This year's Manx LitFest was a whirl of inspiration for me.
I managed to attend more events than last year, but still not all of the things I wanted. I thoroughly indulged myself and it was most refreshing.
My joys ranged from Matthew Kneale, to Jason Lewis, to the Famous Five, to all the outstanding local poets and storytellers and to Viviane Schwarz.
While I will get around to talking about the other events, it is Viviane Schwarz that I would like to talk to you about today.
Followers of this blog will know that I sketch from time to time and my friends will know that I used to create collages and overly-complicated postcards with interactive pull-downs and pop ups. You may also have noticed that I haven't done this in a little while. With this in mind and a yearning to return to it, I took part in a workshop given by Viviane during Lit Fest.
We swirled vivid colours, created characters and writing implements, learned about stagecraft in relation to the performative aspect of picture books and one of us may have stabbed herself in the finger by accident. (don't worry, it's all healed now.)
Since the workshop I have used the things I learned to create a dummy book of my poem Perdita and have been swooshing about on big pieces of paper with paintbrushes and richly hued inks. It's wonderful.
Yesterday, I tried combining my Eames and Yellow Owl Workshop stamps with some characters. Here's the result:
The best thing was that my son was interested in what I was doing and wanted to join in, but sadly it was too late and he had to go to bed.
This morning, he woke me up with this:
The figure on the left is saying "Fly, my pretty, fly!"
The figure in the middle is saying "Wait!"
The figure on the left is saying "Darling, can you stop saying that?"
Thanks for the inspiration, Viv. Xxxx
I managed to attend more events than last year, but still not all of the things I wanted. I thoroughly indulged myself and it was most refreshing.
My joys ranged from Matthew Kneale, to Jason Lewis, to the Famous Five, to all the outstanding local poets and storytellers and to Viviane Schwarz.
While I will get around to talking about the other events, it is Viviane Schwarz that I would like to talk to you about today.
Followers of this blog will know that I sketch from time to time and my friends will know that I used to create collages and overly-complicated postcards with interactive pull-downs and pop ups. You may also have noticed that I haven't done this in a little while. With this in mind and a yearning to return to it, I took part in a workshop given by Viviane during Lit Fest.
We swirled vivid colours, created characters and writing implements, learned about stagecraft in relation to the performative aspect of picture books and one of us may have stabbed herself in the finger by accident. (don't worry, it's all healed now.)
Since the workshop I have used the things I learned to create a dummy book of my poem Perdita and have been swooshing about on big pieces of paper with paintbrushes and richly hued inks. It's wonderful.
Yesterday, I tried combining my Eames and Yellow Owl Workshop stamps with some characters. Here's the result:
The best thing was that my son was interested in what I was doing and wanted to join in, but sadly it was too late and he had to go to bed.
This morning, he woke me up with this:
The figure on the left is saying "Fly, my pretty, fly!"
The figure in the middle is saying "Wait!"
The figure on the left is saying "Darling, can you stop saying that?"
Thanks for the inspiration, Viv. Xxxx
