PRETTY AS A PICTURE

Or the Capital P on Picturesque

Having always thought that picturesque was just another adjective favoured by my grandmother’s generation, it was with some surprise when the other day I stumbled on Picturesque.

With a capital P.

(Such was my Surprise it deserves a capital S. Just goes to show that while we figuratively tack and veer, each happy captains of our own HMS General Culture bound for far ports of call, thankfully we need not set out to sea in them physically. I for one would have sunk long ago.)

TATTERDEMALION

Or A Few Words on Fantasy and the Fine Art of Unravelling

I’ve often wondered how best to describe what by default must be qualified as an approach or method to fantasy illustration.

STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND

Or All About Adventitious Roots

Recently did another interview for a web site, where it was question of roots.

SLICING TIME

Or a Certain Dislocation of Perception

Very recently, a correspondant wrote “curious how we partition Time to try to control it…but it just flows on….”

BEST WISHES FOR 2010

Or A Thought or Two for the New Year

After an eventful and really quite busy year, no newsletter for year’s end, just a thought or two.

THE WOOD OF LOST STORIES

ROB HOLDSTOCK, 1948 - 2009

Two weeks ago, Robert Holdstock died from an E. coli infection, in just over ten days. We were following his progress daily, when on the 27th, his condition, which had been improving or optimistically stable, suddenly worsened. He died at 4 a.m. on November 29th. He was 61 years old.

You can easily find all the details of Rob’s career and books on Wikipedia, so I won’t bore you with that here, and homages will abound, as they do, but I’d like to add a few thoughts.

A FEW LINES ON MAKING LINES

« Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere. »
G. K. Chesterton (1874 - 1936)

Over the last few months, I have filled a coffee cup halfway to the brim with pencil stubs and it suddenly occured to me that while I happily take brand-new pencils and sharpen and otherwise sketch and draw them down to next to nothing, I knew nothing about the origins of such a wonderful and simple instrument and what one does with it.

HORSESHOES FOR SLEIPNIR

Or Extra Legs and Many Meanings

Have recently been doing quite a lot of reading on the solemn subject of death.

DRAWING THE LINE SOMEWHERE

Or Why a Drawing is Never Really Done

“We’re going to do a book,” my editor said. “Got anything planned for next week?”

LOSING WORLDS AND WRITING BOOKS

About Worlds, How They Become Lost and Occasionally Found

Quite a while ago, I agreed to illustrate a history book.

SOMETHING NEW

Or Where I Try out a Neologism

Had a long chat with my editor the other day, and we agreed to do something a little different.

OF SIRENS AND SEA NYMPHS

Or of Passions Perilous and the Mythopoeic Nature of Water

Every now and then, it is with gratitude and delight that I can announce a guest writer for this newsletter. (Not only does this spare me the temptation born of desperation of posting some dog’s breakfast riddled with spelling errors and ill-made phrases at the eleventh hour, but that writers and friends and colleagues who take their writing seriously be willing to share it here enchants me to no end.)

YÐ

Or of the Most Serious Business of Watching Moving Billows of Water,  Musings on the Weight of Words, a Paragraph or Two on Unsupported Transit, News Regarding Resin & Bronze and Even a Bit About a Book Trailer

I’m no man of the sea, rather (to steal a line from famous French maritime photographer Philippe Plisson) a man of the edge of the sea.

PAINTING OUT LOUD

Or a Certain Conflation of Sound and Vision

The other day I was busily painting away, with my iPod plugged into my ears, when I realized that something was wrong.

SNAKES AND TOWERS

Or an Oriental Tale of Mélusina

When I opened the curtains of the 25th-story hotel room in Hangzhou in the early morning and looked out, I really did wonder where I was.

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Welcome to the NEWS section. Newsletters appear, weather permitting, once a month. Subjects vary, but only according to whim and circumstance. CHRONICLES archives the successive newsletters, OUT & ABOUT announces events and public appearances.

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• THE STUFF OF DREAMS
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