I meant to say, before I too hastily posted the last blog post, that Beaulieu boat jumble was about more than ’stuff’, it was about people too.  I was introduced to Giacomo de Stefano, a quietly spoken Italian with a small boat and a mission to sail and row across Europe to the Black Sea.  His passion, and his message, is care for the water and the world we live on and I’m sure he’ll attract support and friendship along the way.  Sometimes it’s the quietest people who do the most extraordinary things, which is rather refreshing in a world where hype is all.  Here’s the link to Giacomo’s website, anyway, make of it what you will!  http://www.manontheriver.com/

His boat is called ‘Clodia’ by the way – a good name, say I.  Shame about the spelling!

It’s that time of year again.  Not for the garden, which in our household is ignored for a year and then in a fit of guilt attacked with a chain saw. For those  of us addicted to all things nautical, spring is boat jumble season.

Anyone who thinks that sailing is posh should be forced to attend Beaulieu Boat Jumble at opening time. It’s a stampede of several thousand bargain hunters, some armed with wheelbarrows, and all prepared to haggle to the death over a pile of rusty shackles and a coil of manky rope.  Forget cocktails on the poop deck and matching wellies;  this is what sailing is really all about.

Five minutes to go……

A few essential bargains……..

Boat jumbles are gloriously immune to the vagaries of world economics and technological advances. There are always rusty shackles, ancient electronics and mis-shapen fenders along with oversized nav lights and tatty mirror dinghies. And of course the ships’ wheels, destined for theme pub walls.

Trade stands are part of the mix at Beaulieu, as long as you’ve got some bargains on offer, so we had a good day selling reasonable amounts of  ’stuff’.  It was quite a good day for selling books and as ever it was a delight to meet the youngsters who read my books and sign copies for them.  We managed to spend slightly less than we earned….. well, it was a bargain!  A few boat bits and some cheap deckies were sensible purchases, but I was also on the lookout for interesting things to turn into art.

Yachting columnist Dave Selby has a great article in the current issue of Practical Boat Owner – here’s the cartoon I did to go with it:

“A tenner?  But I sold it to you for a fiver!”

The next task is to apply all our bargain tins of varnish and packs of economy sandpaper to the essential and neglected parts of the boat….. glamorous stuff, yachting!

The timing of this post is a little askew as I’ve been gadding around in Cornwall and only just catching up, but this inspired me back in March so it’s going in.  It’s about shipwrecks, teaching, questions and stories, if you were wondering whether to read on.  So pour yourself a glass of wine, sit comfortably and we’ll begin…..

Eight children sit on cushions on the floor of the museum, looking up at a teacher and at the painting of a ship under sail in a glass cabinet in front of them.  It is 18^th March, so most have round red noses attached to their face; one of the girls is wearing a bright red tutu.  Sparkly red baubles wobble from headbands as the children nod or raise their arms to answer a question.

The Waterfront Museum in Swansea is modern, stark and dark, a spotlight on each exhibit.  There are buttons to press and drawers to open; disembodied voices tell you about the artefacts with the sound of seagulls in the background.  The painting in the cabinet is of a large steel barque heeling in a rough sea.  This is the Afon Cefni, which set sail from Swansea on 13th October 1894 with a crew of 28 and was never seen again.  A painting of a ship is just a painting of a ship; you glance at it, admire the skill of the artist, the curl of the waves and the curve of the sails, then you move on.  How do you breathe life into these static displays?  How do you unlock them and learn from them? Chris Stephens, teacher and trainer of teachers, has the knack.  He gives the children a few minutes to find the names of five other ships on display.  The red tutu flashes amongst the plinths and cabinets as the children hurry around the room looking at paintings or models.  Chris then reads them his poem featuring all the ships they’ve found, pausing at each rhyme for them to fill in the missing word.  There’s something joyful about rhymes. They soon know the chorus off by heart:

Wrap it up in seawater, wrap it up at sea

Museum paintings tell the tale of Wales’ history

Their next task is to make a collective poem about the Afon Cefni.  The brief description on the cabinet is read aloud and questions are asked – where was the ship sailing to?  What cargo did she carry? Where was she when the storm struck? What happened to the sailors – did they all drown?  The right words are hunted down and Chris weaves them together to make a poem about a fatal storm off Cape Horn that took the ship and all her crew to the bottom of the ocean – by this time the children are keen not to let the facts get in the way of a good story, especially one in rhyme.  The painting has come alive; it’s no longer something to be glanced at before moving on.

According to Chris, the idea of using a museum as a place to trigger creative writing comes from a teaching resource book called ‘Location Writing’ by Caroline Davey and Brian Moses.  What wonderful possibilities – a bit like sketching  in words…. anyway, I digress.  The day at the museum was a workshop for teachers, using maritime history as a theme.  More importantly it was about how to use history, creative play, games and artefacts to improve literacy, understanding and the spirit of enquiry.  I don’t teach children, but I found it fascinating, and it made me wonder why children get all the fun stuff.  Some of the exercises Chris showed us for the classroom would be considered too childish for adult learners, but we all thoroughly enjoyed them and in the context were not afraid to admit it.

Perhaps the most valuable thing we can hang onto as adults is the spirit of enquiry, and finding ways to unlock the story in everything. It would certainly stop us wandering round museums, or through life, in the way that many of us do; skimming the surface, acquiring and instantly forgetting facts.

Facts are not bland and boring; facts are stories.  They are doorways that look dull until you open them. Facts – and artefacts – lead to all kinds of discoveries in time or space, but only if you open the door, ask the questions, engage the imagination.  Next time you’re in a museum, if you see someone gazing at an exhibit and muttering inane poetry, it’s probably me.  I’ll pass on the red tutu, though, even on Red Nose Day.

And the Afon Cefni?  She was a steel ship, nearly 300′ long and quite capable of weathering the storms of Cape Horn.  She went down closer to home,  somewhere off the Isles of Scilly.  A teak name board and ship’s lifeboat with the remains of her name on were washed up ashore at St Agnes, but the reason for her sinking remains a mystery.    Four masted barques are, sadly, a rare sight in the 21st century, but the photo is of Sedov, similar in size and rig to the Afon Cefni.  She’ll have a few tales to tell too, no doubt.

Now I feel silly. Burbling on in my last blog post about how much I was looking forward to some fizz at my book launch and actually there wasn’t any. Steen (RYA publishing whizz) must have seen the look on my face when he said there would be no bubbly, as he very reasonably pointed out that the event would be on stage and it would be rather difficult to provide drinks for the entire audience.  Fair enough, as it meant that ’Go Green’ was indeed launched at the weekend to a large audience at the Dinghy Show with a the help of TV wildlife guru Chris Packham and sailing superstar Mike Golding, along with several children and some cardboard boxes. It was fantastic that Chris took time out from his schedule to add his support and talk about the importance of marine conservation for us all.

On stage (right to left): Chris Packham, Mike Golding (hidden behind presenter Tracy Clarke), young volunteers from the audience, Dr Susie Thomson (environmental expert and consulting editor).   And me.

If you’re wondering what the cardboard boxes were for, the youngsters had to pick out items of rubbish from a large box and try to sort them according to how long they take to biodegrade.  Most of the plastics, sadly, take around 500 years.  Since writing the book I’ve become so much more aware of how much plastic and packaging fills our world and chokes the life out of the seas.  I’m the one in the supermarket with loose apples and vegetables rolling around and causing havoc at the checkout, wondering why checkout assistants always say ‘Are you sure?’ when you say ‘No bags, please’.  Of course I’m sure! Otherwise I wouldn’t have said it.  I’m already feeling guilty at the checkout for buying blueberries which I adore and keep the winter bugs away, but can only be bought in non-recyclable plastic punnets. One day I’ll behave really badly and pounce on the next shopper I see stuffing a bunch of bananas in a plastic bag.  ”Look, you muppet, they’re already wrapped in a skin.  They don’t need any more packaging!”

But don’t worry, it’s not a preachy sort of book.  And all the jokes are fully recycled….

While I’m getting in practice for being a grumpy old woman (though according to Perry I already am), here’s a grump of the day.  There’s a new scheme for the over 50’s which is a special helpline to ring in the event of a power cut.  Eh?  Over 50?  Since when has 50 become the age that you suddenly need helpful little leaflets for the elderly?  A different government department to the one that says you’re only half way through your working life at 50 and don’t need a pension for… ooh, ages yet, if at all.  Anyone who thinks I’m a little old lady will get a smack in the mouth and a reminder that, actually, I was a late starter.  Having spent most of my twenties and thirties living in damp bedsits or leaky boats, or drifting around being spiritual, I didn’t get round to the family phase of life until much later.  So it was in my late forties that I started thinking about a sort of career, which is why at the splendid age of umpty-umph I’m just getting into my stride.  I’ll have your leaflets for the elderly when I’m ninety and not a day earlier.  With a bit of luck I might have retired by then!

Don’t you just hate blogs that grumble?  Mm, so do I.  Better stop now.  See what happens when I’m deprived of fizzy wine for too long?

I wonder how and when fizzy wine became associated with celebration.  I always have a bottle in the fridge, just in case (Tesco’s Cava, special offer), and if nothing exciting happens during the year, it gets poured at Christmas breakfast.  But launch parties are the best.  Boats or books, a new one is always worth celebrating.

Whether books or boats, the anticipation of the launch keeps you going during the long hard months of writing and planning, or, in the case of boats, sanding, scraping and varnishing.  But the reality is not always the crowning jewel of achievement that you imagine.  When we finally launched our wooden cutter ‘Torhilda’ after rescuing her from the chainsaw and spending six years and all our savings on a keel-up rebuild, we were exhausted, broke and it rained all day. We didn’t exactly sail off into the sunset; for a start it took another five months to get the mast and spars sorted, but it was still a milestone and the fizz tasted good.  I think we all need to mark our achievements in some way, even if just to prove to ourselves and our friends that we really can see a project through.

January 2004, Maldon town quay.  Looking stressed because the crane was just about to pick ‘Torhilda’ up…

Eight tons of boat safely landed.  Do you think we had enough fenders out??

My first book launch was a huge buzz.  Being a niche market has its advantages – small fish, small pond, which means plenty of friendly faces and hopefully no sharks.  ’Go Sailing’ was launched at the 2005 Southampton Boat Show in style; local tv and radio, the Olympic team, lots of interviews and a queue of face painted children to sign copies for. Cakes, tea shirts, balloons and of course, fizz.  Isn’t it funny how half an hour of sheer pleasure can balance out a year or so of long solitary hours, frustration, struggle, endless editing and redrawing.

I couldn’t find any photos anywhere of the launch of Go Sailing, so this is the follow up, Go Cruising, September 2006.  Tom Cunliffe really is an impossibly tall person and yes, that cake was shaped like a boat.

Not all launches have gone quite to plan.  I’ll gloss over the one where a tv presenter was drafted in to present the book and did such a good job that my presence wasn’t needed at all – I had to elbow through the crowd to get my half glass of fizz.  Or the one at an outdoor event where it rained and all I remember is a lot of mud, a cup of lukewarm pimms and one book signed.

It doesn’t do to be precious about these things; life rarely turns out as expected.  If it did, there would be nothing interesting to blog about!

The reason launches are on my mind is that there’s a bit of a party for ‘Go Green’ next Saturday (5th March) at the Dinghy Show in London.  I know I’ve mentioned it already, but I’m hoping this is going to be one of the more enjoyable ones.  The RYA marketing team are rallying round, fizz  is promised, and at least there’s no mud in Ally Pally.  There will be hordes of over-excited children, cleverly orchestrated by the dulcet tones of presenter Tracy Clarke. Mike Golding, awesome sailor and staunch supporter of the Green Blue, will be on hand too.   There’s a rumour that Chris Packham, tv’s wildlife expert, may well be around during the day too. So if you’re going to the show, come and say hello.

If you had fizz every day, it would stop being special and high points in life are only high because of all the day to day stuff inbetween.  I’ll try and remember that when I’m knee deep in the next book and spend all my blog posts complaining about it!

Children play; adults usually don’t.  At least, not in the same way.  Adults play an instrument, or tennis, but they don’t often ‘play’ like children do, to learn, to find out what happens if….., which is a shame. Children play to learn, not because they don’t have proper jobs or a hundred chores to do before breakfast like grown ups do.  To play is to learn, and learning is a serious business. To learn to paint, you need to play around with the materials, not feel pressurised to come up with a finished painting every time.  To be a writer, you have to play around with words, follow them and see where they take you.

So why don’t we play?  Perhaps as adults we’re expected to be competent, and we don’t like feeling silly.  Playing to learn can look silly, and it doesn’t always lead to perfect results.  We like to get things wrong in a discreet and dignified way.

I decided long ago that if I was afraid of looking silly, I’d never dare do anything at all.    But learning to play with silver is particularly challenging because I’m not used to messing with something that’s so expensive to waste!  I’m making progress, but the cost of silver is inhibiting and I’ve got a pot of failed unfired pieces to chop up and reconstitute if I can.

This was the result of playing with string, silicon, resin and silver clay.  Uncharted territory for me, so the first attempt failed but I was happier with this one.  It’s interesting to work with new materials, learning the craft (how to handle the materials) as well as the art (design elements).

Me, an artist?  Nah, I’m just playing at it!

Only three weeks to go until the Dinghy Show at Alexander Palace – always a nice family show.  There’s a bit of a party on to launch my book on the Saturday afternoon so I hope there’s a bottle or two of fizz involved.  The struggle of working all day every day on ‘Go Green’ seems a long time ago now, but the anticipation of that glass of fizz and a bit of a buzz kept me going when I was struggling with how to draw sea squirts and write about sea defences in a fun, fascinating way.

Hope to see you there!

My studio table is a map of what’s going on in my head.  Sometimes it’s tidy; mostly it isn’t.  At the moment it’s full of half finished projects. There’s jewellery making  stuff still laid out (lots of ideas, must get down to it when I get a free day).  There’s a possible design for a screen printed cushion cover, or possibly two if cashflow allows.  There’s a half finished painting on the drawing board, a half edited story by the computer.  Various bits of admin, a poster design for a sailing event, sketches and general ’stuff’.

There are also a couple of activity sheets I’ve done for the Wildlife Trust website.  The Trust have been good enough to recommend my ‘Go Green’ book and wanted to add to their range of children’s downloads to tie in with the marine conservation theme.  If there’s nothing on tv and you secretly still like colouring in, you can download them on http://wildlifewatch.org.uk/Wordsearches.  There’s nothing wrong with colouring in – I do it for a living!

The trouble with having lots of ideas on the go is that starting things is much easier than finishing them.  On the drawing board is a half finished painting of some blocks and deadeyes spotted at a recent visit to SS Great Britain – well worth a visit, if ever you’re in Bristol.  I loved the shapes, the colours and the spaces inbetween…..

I’ll try and remember to photo this when it’s finished.    Shouldn’t be painting watercolours really, as it’s hard to sell paintings at the moment, but sometimes I just really fancy it.  After a few weeks of drawing to commission, it’s nice just to splash a bit of paint around for fun.

At the laptop end of the table I’m playing with some writing projects, including my ongoing research of sea stories, currently the self imposed marooning of Alexander Selkirk.  I was reminded recently of the ‘three by three’ rule to summarise a story – I’ve come across it several times and it’s a good way to check if a story has a beginning, a middle and an end.  My challenge is to turn my collection  into proper ’stories’rather than simply narrative accounts of something that happened.   All you writers out there will have the three by three rule hot wired into your brains, but for the rest of you, take a story and reduce it to three statements of three words each.  It works with fiction (though you can try War & Peace if you’re feeling brave!) so I wanted to see if it works on my non-fiction….

Yes it does.  The story of Selkirk,  the ‘real’ Robinson Crusoe’ can be reduced to:

1.  Selkirk stays behind.

2.  Selkirk regrets it.

3. Selkirk gets rescued.

I like this – it works!   Let’s try it on Christopher Columbus:

1.  Columbus looks for China

2. Sailors nearly mutiny

3. Columbus finds Cuba

You get the drift.   Time to finish this post…… and I do need to practise finishing things.  Starting them is so much more fun.  If you don’t believe me, try it on a glass of wine!

I learn more from teaching than my students do; there’s nothing to focus the mind quite like having to explain something clearly, to show how to do it and analyse why it’s going wrong for someone else. Drawing, I tell them, is just thinking with a pencil. Don’t blame your hand for your mistakes, blame  your brain.

I enjoy teaching Jane who comes to my studio for a lesson on a Friday morning.  Jane, having spent most of her life not drawing, now has 70 years’ worth of artistic urges to catch up on and she is has a very enquiring mind. This is good for me, as I need to find answers to her questions, so it keeps me on my toes.

Last week we wrestled with perspective. Not in a mathematical way, but by waving coffee mugs around (it’s ok, we’d drunk the contents). Jane wanted to know how to get the perspective right on a cylindrical object, where the round part shows as an ellipse. Well, it all depends on your point of view – literally. If the top of the mug is exactly on your eye level, it will appear as a straight line.  Honestly, it will.  Try it. If you move the mug to just below eye level, you get a small ellipse. The lower you go, the bigger the ellipse until you’re looking down on the mug and roundness is restored.

All very logical, but the problem begins when you try to draw the ellipse. ‘No, no!’ your brain says. ‘The top of a mug is a round thing!  It’s as round as a round thing that’s round!’.  Your knowledge of the shape of a mug interferes with what your eyes are telling you and the result is an uneasy compromise that neither brain nor eyes are happy with.  ’It’s all wrong’, said Jane, of her attempted drawing, ‘but I don’t know why!’   What usually goes wrong is making the ellipse too big, because your brain won’t believe that something so round could possibly appear so narrow. Drop the mug just slightly below eye level and look, really look at the ellipse. How do you know if you’ve got it right? Trust your eyes and measure. See how many times the widest part of the ellipse goes into the body of the cylinder

That’s enough theory – if you’re not interested in drawing you are probably losing the will to live by now. But the main lesson of the lesson was that if you move an object in relation to your viewpoint, it becomes a different object.  What the object usually looks like is irrelevant; ask yourself – what does it look like now?  The next time you are baffled by perspective, wave a coffee mug around, or a wine glass.  Drink the wine first, of course, that’ll help.  It will also start you wondering how this lesson on viewpoint applies to life, when people cannot understand another person’s point of view unless they have the imagination (ie. mental imagery) to picture how a situation looks from another perspective.

Most of the time you don’t have to tie yourself in knots worrying about perspective.  Just draw.   Draw first, measure later and after a while, with subjects you’re familiar with, you won’t have to measure at all.  Sometimes you can decide to ignore perspective completely in the interests of design (that’s my excuse – what’s yours?) .  This week I’ve been working on a set of notebook designs as part of our list of new designs to make this year for shops and shows.  Here’s one – but do me a favour and don’t check the perspective!

Starting a project in the morning and finishing it in the afternoon doesn’t happen often; life is usually much messier than that, especially when working on a book.  But it’s a new year with a new list of projects, one of which is a mouse mat design.  I did a similar design last year with that in mind but shelved it and then used that image elsewhere.  So starting again seemed like an enjoyable way to spend a rainy windy day.  Here it is, stage by stage:

Stage One.  Well, almost.  By the time I remembered to get the camera out I’d drawn the design in pencil, then in pen, and started  laying on colour.

Stage Two.  I don’t have a colour scheme in mind, but work it out one piece at a time.  The way to grow a painting is to pause between each stage and let the painting ‘tell’ you what it needs next, rather than rushing in and risk messing up.

Stage Three.  This is the easy bit – more colouring in!  I’ve more or less decided what colour scheme it needs.  The compass points start to come to life once I lay a darker colour on one side of each point.

Stage Four.  Ah, now it’s getting messy.  This is the stage I usually spoil it, by rushing in without thinking.   The sails and bird in the centre section are still covered in masking fluid.  It always takes time getting the spacing right on the border quote.  Lots of pencil lines to rub out!

Stage Five.  Finished – more or less!  I’ll leave it to dry and take a fresh view in the morning.  The next stage is to get quotes for round mousemats, agonise about how many to get done (write a large cheque for a big print run and get the unit price down… or not), then get the image scanned and hope to sell lots online and at the dinghy show.

The plus side of having no deadlines at the moment is the time to develop new ideas.  The minus side?  Turning images into saleable items involves spending rather than earning!  At least to start with.  Have I earned that glass of wine yet, I wonder…..

Two things make an illustrator stressed:  

a)  Having deadlines.  

b)  Not having deadlines.  

Last year I was suffering  from the first type.  So far this year the second version is looming.  I’ve plenty of work to get on with, including a revision of the Log Book for Children which is nearly out of print, and ideas for new designs, but all that involves spending money before I earn it!  I could do with another book deal, and then I can happily complain about deadline stress again.  

In the meantime, it’s a good time of year for making lists, so I’m starting with a list of my top ten books – the ones I’ve really enjoyed, that is, not the ones I feel I ought to have enjoyed.  Some have been read recently, some are old favourites, but all are on my list of books that deserve reading more than once. There are dozens more, of course, but if I spent any longer sorting them out I’ll never get anything done.  

Non-fiction:  

‘Words, Words Words’ by David Crystal  

An inspirational look at language, how it’s changed, how it’s used and the influences that shape it.   I took this out of the library, read it in one sitting then went and bought it.  Looking forward to a second dip.  

General fiction:  

‘Casting Off’ by Libby Purves  

One of my favourite authors, with stories and characters that take over your life, a core of humour and delicious phrasing.  This one I like in particular because it’s about a middle aged woman getting into a strop and storming off in the family yacht.  

‘The Tennis Party’ by Madeleine Wickham  

No boats in this one, but characters that fill your living room and demand your full attention.  A tale of wealth, envy, aspiration and come-uppance.   Quality chick-lit!  

‘King of the Castle’ by Martin Plimmer  

An underachieving writer faces the challenges of chaotic family life, unappreciative editors and desperate assignments before finding his breakthrough. Endearing and hilarious.  

Travel:  

‘The Last Grain Race’ by Eric Newby  

All my favourite things in one book – humour, clever observational writing and sailing ships.  A memorable account of one of the last cargo voyages under sail, as Newby turns his back on the nine to five and runs away to sea.  

‘The Magic of the Swatchways’ by Maurice Griffiths  

A well thumbed favourite, much loved by all who have discovered that sailing the east coast is more boating around in the muck than mucking around in boats.  Written with the care and modesty typical of the time, this series of pre-war coastal cruising anecdotes is evocative of a more perilous and peaceful age.  

Short Stories:  

‘The Great Automatic Grammatizator and Other Stories’ by Roald Dahl  

Slightly bonkers and rather clever.  Short stories are a joy to dip into, especially the unusual ones that make you think  ’ooh, I wish I’d thought of that!’  

‘Smile’ by Deborah Moggach  

The art of making everyday situations fascinating.  I think it was Alex Keegan who said that a good short story is something you can read in a few minutes but remember for a lifetime.  

Childrens:  

‘Alone on a Wide, Wide Sea’ by Michael Morpurgo  

Crossing an ocean in a small boat, marine conservation issues and a cracking good story.  I wish these books had been around when I was a proper child.  

‘We Didn’t Mean to Go to Sea’ by Arthur Ransome  

Alright, I’ll admit, I’m biased towards sea stories.  Though I could just as easily have put the Chronicles of Narnia in as most influential children’s classic.That’s it for  now.  If I leave it any longer I’ll come up with ten different ones, but these are pure enjoyment - some with a dash of salt!