The Railway Rabbits

Most of us rabbits who disappear don't come back, Mrs, said Little Woo Woo, her dark eyes trembling. Not ever...

So begins the desperate search for Mr Rabbit....

Fresh from the printers comes The Railway Rabbits, the latest book by Geraldine Taylor, with pictures by me. She describes it as 'a story for children, written for grown-ups as well. ... for children, it's about a brave little rabbit searching for her father, helped by Hairy Old Badger, a one-eyed owl and London taxi drivers.'

It's a limited edition of 100, and if you want one then it costs £5, and is available from Geraldine Taylor c/o 28 Berkeley Rd,, Westbury Park, Bristol BS6 7PJ,   email geraldine@geraldinetaylor.co.uk

The Secret Blackbird

The Secret Blackbird is hot off the press! More adventures in accidental ornithology, as Geraldine looks into the whys and wherefores of garden birds disappearing in the summer.

"Suddenly, every summer, there's an uncanny silence throughout the land, and I'm asked, where are the birds? Has my robin deserted me? Is it the global warming? Is the country going to the dogs? Have the blackbirds left the sinking ship?

This book explains what's going on; why our birds disappear in the summer, what they are up to, why they aren't singing, and when they will come back"

Available from Etsy (click on the link to go to my shop!) 

Secret Blackbird

 

Some more pics for Secret Blackbird, my new collaboration with Geraldine Taylor. I was quite pleased with the pics I have already done, such as the titular blackbird

-but they were lacking a bit in narrative content, as it were. So, here's a few cartoony ones.

going round

Here's a friend of Geraldine's. He's called Drew (no relation), and he's been living in Leigh Woods on the other side of the Gorge from Bristol, for the summer. This picture accompanies Geraldine's description of Drew's experiences, and is for the next issue of the Bristol Review of Books.


And here's another round picture; it's for Andrew Sartain, chef, keeper of Gloucester Old Spots and inveterate forager- constantly off hauling fish out of the sea, hunting down fungus and doing unspeakable things to game animals. You will probably find him at a Farmers Market near you, if you happen to live in the Bristol and Bath area. Try the sausages. They're good.

The Case Of The Curious Crow

The new book is back from the printers, and very nice it looks too!

It's the second book of true bird stories from Geraldine Taylor, illustrated by me. Our previous one was The Coffee Thrush, published last year. It proved very popular, and we have high hopes for this one too. Plenty of good, closely-observed stories. And I'm very happy with my pictures too.





The Case Of The Curious Crow, originally uploaded by Dru Marland.

If you would like a copy, then you can order one for £5 (P&P included) from

Geraldine Taylor
Eyeon Books
28 Berkeley Rd
Bristol
BS6 7PJ

tel. 0117 9732787
e-mail eyeon.books@virgin.net

...and I've listed the book on ebay, which is handy if you have a PayPal account.


...or you will be able to get it on the Bristol Books and Publishers website (click on the link to the right of my blog page there, or follow this link here and hunt around a bit; it's not yet been listed there, but when it does I'll edit out this sentence...)

The Case Of The Curious Crow

The Case Of The Curious Crow, originally uploaded by Dru Marland.

Here are the illustrations for the book that Geraldine Taylor has written. It's going to be published in the autumn.

moonlight bear

"Slugs is to badgers as rice is to the Chinese"

I've finished the picture, and am very happy with it. I was worried about how the hawthorn tree would turn out; I blanked out the blossom with masking fluid, which I also used to frame the night sky and the moon. It took ages to get the latex solution out of the brush.... I'd never even heard of masking fluid until a few years ago; it's jolly useful. But a pig to get out of a brush.

I also had to put off painting the sky until the shops opened, so that I could get some indigo watercolour. And then hummed and hah-ed about whether I should get some Cotman watercolour at £1.99 a tube, or Artists watercolour at £5.99 for a tiny tube. I settled for the Cotman. It seemed to work OK. (I once made a nasty mess using some watercolour from LIDL. You can't be too careful. Well .....perhaps you can be too careful. Anyway...)

Still learning.

This picture is for Geraldine's next book, The Case of the Curious Crow. Here's a link to our last book, The Coffee Thrush

splashing paint around

I'm getting on with the new book I'm doing with Geraldine. I'm still having trouble with skies, as it were. I was quite pleased with the way the grass turned out on this picture: masked the birds, branches and Geraldine with latex masking fluid, then painted over it with that big soft brush. Then rubbed off the mask, and the green looked really good, but the details needed retouching because I'd rubbed half the paint off along with the mask.

And then I dripped a tiny drop of water onto the green.

And tried to smooth over it.

And the patch got bigger

And bigger

And I ended up re-masking the picture and repainting the grass.

And bought the Right Sort of rubber for removing masking fluid. It's sort of crepe rubber, just so you know.

And then I totally goofed on the sky and ended up replacing it with a sky that I'd photographed up on the Skirrid on Christmas Day.

O well, onwards and upwards. Still learning.



Richard is getting into gear ready for the Norwich reading next week, and here is a story about our walk across Wales, on his blog.

wild places

At last I've got into gear and am painting pictures, and I'm pleased with the way this one is going. It's a fox catching hailstones in its mouth. It was something that Geraldine Taylor spotted on the Zoo Banks, on the Downs. Assuming I don't mess the picture up, it'll be in the Bristol Review of Books and in Geraldine's new work-in-progress book.

There's been a lot of nature around the place lately. I walked along the Severn estuary on Sunday, exploring the bit where the railway tunnel and the new bridge intersect.



This is a shaft that was dug to tunnel outwards from, and is now used to pump water out of the tunnel. The one on the Welsh side is more impressive, because it pumps out the Great Spring, which was discovered in dramatic circumstances during the construction of the tunnel, and which has in its time supplied an ordnance factory, a paper mill, and, now, the brewery that makes Becks and Stella beer.

Anyway, the recent snows have been thoroughly washed away by the rain, and the sun shone brightly, and the birds agreed with me that it felt like spring, and were singing in a chirpy sort of way all over the place. A couple of blue tits were bobbing round in circles, occasionally performing sudden vertical climbs. Similarly, a grey squirrel in next door's garden was performing high-speed circles punctuated by great leaps into the air. Lord knows what that was about; perhaps it was art.

And the magpies in the plane tree at the front of the house have been repairing the nest where they reared their single chick last year, before it was killed by the local fox. Gratifyingly, the car parked below the nest was spattered with twigs and magpie crap. It is this car's owner who cleared the snow before driving away last week, throwing the snow onto the footpath where I had cleared the snow. Karma!

The Coffee Thrush

The latest book that I've illustrated is fresh back from the printers. It's The Coffee Thrush, by Geraldine Taylor, and it's a sort of adventures-in-birdwatching book, which is a really bad description. More 'stories of what life is like when birds play a big part in your life'. Here's a flavour:

One of these mornings

You’re going to rise up singing

November 2008

Sunrise. Three dog walkers and I stand round this ivy covered ash, listening to the commanding phrases of a song thrush, in the way that people once gathered around bushes containing nightingales.

Early one morning in February, I was passing a bush just as the song thrush in it started to sing. The bird warmed up with a loud medley sung from the roots; then it rose up through the branches, singing with thrilling sharpness.

I talk to the birds, ask how they are doing, encourage them along. Sometimes they react with clucky exasperation or by jumping in the air, but often they continue singing while I listen and watch. They are not singing for me, of course, though my heart finds this impossible to accept. Also, as a therapist, I find myself trying to make a relationship with everything I see.

The Bird of Perfect Summers

May 2009

Meadow now, in Ashton Court Estate where the bird song is as thrilling as the morning: skylarks on scramble, rising up singing; goldfinches ringing like bells on blossomy hawthorns; willow warblers in small corners, tiptoeing into song.

The willow warbler is the bird of perfect summers, now and long ago. Their dainty song melts our hearts. Nature writers write lyrically about these little green birds, and birdwatchers speak of them with great affection. I wish I could know willow warblers as individuals like the Coffee Thrush or the Observatory Robins.

I wonder, for example, if the length of their song varies between individuals: although I have reservations about turning up in the meadow with a stopwatch to time them. What is it like to hear willow warblers in the dawn chorus? Can they hover like sparrows and blue tits?

Sparrows and other small birds can hover like hummingbirds for short periods. I’ve seen a sparrow hover for over a minute to catch flies under a garage roof: once, I saw a robin attempt this, less successfully. Sometimes blackbirds hover for a second or two and this is usually the product of indecision. Blue tits include a hover in their fussy flying pattern – land on one branch, take off and hover; land on another, take off and hover, and so on. It’s pretty to watch, especially around hazel bushes in the sunshine.





Here's a link to the other pictures in the book, and if you'd like the book, then it's £5 including postage from EYE ON BOOKS, 28 Berkeley Road, Westbury Park, Bristol BS6 7PJ. Cheques made payable to Geraldine Taylor.

on air

Geraldine and I went down to BCFM, Bristol's community radio station, to talk with Tom Bigwood about the Downs wildlife book. We got there very early, and had chance to talk with Tom while some music was playing. News had been breaking even as we had been sitting in the foyer of the radio station; a knifeman had been wandering around stabbing people, and there was much police activity. Apparently, he was arrested just down the road from the studio.

But we didn't let it get in the way of Spreading The Word. Geraldine mentioned that blackberries are in season on the Downs. I thought of mentioning the damsons, some of which are even now steeping in vodka in my kitchen; but hey, people don't need to know that. Some things need to be secret. Shhhhh.

Thrush

I'm doing some pictures for a new book by Geraldine Taylor. Here's the cover illustration, which is set in Fairyland (as mentioned in an earlier post). The song thrush, however, is modelled upon a stuffed song thrush in Bristol City Museum.

I finished the picture and got it scanned ready to add the words and stuff on Photoshop. And then popped it into a frame and down, along with a few other pictures, to the Natural Health Clinic on Cotham Hill, Bristol, where they are kindly allowing me to hang them this month. It's all good fun and a useful exercise, and so far people have said nice things about the pictures.

another launch

At last! The books will be here from the printers on Tuesday, and we do a launch at Stanfords in Bristol on Wednesday evening.

It says I did 'over 200 illustrations'. Gosh. I'm sure it's right. No wonder it took so long.