Otters!

Over on Gemæcce, my research blog, a post all about the difference between a) the static, two-dimensional profile art of the Early Medieval gospels and Pictish stones, and b) today’s more dynamic, realistic portrayal of beasts.

It’s longish, and not all readers will be interested in what it’s like to try create things like a doe and her faun, an eagle, and swimming orcas in a style that’s related to the Early Medieval. (If you do, of course, you can just follow the link above.) But my guess is quite a few of you wouldn’t mind seeing a few playful otters.

The reason I became interested in trying to draw otters was that I wanted a handmade cover for the tiny excerpt/outtake of Menewood that’s all about an otter that I posted on Patreon. (I did a cover for the entire, previously unseen chapter that went up a week later—but that was just a version of the existing book cover.) I thought it would be easy to draw a quick otter in the style I’ve developed for my zoologics series but, well, it wasn’t!

Otters, like hares, are very difficult to draw in simple black and white lines. They look reasonable enough in photos, and in colour images, and even in realistically shaded pencil sketches, but the minute you try to simplify them they become…improbable.

The first few I tried looked like Frankenbeasts: a blend of seal, weasel, and cat-turning-into-a-beaver. (One unfortunate version was rather like a manatee…) So then I decided to begin with basics: the dreaded static profile. And here I ran into a different problem: to make doubly sure they looked like *otters* and not any of the other mustelids (or marine mammals), I exaggerated things about the face and head that ended up neotonising them, turned them into cutesy baby cartoon versions of themselves.

I went back to the drawing boards—or, well, actually went to look at a lot of photos (lots and lots of photos; so very many photos—thanks to all on Bluesky and Facebook who suggested sites), plus an otter skeleton. And then I was finally able to figure out how to draw something recognisably otterly, vaguely Early Medieval, and with some personality: alert, curious, but not too cute…

But it’s still a profile. Yes, I turned the head (I’ve learnt that’s the best way to animate an otherwise stiff pose) and artistically curved the tail but, still: a fucking profile. None of that otterly twisting, turning, diving playful curiosity that is so characteristic of the murderers with a twinkle in their eye. So then the hard work began.

I’ll spare you the litany of woe, the shouting at my iPad, cursing the universe for making such weird and simultaneously attractive animals, and bellowing at the cats when they deleted six minutes work by thoughtfully tapping the wrong icon, and just show you what I ended up with (click through each image to larger versions).

There are things about all three that I like, and things that I can’t figure out how to fix. I experimented with different ways to draw the head, the paws, the limbs. None are quite as successful in their own right as the one in simple profile. If I had to choose a favourite of these three it would be the last—it feels more alive and proportional than the other two. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that it’s also the one that’s least Medievalised. At my level of artistic skill (beginner, self-taught), that mix of Lindisfarne Gospels and Pictish Stones style that I’m fond of does not play nicely with dynamic movement and personality. Could an actual artist do it? Very probably. (And if one of you wants to have a go I would absolutely love to see some otters done right!)

And here, just because I can, are all three otters playing together.

Orcas and Otters and Eagles! Oh My!

A couple of months ago a reader sent me a photo of a Pictish stone I hadn’t seen.1 It was absolutely crammed with beasts, including two I hadn’t encountered on a stone before (a bear, and a goat—I think), plus two new combinations: a doe and faun, and an eagle eating a salmon.

It’s a puzzling stone because some of the beasties are incredibly lifelike—the bear is easily recognisable, so much so that you can tell it’s a brown bear, and the doe and faun are lovely!—while others are, well, perhaps the kindest way to describe them is ‘stylised to strangeness’. One beast in particular, the goat, is so odd the only reason it could be a goat is the horn.2 And the eagle eating the fish is so stiff I’m guessing the stone mason had never seen such a thing happen in the wild, so they just took an image of an eagle, swivelled it 90 degrees at the hips, and made it look as though it was lying on top of the fish like a toppled tree. (As I’ve noted elsewhere, some Pictish carvers were not very good at depicting animals in motion. Static and in profile? Yes. In motion and/or turned a few degrees? No.)

Still, I really liked that doe and faun, and I thought that if I rationalised the weird goatish beast just a bit it could at least look interesting. And then of course I thought I’d draw my own version of a Pictish eagle, only without the bother of the fish.

So that’s what I did—trying to represent Pictish style but with a slightly more 21st-century sensibility—that is, a sense of personality and a lot more movement:

I admit I completely forgot about the bear. Eh, maybe another time.

But then I started thinking about all the beasties that might, reasonably speaking, be familiar to Picts of the Early Medieval but that aren’t—as far as I know—represented on any stones.3 Things like dolphins and orcas, beavers, lynx, otters…

I’d already tried my hand at the lynx (though sadly that came out rather stiffly—it gave me much sympathy for the poor old stonemasons of yore) so I thought orcas might be cool. And they were! But. And. It turned out to be a bit difficult to render them Pictish style because—having lived in Seattle for more than 30 years—when I think of stylised orcas I tend to think of First Nations/Native American, particularly Coast Salish, imagery.4

Given that both cultures—Picts and Coast Salish—were working with the constraints of two-dimensional sculpture, it’s not surprising that there is a certain similarity between the two art styles. Anyway, to get the influence out of my system I did a version of the Tulalip Casino logo as it might have appeared on a Pictish stone. It’s a male orca (note the shape of the dorsal fin) with classic predator teeth.

Once that was done I felt better and could buckle down to a proper attempt. I wanted a killer whale, one that looked Early Medieval without also looking like the evil, mustachio-twirling villain of a silent movie. Also, given that traditionally female orcas do more hunting, I wanted her to be a girl.

I was pretty happy with that—and I wanted more of a challenge: to draw something more dynamic, less of a simple profile. So then I came up with this.

So now I couldn’t decide which I liked best. They were pretty different in tone: one serious, watchful, deadly; the other playful and carefree. And then it struck me: they belonged together!

When I worked on the hares I managed to get some dynamic figures—but they were still largely in profile. I wanted a really big challenge—and what better beastie to work with than an otter?

Otters, like hares, are very difficult to draw in simple black and white lines. The first few I tried looked like Frankenbeasts: a blend of seal, weasel and beaver. (One unfortunate version was rather like a manatee…) So then I decided to begin with basics: the dreaded static profile. And here I ran into a different problem: they looked like cute cartoons. However, after studying photo after photo of otters in the wild, then one of an otter skeletons, I finally figured out how to draw something recognisably otterly, vaguely Early Medieval, and with some personality: alert, curious, delightful but not too cute…

But it’s still a profile. Yes, I turned the head (I’ve learnt that’s the best way to animate an otherwise stiff pose) and artistically curved the tail but, still: a fucking profile. None of that otterly twisting, turning, diving playful curiosity that is so characteristic. So then the hard work began.

I’ll spare you the litany of woe, the shouting at my iPad, cursing the universe for making such weird and simultaneously delightful animals, and bellowing at the cats when they deleted six minutes work by thoughtfully tapping the wrong icon, and just show you what I ended up with (click through each image to larger versions).

There are things about all three that I like, and things that I can’t figure out how to fix. I experimented with different ways to draw the head, the paws, the limbs. None are quite as successful in their own right as the one in simple profile. If I had to choose a favourite of these three it would be the last—it feels more alive and proportional than the other two.5 I don’t think it’s a coincidence that it’s also the one that’s least Medievalised. At my level of artistic skill (beginner, self-taught), that mix of Lindisfarne Gospels and Pictish Stones style that I’m fond of does not play nicely with dynamic movement and personality. Could an actual artist do it? Very probably. (And if one of you wants to have a go I would absolutely love to see some otters done right!)

But for now I might be done with drawing. I need to be writing.

Pictish Beasts in Bronze

Remember the silver snakestone lapel pin I sometimes wear on my jacket? It was cast by MaudPunk (who also makes the great Fairford Duck pendants that Kelley likes so well). Now, with my blessing, she has used two of my Pictish- and one Viking coin-inspired animal designs to cast pendants. (The raven is from the Norse coin.) Right now they’re only for sale in bronze, but in a week or two they’ll be available in copper—and maybe silver? (Not sure about that.) Also, though I’m not sure of the timetable, she’ll cast the designs as lapel pins.

Each image below links to its Etsy sale page.

If metal isn’t your thing but linoprints are, another artist friend, Vicki Platts-Brown, is working on a couple of other images (flying heron and the boxing hares). More when I have it. And if neither metal nor paper work for you, I recently had a conversation with a ceramicist about mugs. Stay tuned!

Dear Reader: a note about SHE IS HERE

I have a new book coming VERY SOON. I, of course, want you to read it. I’m also trying to find time to prep the events—y’know, what bit/s to read, how to talk about the book—before those events actually begin. Which means I’ve been working out how to talk about the book.

I thought you might like to see what I came up with.

Dear Reader,

Novelists learn very early in their careers to summarise every new book with a pithy phrase. (My first novel Ammonite: “Change or die.”) But today, less than a month before the publication of She Is Here, I am still struggling to define it. Perhaps that’s because it’s not a novel—nor all fiction, nor even prose. Not even text. 
      She Is Here is a selection of various published and unpublished creations spanning my career from before the publication of that first novel through to today. The fiction ranges from very short, to very early, to a novella about the magic of music published here for the first time. The poems were written to express emotion in private—grief, refusing ableism, dangerous lust, and the despair of degenerative illness. None are previously published—in fact, this marks the first publication of any of my poems anywhere. Similarly, I made the art purely for its own sake—in this case, images (very) loosely inspired by the illuminations of Early Medieval gospels. The non-fiction ranges from manifesto to Op-Ed to epistolary criticism to musings on etymology and the double-edged tool that is branding. Different facets from different eras of my creative life.
      That long-ago tagline, “Change or die,” was perfect for Ammonite. More than 30 years later I find it has become the bedrock principle of my life. Writers are often advised to write what we know. I believe, rather, that we write from our deepest self, from who we are. If we want our work to change and grow, we must, too. Life is change—constant discovery.
      The last words of “Glimmer,” the shortest fiction in the book, are “She is here. She has arrived.” The narrator has made a galaxy-spanning journey through time and space, past reality—astonishing, impossible—a miraculous achievement. But the achievement, the arrival, isn’t the point; the rest of her life is about to begin. Because it’s always about to begin.
     She Is Here, then, is a snapshot of a moment in time, containing, as do all of us, bits of the past, present and future. A kind of creative Commonplace Book.
      She is here. I am here. But where, exactly, is that? I have no idea; that’s the point! The joy lies in continuing to find out…

If you like the sound of that, perhaps you’d like to join me for one of those events in Seattle or Edmonds or virtually, before or during publication. I’m curious about what aspect of the book you’d like to know more about—so if you have an opinion, comment, or question, just drop it here.

Meanwhile, feel free to pre-order the book. Or put a hold on it at your library. It’s all good.

#bookBirthday #essays #interview #novella #poems #publication #sheIsHere #shortFiction #zoomorphics