seems to belong somewhere else somehow and there are already many opens that feature photography, but I have to say that I thought many of the best things there were photographs.

The Summer Exhibition is infuriating and exasperating and exciting and rather wonderful, simply because it doesn't quite have its finger on the pulse and is such a weird assortment in there.  But there are few places in the world where Sunday painters rub shoulders with struggling professionals and students with world renown artists and I hope it goes on and on forever.  It is a fine thing and I bear it no ill will at all for overlooking my genius this year.

There's always next year....

Angus

I have been really bad about keeping the blog up to date.  Apologies to all who came and found old posts here.  I know how frustrating I find that when I look at the blogs of other writers and artists.  I have promised in the past to try harder and I make that promise again - this time with hopefully more resolve.

There is a lot to catch up with but first I will say that I have recently returned from a trip to Scotland where I was shortlisted for the Angus Book Award for Mister Creecher.  My fellow shortlisted authors were Tim Bowler, William Osborne and Teri Terry - and it was Teri with her book, Slated (as with the North-East Book Award) who beat me to it this time.  Congratulations to her and thanks to everyone who voted for me.  I think we all know that there was some kind of terrible mistake in the counting (sob).

Everyone I mentioned the Angus Book Award to raved about it and I can see why.  It is extraordinarily well run and everyone concerned with it was friendly and enthusiastic and very supportive.  We stayed on the coast at the Carnoustie Hotel right next to the famous golf course and on the day of the event we each did two separate school visits.  I went to Webster's High School and to Brechin High School, the first a small group in the library, the second a large group of nearly a hundred, in the school hall.  Both visits went pretty well, I hope.  I certainly enjoyed them.

On the way, my chauffeur for the day, Lynn ('are your shoes...purple?') took me to see some Pictish stones.  The Serpent Stone at Aberlemno at the top of the page is the model for the award itself and it was some compensation to be seeing the original.  To be honest, it was worth it for me to come all that way and see these incredible pieces of art.  It was a chilly and overcast day, but that somehow seemed right.

The event at Arbroath High School was compered with incredible confidence and poise by two students from the school and each of the school involved in the voting process had made films about the books on the shortlist.  These two were full of wit and imagination and put many a publisher's trailer to shame.

Each of the authors did a five minute piece about their book and then Teri's name was read out and she received her award, after which we signed books (posters & scraps of paper) before going back to the hotel for a well-earned drink and some very fine chips.  A huge thanks to everyone concerned - the organisers, the staff and students of all the schools involved.  Hope to be back soon.

The next day I was driven back to Edinburgh airport with Tim Bowler.  I'd driven up with Tim and we talked about books and writing and all that kind of thing.  We shared some enthusiasms - especially for Rosemary Sutcliff, with whom Tim had amazingly exchanged letters just before she died).

Tim caught his plane back to Devon and I went into Edinburgh for a a few hours on what turned out from a very unpromising start, to be a glorious day.  I must have seen Edinburgh in sunshine before, but I can't quite remember when that would have been.

I put my bag into left luggage in Waverley Station and then mooched around, walking up to the castle and around the old town.  I made my usual pilgrimage to Greyfriar's Cemetery and generally enjoyed being in arguably Britain's most spectacular city.

The day was ruined by Easyjet of course.  My flight was, without explanation (unless you regard 'operational difficulties' an explanation) delayed from 5.30pm to 11.30pm.  We were given the option of changing planes to an earlier flight to Luton, which is what I ended up doing, incurring a massive taxi bill to get to Cambridge.

To the victor the spoils.  To the loser the spoiled travel plans.