through the wardrobe

Earlier this year I spent a couple of months with a crack team of artists and makers creating a new stage version of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, held in a purpose-built tent theatre in London's Kensington Gardens. Led by the illustrious Max Humphries, we were tasked with building puppets for the production.



We had a very short time in which to create a small army of giants, centaurs, minotaurs, woodland creatures, dryads, beavers and lions.

Here are some of the dryad (tree spirit) masks in progress:

...and the dryads in action on stage:

These are the Beavers' gloves before the fur has been applied:

Don't they look a bit like pangolins?

Mr. and Mrs. Beaver (Paul Barnhill and Sophie Louise Dann) on stage wearing their furry beaver gloves:

Aslan the lion was our most important and most difficult creation. Several versions of Aslan were built before we constructed the final puppet. A few early attempts may may be seen here, along with early puppet versions of the beavers and yours truly in giant beaver feet:



The final version of Aslan was built in less that five days, literally with blood, sweat, tears and very, very little sleep. Here are views of our final Aslan under construction in the workshop:

This is what Easter looked like in Narnia:

...and why exhaustion and butane heat tools should not mix:

This video shows Aslan, operated beautifully by Jane Leaney, Christian From and Will Lucas, in action:



Finally, two views of the threesixty° Theatre tents in Kensington Gardens.

The show, designed by Tom Scutt and directed by Rupert Goold, ends its run on September 9th, so if you haven't seen it you still have a little bit of time to get tickets!

Tiptoes

I found some very old watercolor drawings while transferring files...

Costume sketch details for The Nutcracker ballet; dancing Sugarplum Attendants, the Prince's slippers, and the Rat King respectively.

the forest for the trees

Today I've started making a tiny forest out of twigs, and I'm excited to see how it will turn out.

For inspiration I've been looking at the work of Russian artist Ivan Bilibin. Here are two of his illustrations, published in 1900, of the red rider who brings the sunrise and the black rider who brings the night from the Russian fairytale Vasilisa the Beautiful.

(click for much larger images)


The full story can be read here. Baba Yaga the witch, who flies around in a giant mortar and has a house on chicken feet, makes an appearance. It is well worth reading.

For the last several nights as I've been going to sleep I've found ladybugs on my bedside table. I've been visited by red ones with black spots and black ones with red spots. Even if I let them out the open window they come right back in. I wonder if they'll be back again this evening?


(detail from the Alexander Marshal Insect Watercolors Album, ca. 1600-1680)

spelunking in the closet

I suddenly realized I leave to go to the States in about a week and a half. I'm trying to be very very productive in the interim. Much exciting progress is being made on my current projects (hurrah!), but I keep needing little odds and ends.. bits of metal, tiny fixings, and today I needed some pieces of fur. Unfortunately my bits of (vintage, not new) scrap fur live in the back of my closet, which, unlike most British closets, is cavernous. I had to crawl to the very back of it to dig out the box I needed. A miner's lamp would have been helpful.

(the piece of fur in question)

I also got a beautiful print in the post from the very talented Rima, which you can see here. Thank you, Rima!

old and new

I am finally packing up to move into my new studio (yay!) in my new house (hooray!) and am finding things I haven't seen in a while, including some very old drawings:

(click for larger images)

a few old drawings...