It's a very rare and special thing so meet someone by chance and instantly 'click', knowing that you are going to become great friends. I've been lucky enough to make two such friends over the last year.
One of those friends is Alice. We met by chance at 'A Celebration of Nature' in May this year and hit it off straight away. I was so pleased when Alice 'made the first move' and invited me to meet up for cake as I'd been wishing I had suggested the same thing. We have since bonded over a mutual love of art, books and good food. Alice secured her place in my heart as one of my favourite people in the world when she bought some gluten free cookbooks especially for cooking me supper (hands down the best pudding I've eaten this year).
During September, Alice invited me over to her house to ask me something important. She asked if I would like to make a children's book together. We got chatting about possible stories and I had the mad idea that we could make a limited edition fine art print book in time for the Christmas h.Art Weekend (5th-7th December), giving us just a few months to write and illustrate it. 'A Yuletide Tale' was born.
I'm a perfectionist and if I have a year to do something, it would take me a year, so working to a strict deadline has been very good for me. I definitely wouldn't have stuck to such a short time frame without Alice's encouragement or wanting to live up to her beautiful writing. It's been a very, very hectic few weeks but we did it!
We wanted our book to be a special Christmas gift and didn't want to cut on any corners and I'm so proud of what we achieved. 'A Yuletide Tale' is inspired by 'The Holly and the Ivy' Christmas Carol. It features my dip pen and ink illustrations as well as archival quality colour fine art prints. Every book is bound by hand and is a signed and numbered limited edition of 50.
Extra special thanks go to our parents for chipping in with our mammoth production lines, Iris Print for producing such beautiful miniature colour prints and The King's School Worcester reprographics department for such a fantastic printing job.
'A Yuletide Tale' will be available at our Christmas h.Art Open Weekend this week (5th-7th December). For details and directions, please see the flyer below. We will have plenty of mulled wine, mince pies and sausage rolls for visitors too. Just follow the pink signs for Venue 10!
We've already had pre-pre-orders so if you would like to reserve a copy to avoid disappointment please email me at katebsmith89@mac.com. Each book is £45.75 and will be available for collection during the h.Art weekend or can be posted if this is not possible.
It's been a very busy few weeks recently, with a very successful first h.Art open studio in September and preparations for Christmas products and events well underway now.
As the season is now well and truly upon us, I thought I would share an autumnal recommended read.
'Autumn Story' written and illustrated by Jill Barklem is part of the Brambly Hedge series of books. The illustrations remind me a little of Beatrix Potter and the stories are just gorgeous. I thoroughly recommend them for children of all ages.
Surprisingly, 'Autumn Story' is the only book from the collection that I actually own, although I have fond memories of reading them at school and watching the charming TV series when it was released. I have a sneaking suspicion that Father Christmas may be rectifying this situation for me this Christmas though!
On Wednesday I was lucky enough to go and see Kate Bush's magnificent comeback, Before the Dawn. She is one of my all time favourite singer-songwriters thanks to my parents playing her albums, especially 'The Red Shoes', as I was growing up. Dad was only able to get hold of two tickets and very kindly let me go in his place.
I love Kate Bush. She is well-read and not afraid to show it, and has an incredible imagination (who else can write songs about a foetus, Cathy Earnshaw and a rain making machine?). Whether or not you are a Kate Bush fan, I don't think anyone can deny that writing this song, amongst 100 others in your early teens is anything short of phenomenal talent.
On top of all of that she is stunningly beautiful, but relies on her talent rather than her body to sell her work. You'll never find her twerking, bumping and grinding à la Miley Cyrus, or so many other female singers today. If she wants to unleash the wild eyed stare, flail her arms and don roller blades then that's exactly what she's going to do.
It was a very special evening for Mum too, as she had been to the 1979 tour at the tender age of 17. When I asked her what she thought would happen during the show, Mum confidently said, "This will be the best thing you will EVER see." So I was expecting great things!
I had been incredibly excited, but had resolutely avoided all news and social media relating to the opening night (Tuesday) so that everything would be a complete surprise on the night. We didn't even look at the programme until after the show and were so glad we were spoiler-free. As a consequence, our faces looked like this for most of the evening.
The atmosphere was amazing when we arrived. Everyone at the Hammersmith was clearly very excited to be there and there was a real sense of occasion. We all knew we were about to see something truly brilliant. Mum uses a wheelchair so we were sat at the front of a balcony with a fantastic view of the stage. We were quite surprised because the band's instruments seemed to be taking up a lot of room on stage, so we assumed a screen might come down at some point for a video.
Bang on time Kate Bush arrived to 'Lily' barefoot, dressed in black and looking beautiful as ever. I lost count of the number of standing ovations the audience gave her during the evening and it was difficult to hear the beginning of the song because of the applause and cheering. Everyone had waited a long time for this and wanted to show their appreciation. As in her more recent albums, her voice has become lower and richer with age and was incredibly powerful as she belted out 'Hounds of Love', 'Joanni', 'Top of the City', 'Running up That Hill' and 'King of the Mountain'. It seemed to be more of a traditional set-up than we were expecting, but we were loving it.
At the end of 'King of the Mountain' to the lyric, 'The wind is whistling', the real show kicked off. The drummer, aptly described by one reviewer as looking like an extra from 'Pirates of the Caribbean', then leapt to the front of the stage and started flinging something over his head in circles and the Hammersmith was plunged into darkness with lightning illuminating him to stormy sound effects. Wind canons blasted slips of paper with a quotation from Tennyson's 'The Coming of Arthur' into the audience.
The stage was covered by a large screen and we watched a short film in which an amateur astronomer had picked up a distress signal from a boat at sea with a woman overboard. The much anticipated Ninth Wave had begun. If you didn't already know, this is the second side of 'Hounds of Love' and is a series of songs about a woman alone at sea. The screen lifted to unveil the huge bones of a shipwreck and spooky fish skeleton men wafting huge stretches of fabric to create a sea effect. On a smaller oval screen at the back of the stage area, Kate Bush appeared in water wearing the life jacket from the promotional photo singing 'And Dream of Sheep'. She had spent days recording the film in the suspension tank and had caught hypothermia in the process. Her vocal was recorded whilst she was in the tank and really made you feel cold for her.
From my sketchbook: One of the fish skeleton men.
She then sang 'Under the Ice'. Her backing singers by this point had become life jacket-clad rescuers. Kate Bush then realised she was the face she could see beneath the ice and fell through the stage. Some large black wings poked through the stage after she had disappeared (a clue for the second part of the evening). 'Waking the Witch' was just as scary as it should have been and her own son Bertie played the part of the son in a swaying living room where Bush imagines her husband and son living life without her in 'Watching You Without Me'. It was especially sad when she tried to hug Bertie and realised she was only a ghost before disappearing to leave the room as it slowly became engulfed by water (very clever lighting). I can't remember exactly which point it happened (there was so much to take in!) but at one point the whole stage went black and a helicopter search light appeared from the ceiling and moved across the audience, with one of Bush's brothers voicing the pilot searching for her. She decided she was ready to live to a rousing 'Jig of Life' with the fish people creating waves around her. A huge buoy appeared on stage next, with backing singers/supporting cast searching for her and pulling her out of the waves before six fish people then carried her away into the audience. The magical first part of the evening then finished with the band returning to the forefront for 'The Morning Fog'.
From my sketchbook: Kate Bush being rescued at sea.
She then announced that they were off for "a little break". There was then a mass love-in for Kate Bush in the queue for the ladies loos. I felt a lot less embarrassed for getting a little teary when she first appeared on stage because one of the ladies I met was still crying and apparently had been throughout! More gushiness followed with the lovely couple we were sitting next to before it was time for the second part and we had no idea what to expect!
The second part was a completely different mood. Set to 'Aerial: A Sea of Honey', snow was softly falling amongst silver birch trees when a small artist's model puppet appeared through some huge wooden doors and interacted with Kate Bush and her band throughout. Bertie played the role of the artist and was painting a huge framed canvas while various birds appeared in slow motion flight across the large screen at the back of the stage. There were still darker elements though, with a half-bird, half-human creature jerkily dancing in the painting and the seemingly sweet puppet killing a seagull he found on the ground. Bertie had his own solo to 'Tawny Moon' and the songs built in drama until the stunning 'Aerial'. There were silver birch trees on stage, a band clad in bird skull masks, dancers dressed as birds and a truly unearthly Kate Bush dancing whilst wearing a black wing. At the end of the song she then disappeared behind the painting which moved away to reveal her wearing a pair of jet black wings and flying towards the audience. Magnificent.
From my sketchbook: There was a single black feather painted on red silk
as our clue for the second part of the show.
Needless to say the applause could not have been warmer, and she returned to the stage alone at her piano to play a beautiful 'Among Angels', finishing with a rousing 'Cloudbusting' before disappearing from the stage again.
When will we see her again? Who knows. I think her choosing to perform her newer material, rather than performing a greatest hits tour, is a good sign that we haven't seen the last of Kate Bush. We'll be waiting.
Mum was absolutely right; it really was the best thing I've ever seen.
I always get excited when the Bake Off starts. It's my sign that autumn and winter are on the way (my favourite times of year). I also get to nurture my obsession with Mary Berry a little more- what's not to love?!
To celebrate the arrival of the GBBO I thought I would share my favourite cake recipe.
Food is the way to my heart and my very good friend Lizzie, who is an excellent cook, secured her place there when she passed this gem on to me. I cannot eat gluten, so I've changed it slightly from the original. If you are a relative, friend, or former pupil of mine you will have eaten these before. They have become my go-to cakes that never let me down (alongside Mary Berry's lemon drizzle tray bake). This recipe is for vanilla flavoured cakes, but you can add whatever you wish. My favourite ones so far have been lemon and marzipan!
Tip: I use Dove's Farm gluten free flour- this is a blend of different flours and includes xantham gum which will help hold your gluten-less cakes together.
*I got a little carried away with my calligraphy here and meant to write 550, rather than 500g of flour- sorry!
Decorate your cakes however you like them. I like using Lizzie's buttercream recipe (500g butter and 500g icing sugar).
If you're feeling a little lazy, you will have enough mix to make a couple of traybakes rather than spooning into cupcake/muffin cases.
Today was another fantastic day. We spent the morning on a wildlife 4x4 tour around Ardnamurchan and saw some incredible sights. It was a very inspiring day- much more to come on this in the next week or so as there are so many things I want to draw from the day!
Tonight is our final evening in Ardnamurchan. It's very sad to be leaving but I'm looking forward to seeing all of our lovely animals again, and we already have plans for the next visit!
To celebrate in style, we lit the fire bowl and toasted marshmallows, and our drinks, to a wonderful holiday.
Today has been my favourite day of the holiday by far.
We paid a visit to the Ardshealach Smokehouse and stocked up on all sorts of delicious treats for tonight's supper. If you are a foodie, I definitely recommend checking out their website.
We then pottered on the beach whilst munching on some whiskey fudge from the smokehouse. I took the opportunity for some very speedy sketching here.
After that I had an amazing lunch at Glenuig Inn- an enormous plate of local prawns followed by homemade ice cream. Hours later, I'm still so full that I'm struggling to move!
When we visited Ardnamurchan two years ago, we came across a venison shop selling deer skulls complete with their magnificent antlers. We bought two but I've always regretted not getting one of my own. The venison shop was our first stop but nobody was there. We had a phone call from a man named Fergie later in the day who told us he would be at the shop for us to stop by on our way back from lunch.
Fergie was one of those amazing one-off characters you know you'll never forget. He had a really good long chat with us and told us that his son (who runs the hotel and shop) is about to shoot in The Commonwealth Games and wanted to know all about where the Scottish side of our family were from. He was really pleased that we already owned some of the stag skulls from our previous visit, and even more so that we will be displaying them as they are and not cutting them up (apparently lots of people turn them into walking stick handles which I think is a crime!).
Fergie then told us that he is an accordion player and will be featured on BBC Alba on Thursday at 9.00pm. We asked for his full name so we could look up his music, at which point he stopped us leaving and whipped out a CD from his car boot which he very kindly gave to us.
