Sunday, January 16, 2022

Of Models and Muses

I am solidly into the thick of the Winter Doldrums here. The warm sun of summer seems like a figment from a half-remembered dream and the Little Studio with it’s TARDIS blue door catches the freezing western wind and isn’t quite insulated enough to keep reliably warm. So I either set up inside the busy house or I sit at my quiet desk with both a space heater and a fire in my tiny wood stove, embracing both the chill and the melancholy.


Here in this low ebb of the year I’m trying to draw up an illustration for the cover of Reynard’s Tale. This book is important to me and I am so intent on getting all the little details of design to turn out right (let us now obsess over paper texture! and colored drop caps!) The cover, in particular, has been giving me fits.


But it has turned a corner. I think.


One thing I did to jog myself out of stagnation was reach out to Erin, who did some modeling for me back in the halcyon days when I was able (with the help of Rose) to put together semi-regular life drawing evenings. 


It seems counter-intuitive to have a wood elf pose for a mermaid, but it worked. And the cover illustration has started to come together. 


Drawing from life. It never fails.