A Friend In Need by Sue Howes, part 3

A Friend in Need pt3
Originally uploaded by Alice Wood

Parts 1 and 2 of this story were published in Horse + Pony magazine before it ended publication with the August issue. Sue has kindly allowed me to post the rest of the story along with the final two illustrations...

A Friend In Need by Sue Howes, part 3

Gemma waited on Pip behind the barn. She was sure that Mrs Feather would search the woods, once she had phoned Gemmas’s parents to tell them what was happening. Gemma reckoned she had about twenty minutes before her parents arrived to join the search, and she hoped the first search party would leave soon so she could get away. Within five minutes she saw Mrs Feather and Jess leave the yard on two of the school ponies, and head towards the woods. As soon as they were out of sight, she hurried Pip out of the front gate and was soon threading her way through the back streets of the town.

She felt bad sneaking off like this, especially without telling Jess, but she was certain that she would not have been allowed to do it on her own, and to be on her own with her pony was what Gemma desperately wanted. She hadn’t really been alone at all since her accident and she was hoping for an hour or so before she was caught. Her head was filled with Jess’ description of the little valley on the moor, and she decided to see if she could find it.

Jess and Mrs Feather had each taken one end of the track through the woods, looking carefully between the trees. When they met in the middle they were both disappointed, there had been no sign of girl or pony.

“We’ll have to go further afield,” decided Mrs Feather. “Have you got any idea where she might have gone?”
“I did wonder if she might be looking for the place I found the other day,” said Jess, “only it’s a long way away. I don’t think she realised how far it is.”
“In that case, we’d better go back to the stables and change ponies. These two are too old for an extended ride. You can have Otter, & I’ll take Briony. You can show me where but we must stick together, I don’t want two of you missing!”

While Jess tacked up the two ponies, she could hear Mrs Feather talking with Gemma’s parents who had arrived, white-faced and frightened. They were imagining Gemma, fallen from her pony somewhere, unable to move and helpless. They were going to look round the roads nearby, and had already talked to the police.

Jess led Otter out of his stable. If it hadn’t been for the seriousness of the search, she would have been thrilled to be allowed to ride the sleek brown pony. He was the youngest in the yard, at eight years old, and was very keen. Only the most experienced were allowed to ride him. He bounced a little under Jess as she checked her girth, and led the way out of the yard at a brisk walk.

They had been riding for about half an hour when Mrs Feather spotted the first signs that a pony had been that way – a pile of fresh droppings. They hurried on at a trot, the feeling of urgency driving them on. The path cut across the side of a steep hill, and there was a sheer drop down on one side of it. Jess looked down, hoping she wouldn’t see Gemma lying in the bracken below, but thankfully there was no sign of her there.

“It looks like we’re in for some nasty weather,” called Mrs Feather, pointing to the darkening sky to the west. “And Gemma’s coat is still hanging up in the tack room.” She frowned, her face drawn with worry.

As they reached the top of the slope, the wind hit them. It was much stronger than they had expected and Jess shivered, wondering how Gemma had coped with it as it was quite unbalancing. It became hard to talk, with the wind snatching the words away, so they continued in grim silence.

It was then that the rain began. In no time at all it was coming down so hard that Jess lost sight of Mrs Feather. Otter fought Jess, he wanted to turn his bottom into the wind and they struggled on into the storm. She must find Gemma. Just at that moment, a pheasant flew out right under Otter’s hooves, and the pony shied in fright. Saddle slippery with rain, Jess slid out to the side and hit the soft ground with a squelch. She could just make out the pony’s wet brown quarters disappearing into the rainstorm. How would she find Gemma now?

................................................................
Part 4 to follow shortly.

A Bird's Song

The proof copy of A Bird's Song has arrived back from lulu.com and it's looking quite good. The printing is digital so the colour matching isn't perfect, but for that you need proper CMYK printing presses and thousands of pounds. The binding is secure and well put together. The paper is a good weight with no show-through. I managed to send the pdf file without the bleed setting, because their job option file didn't include it, so there are small white edges on the trimmed sides. I will have to change that next time, but it's only a small thing at this stage. The best thing is that the production cost is reasonable enough to sell it at a market price. All in all I'm pretty pleased with it!

Now I have to do the missing illustrations, and then get another proof. It seems that they only allow the option of selling directly on amazon for certain sizes of their available production options and this one, 9" x 7", is not one of them. I'm not sure why, or if, it matters but that's another thing to think about... anyway - back to work.

The Eddystone Press

Over the last year or so I've been thinking more and more about starting a small publishing press. I've thought about making hand-bound letterpress and etching wonders, or simple photocopied multiples. I've considered just about every format possible, from the one-off artist's book to the mass produced paperback.

I've come to the conclusion that whichever way I do it I am extremely unlikely to make a penny out of it, so I might as well please myself! The liberating thing will be the creative freedom. No more changing this-that-or-the-other to please somebody else's idea of how your work should look. No more waiting for feedback and getting frustrated because all I really want to do is scribble, draw and paint all day.

I have so many stories and ideas which will never see the light of day if I rely on finding a commercial publisher for them. They are officially 'uncommercial'. So here goes... Maybe they will be rubbish! Maybe they would have been better with a publisher's art team behind them, and maybe this is an act of fantastic folly. The worst I can do is fail, and as an artist I do that every time I make something, so what's the worry?


First up will be A Bird's Song as a 32 page full colour picture book. I wrote this story years ago, and it's been in many forms over the intervening years. It's lyrical, poetic, obscure and lovely. I need to finish the artwork but I am aiming to have it ready by the end of the year. There are a couple of self-publishing websites now which offer fairly reasonable full colour printing, blurb.com and lulu.com. I am in the process of researching isbns, pdfs, bleed sizes, spine width calculators and generally getting confused. I'll be ordering a proof to see what the quality is like.

I will post more news as the venture progresses...

...and a Happier Day

Boy with Morris Owner magazine of May 1927, collection Tom Phillips.

For the last three months I have been working with Tom Phillips on a series of postcard books for the Bodleian Library. He has an extensive collection of private real photo postcards dating from the turn of the century to the 1940's. They are going to be held in the Bodleian Library Archive and they have decided to publish collections of the postcards in small volumes, each covering a different subject matter. The first two books will be Readers and Women & Hats.

There can be a little research involved when trying to date the cards, so when Tom came across this card of a little boy holding a Morris Owner magazine he gave it to me to investigate. As a long time Morris Minor owner I was excited to find the card and sent a scan of it to Nicola Parkins, the new editor of the Morris Minor Owners Club magazine. When I enlarged the card I discovered, to my great surprise, that the cover featured two military tanks!! I wondered to Nicola if Morris had built tanks. She came up trumps and in this month's Minor Matters there is a fantastic article about the magazine the little boy is holding (from May 1927) with the history of the one-man Morris-Martel tankette, a colour reproduction of the original magazine cover, AND I get my name splashed about all over my favourite subscription!

Minor Matters Vol XXXII no 1 July/August 2010

Meanwhile, my 'tankette' has failed her MOT on some worn out bushes. Nothing serious but I'm not sure I'll be fixing them in the spare room...

The van (Elsie), Kitty, Joey and Ralph in Topsham, August 2009.

A Sad Day...

I heard today that BPG Publishing who produce Horse+Pony magazine will not be renewing their license to publish it from Bauer Publishing, who own the rights to H+P. The magazine has been going for 30 years, and been published by BPG since 2005. I have worked as the short story illustrator for the last 3 years, and loved it.

The August issue will be the last, and this story (A Friend in Need) will end half way through!! Argh!! When I get a minute I'll do the two final illustrations and see if the writer, Sue Howes, will let me post the two final installments of the story here on my blog. The magazine was going from strength to strength and I enjoyed my time working on it. What a sad day :-(

The drawing competition will go ahead and I'll be sending out book prizes when the winners are announced. Thanks to everyone who was a true H+P fan! Ponies rule forever!

The Foundling Hospital

Yesterday I visited the Foundling Museum in London. I had wanted to go there for several reasons, but mainly because I had heard about the foundling tokens. Not wanting to give too much away, but the 'Secret Locket' in my children's book is a foundling token. Our heroine is found, as a baby, in a basket on the steps of the Big House and taken in. She has nothing in her basket except for a golden egg, and a golden locket. The egg hatches into a musical golden bird who remains her constant friend and companion, but no one can explain the significance of her locket... until much, much later!

So many childrens' stories begin with the orphaned or abandoned child. It's a terrific device for taking all kinds of liberties with the adventure, and the opportunity to cut out all kinds of parent-imposed health-and-safety concerns!

The Foundling Museum tells the story of the Foundling Hospital, London's first home for abandoned children and of three major figures in British history: its campaigning founder the philanthropist Thomas Coram (who was from Lyme Regis), the artist William Hogarth and the composer George Frideric Handel. The museum is now in a building adjacent to the original site of the Hospital, which was demolished in 1928.

Sometimes, when a mother gave her baby over to the care of the Hospital, she left a token by which her child might be identified should she ever return to claim them. There were also plea letters, and the Hospital would take a swatch of the baby's clothing or blanket, again for identification purposes. Each child would be re-christened so they lost all contact with their previous identity. The Hospital kept the tokens in its archive. They were never given to the unclaimed children in case it compromised the identity of the mother.

The little objects are heart-breakingly sad. Some obviously made with such care, and no small expense, that one wonders how the mother could not afford to keep her child. Illegitimacy was such a stigma at that time that poverty was not the only reason a woman might not keep her own baby. Some are just curios, of no monetary value, but unique in their form so as to be perfectly suited to their purpose. Half a coin, a strange seed, a tiny fish made of bone, a thimble. Each one hides a story.

Competition Time!

If you'd like to win a signed copy of my new book Princess Dolly and the Secret Locket you can enter the drawing competition in Horse + Pony magazine this month. The July issue has full details (see pictures) but the competition is open to children, and all you have to do is send in a drawing of your favourite pony. There are some examples shown here.


Send your drawing and contact details to: H+P Princess Dolly, 33 Broad Street, Stamford, Lincs PE9 1RB by 5th July 2010. Happy pony drawing!
I illustrate the pony short story each month so here's one of mine...

Joanna Newsom & Roy Harper RFH 11.5.2010

Last night I went to see Joanna Newsom at the Royal Festival Hall. It was a last minute thing as it was sold out, but they suddenly released some tickets (in the choir behind the stage) and I was quick enough to get two. Not the comfiest of seats, our budgies would have had trouble perching on those benches for a couple of hours, but it was worth it.



The lights were all aiming back towards us (for the benefit of the auditorium), so my view was mostly backlit, and very bright. The visual acrobatics of looking into this and then, blinded, down to a little piece of paper were a bit demanding, and I couldn't really see what I was doing. I abandoned the fine pen for a thick black brush pen, and it just about made enough of a mark in the dark to get some idea of what was going down! The action of drawing while watching/listening is very rewarding as it commits music to memory in a very anchored way, the two activities performed together demand proper concentration and coordination. One's mind is prevented from wandering about.

There was a drummer, a guitar/banjo/recorder player who did the arrangements on the new record, a trombonist and two violin players (I should have written down their names). JN played the piano and the harp. She started with '81, alone on stage, just her with the harp. Lovely, and my favourite song on the new LP, then they went on with Easy, Good Intentions and Have One On Me. A couple of older pieces made it in, Bridges & Balloons, and the Book of Right On. I particularly enjoyed hearing Monkey & Bear live for the first time. I liked the way her hands were reflected in the shiny black polish of the piano as she played, like a duet in a mirror.



Roy Harper, one of my favourite, proper songwriters played first and he was brilliant. An amazing guitar player. Just great to hear him sing Another Day after all these years. We had to stop ourselves calling out for Hell's Angels though and giving ourselves away as proper old gits. I was struck suddenly by the similarity between J Newsom's album cover for Have One On Me to that old hippy classic Flat, Baroque and Berserk. She likes Roy Harper, but then he is a poet too. The thing behind him in the drawing which looks like a giant oven glove is the harp in its cover!





As we left the Festival Hall, and people turned on their phones, the news slowly crept through the crowd that David Cameron had become Prime Minister while we weren't looking. There was palpable disappointment. To quote Roy Harper...

How does it feel to be completely unreal?
How does it feel to be a voter?
How does it feel to be a voluntary heel?

New Book out NOW!!

Princess Dolly & the Secret Locket has finally hit the bookshelves! Complete with pink cover, a little gold locket and the most complex endpapers ever published! Priced at £10.99 on amazon & waterstones, or lovereading4kids where it's a little bit cheaper.

Can you spot the differences? There are hundreds to find!

Dolly and her friends are so excited! The Duke and Duchess are coming to town, and they have announced a Grand Ball for the Royal Princess. But who is the princess? As the friends get everything ready for the royal arrival, they wonder about her. How graceful she must be, with lots of servants to clean and sew for her. How wonderful! But when they do meet the princess, they are in for a big surprise!

Moth in the Motor

I've designed a cover and toy theatre for the release of Rachael Dadd's new EP on broken sound music. Every record sleeve will enclose a pressing of the Moth in the Motor mini-album on limited edition 10" vinyl and include the free digital downloads.


There are 5 limited edition Toy Theatre kits each with a unique moth badge and the vinyl record for sale for £38.


Go to the broken sound website to see all the covers in the project or place an order. For more information about Rachael Dadd see her myspace page.

Half-term fun with skeletons

How mysterious is this picture? Does anyone else have one of these in the loft? We went to the Grant Museum, which is a fascinating treasure trove hidden away behind the British Museum. We liked the hairy toad, the woolly mammoth hair and the anaconda skeleton. Joey liked the scorpions in bottles, and of course, the bat.


The giant millipede (bottom right) was quite something too. It's like Hogwarts in here.



Ah-ha! The mystery of the box is solved.

New book on Amazon

New book out this Autumn. Pre-order from Amazon here. Very exciting!

Taekwondo!

No gigs for a (very long) while. I did go to see Ray Lamontagne at the Albert Hall, but we were right up in the vertiginous top bit and I felt a bit squashed and queasy the whole way through, so didn't draw.


I've been drawing all kinds of other things though, so I am going to bend the rules a bit and allow drawings of other live-action fast-moving people to feature here. It's a similar discipline, in that they move too quickly to really 'copy' what you see. I have to rely on really observing what is happening, and making very few marks incredibly fast. The ratio of looking to mark making is about 20:1, and each figure takes around 10 seconds to draw, maybe less.


This is my son's Taekwondo class in action. A very exciting week as the teacher's teacher was in town - Master George (7th dan black belt). He brought with him one of the Nigerian Taekwondo athletes for the Beijing Olympics. He was terrifyingly fast, strong, accurate and supple. Here he is doing the splits, they were all transfixed.

It's been a while...

but I've been doing the artwork for a children's book, and it's taken all my time for the last 2 months intensively. Have now finished it, and about to start new projects of a slightly different kind which I am very excited about. More figurative work, and an opportunity to draw at the allotments (gardening), and the zoo (penguins!). Will also be going to see and draw at Iron and Wine, and Ray Lamontagne soon...

James Yorkston & Martin Carthy - Union Chapel 24.5.07

The usual last minute babysitter dramas of course, but managed to get to this concert in the beautiful Union Chapel. Martin Carthy playing with James Yorkston. You cannot really call it supporting, but then perhaps you can as he is not a vain performer. Proud maybe, but not vain. He played Sir Patrick Spens with a Nic Jones melody, and lamented the difficulty of finding his LP's now. In the old second hand record shop days we used to keep things for a few months, and then sell them on again to buy something new, never thinking that all that vinyl would disappear from circulation one day as the shops closed down under greedy rents and iTunes became the virtual hub of all music sales. Over time I've had copies of LP's by Anne Briggs, Nick Drake, Nic Jones, The Trees, even Vashti Bunyan (who we didn't really rate at all) and who knows how many others whose price now prohibits my buying back again. I liked that old system though. It was exciting to hunt for something, and buying was more like bartering.
Downloading is so easy but I am a visual person and a lot of the pleasure for me is in leafing through sleeves and having the visual stimulus bring up the musical memory. I find it hard looking down a list (of what is real treasure) on my long resisted iPod trying to bring the Arial typed names to life, and find myself longing for a bit of adventurous typography or a picture.













James Yorkston was totally and blindingly on form with a wall of guitar brilliance for a 10 minute start to the set. The way he plays guitar is terrific, so full of energy and tension. He played lots of favourites from Moving up Country and Just Beyond the River (my personal favourite). The songs from Year of the Leopard sounded much more vibrant and full of energy than they do on the recording. His humour was in fine form too, with rude jokes curtailed at the sudden recollection that his mother was in the audience! Looking forward to the Green Man Festival in August, and the new cd out soon.

Joanna Newsom & LSO - Barbican 19.1.07

I was very excited about this concert. I had managed to get tickets over Christmas and the Barbican website was nearly sold out. The tickets must have gone in just a few days. As I had mine in my shopping basket someone else bought them and I had to go back and choose the next 2 along the row! Lots showed up on ebay of course, for serious amounts of money. Touts? Who knows. If you could afford that though, it was well worth it.

I am used to hearing an orchestra, and have heard harps with orchestras before, and was a little worried about the sound balance. At the start it did feel a little overwhelming, and I was filled with admiration for the mixing on Ys which is always balanced just right. It seemed to get easier to hear her though, maybe I got used to listening harder. Her voice has changed a little. It was somehow softer to listen too, and more melodious, less raw and edgy, but still with fantastic swoops, pings and whistles. She sounds like the swallows we have on the telegraph wires, they make this great whistling, pinging noise. The whole audience were stock still, and on the edges of their seats. She totally captivates with her performance. She is a wonder of technical ability and sheer creative force. I first heard Sawdust & Diamonds at the ICA when it was so new, she said, it had words missing. To hear it now, fully formed and performed in such a familiar and easy way was a terrific constrast. Drawing was tricky because we were quite a long way back, and she was tiny on the stage. I made some quick drawings of the whole stage with orchestra, and her in context, and a few little line drawings of her and the harp. It wasn't too dark, but when you look at a bright stage and then down at your lap you are temporarily blinded for just long enough to make some invisible marks, and then look back up to the light again. The scene was very interestingly lit, and there were some great shadow shapes. It wasn't really about drawing her so much, as drawing shapes that would hopefully look a bit like the scene afterwards. I like the small one of her guitar/banjo player on the bottom right. Both he and the percussion player were superb. My other half was on the edge of his seat for Bill Callahan's duet (Smog fan). Some new songs were very different again, but with that mesmerising rhythm from African percussion that loops around and repeats into itself like weaving. I'm so excited to hear what she does next.

Stuart Staples, Bush Hall - 5.6.2006

Went out in a rush and forgot the sketchbook. This is such a pain. I've managed to miss out on drawing Joanna Newsom at the Green Man Festival '05, and later on the Tindersticks concert at the Barbican in September. I need one glued to my arm I think. I managed to get hold of a couple of bits of paper, and these terrible scruffy things are the result of my poor efforts. Lovely gig though, and the first time I had seen and heard Stuart on stage. Thomas the drummer is a marvel to watch.