The Path Through the Vines, coloured pencil on paper, 30 X 30cms. 2015

No, not the 1976 Dr. Who story about the deadly Krynoid space weed, but The Seeds of Doom is a fine title, and as my drawings at the moment are of plants gone bad I thought I’d nick it for this post as it just about fits. In fact the tunnel of poisonous vines could be the entrance to Harrison Chase’s mansion, the ‘baddie’ in the Dr. Who story who is fanatical about collecting rare plants. When a strange pod is discovered in the Antarctic ice by a research team he sends one of his henchmen to steal it and bring it back to his home (the glorious Althelhampton House in Dorest) with expectedly terrible consequences. It’s great, classic ’70s Dr. Who with one of my favourite combos of Tom Baker and Elisabeth Sladen as Sarah Jane.

I think the leaves of the vine are mainly inspired by the Lords and Ladies or Arum maculatum woodland plants I first discovered when I was very small. They fascinated me; how can the English woodlands, with bluebells, and anemones and celandine have something so weird as well? The arrow shaped leaves, sometimes spotted with dark purple, then the strange, rather malignant looking flower, which traps and kills flies to pollinate it, the stiff upright stems of bright red poisonous berries in the autumn, it’s pretty creepy. The colours, though, and the fungi have come into my mind recently after a couple of days out cycling in the great beechwoods north of Berlin which were teeming with fungi of all kinds and where the autumn was throwing up some glorious foliage colour. Here are a few snaps of the forest fungi:

And a few more pics of lovely and sometimes odd autumn colour:

And I’m also reminded of discovering weird and wonderful plants during visits to Kew and the Botanischer Garten here in Berlin, both places are fantastic for sketching and taking photos. Here are a few from our last wander round the Botanischer Garten earlier this year:

I love this place, any time of year it’s a pleasure. And finally, although my poisonous vine tunnel is looking quite unpleasant, it just might be perfectly safe. In one of my favourite Sci-fi novels, Midworld, by Alan Dean Foster, there is a tribe of people living in a highly dangerous tropical forest on steroids environment where everything seems to have evolved nasty ways to kill you. But for the natives, in their tree home, the entrance is protected by a net of vines with flowers which are very poisonous to intruders, but to anybody who lives there, if they spit in the flower, it recognises their dna and curls away to let them pass. So, I guess you could try spitting at my poisonous vine and see what happens…. Anyway, here’s the cover of my old copy of Midworld:

And to finish, a pic from the final episode of The Seeds of Doom when the Krynoid, now grown to massive proportions, raveges over Chase’s Mansion. When I watched episodes like this, aged about 11 or 12, I used to dream of growing up the make the monsters and special effects for TV and film. Well, with Hansel and Gretel promo film it’s kinda come true 😉.

It’s a bit ghoulish this drawing but we are approaching Halloween. I’ve mentioned before I’m collaborating on a promotional film for a new picture book edition of Hansel and Gretel and that I’m producing models to be used in the film. I’m sketching out a few ideas at the moment for some more models I’ll make when I get back to my work table after a visit to the UK. This drawing is of a tunnel of poisonous vines, seething with foetid malice, but with a vision of a sunny glade on the other side beckoning the lost and hungry.  I’m looking forward to having a go at making it when I get back, working out the technical challenges and how to make it look really poisonous! I’m away in the UK for over two weeks, travelling every few days so I won’t take much more than some paper and pencils but I’ll work on my model designs when I’m away. 

I’ll post more on the development of the book and the promo film in the coming weeks, but for now, here’s a link to Clive’s Artlog and a post about who, or what Is lurking in that cottage in the distance – you really, really don’t want to go there. Clive is conjuring a spectacularly horrible witch in his brilliant drawings for the book, one of the great horror villains! 

Work in progress today, trying a painting of the plate of fish sketch I did at the weekend:

I did anothe sketch yesterday, better but not quite there, wanted the composition to be a bit more dynamic, so I spent ten minutes making some cut out paper fish to move around and try and get the arrangement right. By the end of the day the desk was covered in fish!

The point of this excercise is to try and do some direct painting again. I’ve done very little over the last couple of years as I was focussing on working in collage techniques and I’m finding I’m pretty rusty.

For some reason this weekend I’ve been doodling with fish, maybe because I’ve been focussing on coastal themes recently, and I’ve also been craving some strong colour, perhaps because the weather has been so grey this week in Berlin. Anyway, here’s one of the sketches which I’ll use for a bigger drawing. Just working out the placement of the fish, I think they need to be a bit plumper!

Coastal study, mixed media, 20×20 cms, 2015 c
I wanted to try and include a lighthouse in some of these Dungeness inspired studies. I’ve always loved lighthouses since I was a child, and there are two at Dungeness. You can visit the old lighthouse, opened  in 1904, and climb the tower to where the beautiful coloured lenses are still in place. And when you get to the top you’re rewarded with the most wonderful views across the extraordinary landscape and the sea. I could live there!

Continuing to feel my way into the Dungeness landscape with some more sketches and studies this morning, getting to know it better, trying to fix it in my mind so I don’t have to look at the photographs to draw it. This first sketch is of one of the huge concrete ‘sound mirrors’ built in the 1920s and ’30s as an experimental early warning system to detect aircraft flying in from the channel. 
  
I’m not sure what I want to do with this subject at the moment so I’ll continue to draw it, pacing round it, approaching it by stealth as I work out what I where I want it to go. I’m using mostly coloured pencil to draw with at the moment, as well as one or two gouache studies painted over an acrylic wash:

Having been looking again at my photos of visits to Dungeness and the wonderful garden that Derek Jarman created there I’ve done a few more studies and I’m now feeling captivated once again by the extraordinary landscape. On a cold, grey day it can feel like the end of the earth, post-apocalyptic, but in high summer it can be sublime. A strange and beautiful place, the upright structures that Derek Jarman planted in his garden perfectly punctuating the flat, barren shingle. I’m back in the UK soon so I’ll try and get another visit in if I can and take my sketchbook and camera.

When I lived in Kent a few years ago, I visited Dungeness and Derek Jarman’s garden several times. Back in 2013 I made of collage of it and posted it on the blog, you can see it here. My mind has returned to that strange landscape in the last couple of weeks after chatting about gardens via email with Sarah, a new friend I have met recently and who is responsible for bringing into being the wonderful Pinterest site The Curious One. Sarah has lavished a great deal of loving care on building The Curious One and it is a source of endless enjoyment and inspiration for me. You can view it here – enjoy!

Gardens, the landscape, and the plants and trees that grow in them have been one of the greatest sources of fascination and inspiration for me. When I look back at old sketchbooks I can see how often I would draw them; I only started drawing and painting again more seriously about five years ago but the few sketches I did before then were often of flowers and trees, from detailed botanical studies like this Aconitum:

To quick sketches done when out and about:

I’m a big fan of Derek Jarman’s writing too, particularly his autobiographical book Modern Nature, written after he had moved down to Dungeness and following his HIV diagnosis. On the first page, as he describes Prospect Cottage he writes;

‘There are no walls and fences. My garden’s boundaries are the horizon.’

As much as I love an old walled garden, this is so beautifully put; the idea that one’s garden can encompass the world beyond the garden fence. Other great gardens I know of also use this approach to blend the boundary between the garden and the landscape beyond, such as the meadows at Great Dixter. The garden becomes an idea, a state of mind, more than the plants and landscaping of the physical earth.

I found a scrap with an old drawing on it when I was going through my sketchbooks this week. The drawing was made whist I was waiting for a tube train somewhere in London. I can’t remember which station it was, but it was somewhere out of the centre because the platform was open to the sky and there was the remnants of what looked like a tiny garden with some kind of raised bed. All the plants were long gone, and the little corner of the platform was neglected and forlorn, a skeleton of what it was. But its original intention  was there to see; a fragment of green and growing things, of colour and scent and gentle movement to enhance, just for a moment, the journey of the weary traveller moving through London’s crowded and noisy landscape. It reminded me of a line from the Joni Mitchell song Chinese Cafe when she laments over big business ‘paving over brave little parks’. I wonder what became of the little nook on that platform, maybe it’s been rescued and is now being cherished as it should?

Apart from my small balcony here in Berlin I don’t have a garden of my own at the moment although I do love sitting on the balcony with a cup of tea when it gets the sun in the morning and planning the day ahead. It’s right next to my work space too so I get to enjoy the doors open and seeing lots of green when I’m working which is very much appreciated. And I can see over the treetops, east to the old Tempelhof airport and beyond.

And here are the last of the sunflowers, brought in and placed in Japanese vases given to me by my friend Darren. I love how they bring the autumn colour into the home, happy gardening!

Not only an accurate description of today’s weather in Berlin but also an excerpt from a typical Shipping Forecast broadcast. I was delighted to hear Murray Laghlan Young read a new poem about the shipping Forecast at midday today as part of Andrew Marr’s exploration of British identity through poetry called We Brtiish. The programmes coincide with National Poetry Day today, and there’s an opportunity to submit your own short poem in the style of the Shipping Forecast on the BBC website, here. One of my favourites spoof poems is by Stephen Fry, from his Saturday Night Fry radio programme, broadcast in 1988. Here’s an excerpt:

‘Malin, Hebrides, Shetland, Jersey, Fair Isle, Turtle-Neck, Tank Top, Coutelle:

Blowy, quite misty, sea sickness. Not many fish around, come home, veering suggestively.’

I’m a big Shipping Forecast enthusiast so I thought I’d post my dancing lighthouses collage again today along with a few other lighthouse images I haven’t posted before.

What is it about this short, factual broadcast that gets under our skin? Carol Ann Duffy’s beautiful poem Prayer goes some way to capturing the magic in the last two lines:

‘…Darkness Outside. Inside, the radio’s prayer –

Rockall. Malin. Dogger. Finisterre. ‘

And BBC newsreader Zeb Soanes expands on its appeal to many who, like me, wouldn’t know one end of a ship from the other:

‘To the non-nautical, it is a nightly litany of the sea. It reinforces a sense of being islanders with a strong seafaring past. Whist the listener is safely tucked up in their bed, they can imagine small fishing boats bobbing about at Plymouth to 170ft waves crashing against Rockall.’ 

I enjoyed Murray Laghlan Young’s poem; it took a tour around the sea areas, telling stories about each and ending with a reflection on how these sea areas surround Britain, how they are an integral part of the land and the people as well. Those who work out at sea may scoff at people like me who go misty-eyed over the forecast – it is, after all, a purely factual forecast with a purely practical purpose, but it’s poetic rhythm, list of wild-sounding names and often wild weather, captures my imagination. And because i’ve been listening to it for as far back as I can remember, it is a thread that links my memories, from early childhood to now, as i’m entering my 50s. 

The We British programmes i’ve been listening to today have been absolutely fab, and along with last week’s Poetry Please which focussed on poems about Britain’s offshore islands, i’ve got the sound of the sea in my ears today so I’m pulling these lighthouse images out of the drawer. I might revisit these one day and do some more.

And finally an angel I found, made from the offcuts of some of the lighthouses, it should be an angel for sailors out at sea in bad weather!