Fantasy, Tolkien, Pembrokeshire, Cornwall, Hounds
I painted these with inktense watercolours and a Faber Castell small nib ink pen, but I feel that probably acrylic would have worked better than the watercolours.
If you are looking at these on a large screen, bear in mind they appear considerably larger than they actually are. I am wondering if I should adjust them to look smaller: on my screen, they are 2-3 times actual size, and look terribly clumsy as a result.
Sometimes I write! This is a novel-length story I wrote for fun. It’s free to read and download. When I finished writing, I was pleased with it, so I made it a book cover to celebrate. Details and links to the story below!
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The Once and Future King sleeps in the hills, waiting to return in Britain’s hour of greatest need. This much we know. Arthur’s name echoes down to us out of the Dark Ages. But why? When that terrible hour finally comes, what will happen?
My theory involves an ancient Volvo, a lot of bees, Arthur in pyjamas from Marks and Spencer, a random dog, some very old Anglo-Saxon magic, doom, death and the serpent-spawn of a dark god.
Read online -|- Download epub -|- Download PDF
It turns out that moving house is pretty time-consuming and although the move itself has gone through OK, I’ve been so busy with all kinds of things that I just haven’t had much time for art. Still, here are three Christmas cards – the first for the Shop on the Borderlands, and the second two inspired by things we can see from our new Pembrokeshire windows! 
These are all quick watercolour and ink doodles. The first, The Plants Need Me is a doodle of a ghost who still has things she must be getting on with.
This is Transformation, a pencil and watercolour doodle of Léonie de Saint-Vire from Georgette Heyer’s These Old Shades, shown, first, as a ragged and fearful boy, and later as a lady in a beautiful eighteenth-century gown.
Shadow and Flame
Far into the blue shadows where strange things lurk, she wanders, fearless and alone…
In the gloom of the deep forest, flame comes to her bidding, holds its fierce golden heart contained for her comfort. She builds a house for herself in an hour. Who is it here that is strange and terrifying, filled with powers beyond imagining?
Up She Rises
Sailor looks down, merperson comes up.
Afterwards
A Silmarillion doodle with Maglor, one of my favorite characters, and Ulmo, lord of the Sea.
Oh no, another complaint?
Ea-Nasir, the famously dodgy copper merchant of Ancient Ur, adds to his collection.
After twenty years in the Tamar Valley in Cornwall, we decided that the middle of a global pandemic was just the time to move house.
Well, it wasn’t quite like that. I have two day jobs. One is running a small website development business, Clare Associates. This had a lot of travel / tourism customers, and so did not thrive in an environment where nobody could travel anywhere. The other is helping out with the Shop on the Borderlands, an online shop that sells new and second-hand tabletop role-playing games and accessories worldwide.
The Shop has been really taking off recently, and we’d got to the point where we just couldn’t fit any more stuff in our house, meaning no more room for the shop to grow. That, combined with a touch of lockdown fever, was enough to make us decide it was time to relocate, and in Pembrokeshire, just outside Pembroke Dock, we found somewhere with more room for the vital stock shelves, and as a bonus, this fabulous view of the Milford Haven waterway which I am sure will inspire many paintings in future.
I made this A3 size painting as a prize for a competition held by the Shop on the Borderlands. It illustrates a key event for the group, where one of the party has been killed and they are waiting to see if he can be revived. To make sure I had the right idea for each character, I sketched them out in pencil before assembling the finished painting: you can see the various head-sketches below.
Finrod from the Silmarillion is one of my favorite Tolkien characters, and I like the idea that his home in the cave-city of Nargothrond was filled with complex patterns and beautiful things. This is an A4 painting, and I based it loosely on a photo of the young David Bowie.
I painted this from a photo that I took in January 2019 – the Tamar Valley in Cornwall where I live doesn’t get a huge amount of snow, so when it does, everything stops because the roads are icy! So I walked with my dog up to the top of Hingston Down to take photos of the mine in the snow.
It was a rather gloomy day, so I’ve adjusted the lighting here to make the brick warmer and more interesting, and added an old shovel.
I have a whole bunch of paintings being shown at the Tavistock Group of Artists exhibition in the Town Hall in Tavistock from 18th to 22nd June, including my Daughters of the Rivers series. All the paintings will be for sale : eek!
I’ve also had a couple of paintings accepted for the Tavistock Heritage Trust exhibition to celebrate Tavistock’s status as a World Heritage Site in Tavistock’s Butchers’ Hall, Wednesday 26th and Saturday 29th June. Doors open to all between 10am and 4pm, and there will be a special family event on Saturday 29th (??!!).
