I haven’t got round to doing anything ‘Halloweeny’ myself this year but I did like the look of this groovy little vampire story I saw in a bookshop window in Berlin at the weekend; that illustration of the coffin lid being pushed back made me smile.

Berlin still had far more independent book shops than any other city I’ve been to; within five minutes walk of the shop with the vampire book I can think of at least three other places including, just round the corner, my favourite second-hand bookshop which had these lovely Fischer editions with their great cover illustrations – a bargain for €2.50 each!

The weather was very mild for this time of year, and the light was clear and sparking, making the wonderful autumn colour really glow. In the evening I cycled up to the Teufelsberg, just on the outskirts of the city to the south west, a bit like Berlin’s Hampstead Heath but with a cold war listening station perched on top. The views out to the west were beautiful and really showed how forested the district still is.

It was also the time of year when the cranes fly in, often wreaking havoc with farmers’ crops, and a large group flew overhead while I was up on the hill.

From a neighbouring hill you can see the listening post (very pertinent what with the current story in the news about the US listening to Merkel’s phone calls) in all it’s sci-fi weirdness.

And just to finish, I do like to see a knitted lamp-post cover and there were some fine ones up the road from our place in a little neighbourhood we are fond of.

Raven Crag 1

I’ve had a couple of trips up to the Lake District over the last year and one of the many pleasant memories of those holidays was seeing ravens soaring over the wonderful upland landscape including around Raven Crag itself. The crag is a popular spot for rock climbing with some great and rather intimidating looking routes up the sheer face of the buttress. The wild scenery is the perfect backdrop to seeing these large birds which are so steeped in rather dark mythology and folklore.

A couple of projects on this autumn, including quite a large painting for my friend Jill in Whitstable and also a tattoo for my partner Jan. He already has quite a few big tattoos, but his left arm is ink-free and he wants me to design something going across the left side of his chest and shoulder and down the arm. He’s provided me with a brief description of what he wants so here are the first couple of ideas, sketched out just snipping and collaging the basic shapes. I’m touched that he’s actually willing to permanently mark his body with something I’ve designed, so, better not mess it up or I’ll have to pay for the very expensive laser removal!

I’ve been snipping and glueing more birds, probably make a small flock of collaged crows this week…

I haven’t posted anything for quite a few weeks now so it’s high time to get cracking again and back to doing some work. Towards the end of the summer a couple of difficult life events meant that the artwork had to take a back seat for a while. I mentioned in a recent post my dear Dad had been poorly, but I’m glad to say he’s been doing a bit better over the last couple of weeks; thank you to everybody for their kind words and good wishes! My partner had also gone down with pneumonia, the poor ol’ sausage, but he’s well and truly on the mend now so things are a little calmer. When I’ve thought about painting recently, though, I didn’t really have a clear idea of what to do, so I’ve started with some simple collages in a sketchbook just to get doing something.

I’ve always been drawn to crows of all kinds, rooks, ravens, jackdaws, magpies, they all seem like creatures that, as well as doing what they have to to keep going, also seem to have fun and to do things for the sheer enjoyment of it. I love them too for their inquisitiveness and their mischievousness.

A few years ago I found a young rook that had flown the nest but was hopping along the ground looking rather bemused by the world in which it found itself. It looked at me without any fear, just curiosity, and I picked it up and held it in my hands. It studied me as I studied it, and it was wonderful to see it’s beautiful feathers up close.

I’ve watched them a lot, and I’ve noticed them do things that I can’t explain in any other way than that they were just larking about. What other reason could the bird I watched in the park one day just throw itself off a branch backwards, let out a squawk then fly back to the perch just to do it all again. I’m sure somebody would try to explain that this and the other aerobatic displays are driven by some evolutionary instinct but it just looks like they’re enjoying themselves.

And there are crows in the title of this blog too, of course, but more about them in a future post….