Study for The Droods, (poem by Jeffery Beam), mixed media collage, 30 x 40 cm, 2017

Suddenly, it’s full-on summer, and it’s just glorious.  I’m not immune to the charms of a walk through drifts of red and gold fallen leaves in autumn, or the crystalline icy wonderland of a frosty morning in winter, but this weather is my favourite!

So the swooning languor of summer is infusing this collage study for an illustration project i’m working at the moment. I’m working with the wonderful American poet Jeffery Bean on illustrating his children’s poem The Droods. It’s an extremely exciting prospect for me; I think making images to go with text, both elements enhancing the other, is one of the most enthralling ideas for an artist – but also one of the most difficult!

My first sketches for this project are mainly exploring composition, and how to make a space in an image for lines of text that looks convincing and that allow words and images  to breath and collaborate on the page. Hence the space in the top part of this picture; the style may change drastically, but the way that the text fits on the page is going to be crucial for the illustration to be successful. Lots of experiments to be done!

The Droods is a children’s poem, but I find it every bit as entrancing now, as I read it in my 50s as I would have done as a kid. Reading it now, as an older person, has the marvellous effect of connecting me with my inner child again, and all the magic that seems perfectly plausible to that person! As well as the composition, this study explores the territory of doorways to different worlds; a favourite theme of mine. A trout breaks through the thin membrane that separates the water element with the air, just as the person in the poem stumbles into the Droody universe in the trees on the other side of the stream… This notion of stumbling across a doorway to a different place is so central to my memories of my childhood, of play, of daydreams and imagination. These magic worlds are usually only accessible to children, the ‘grown ups’ would never find it, they’ve lost they key.

There are some lyrics in the Pink Floyd song Comfortably Numb that sum it up perfectly for me:

‘…When I was a child

I caught a fleeting glimpse

Out of the corner of my eye

I turned to look but it was gone

I cannot put my finger on it now

The child is grown

The dream is gone…’

You lose touch with that part of yourself when you grow up at your peril, and poems like The Droods helps me reconnect.

More about this project later in the year…