How It All Began

The Inky Tale of Books and Pens
Well, like all good tales you have start with a prop. The prop in this story is a book, not just any book though. No, it was the sweetest little book with crisp cream pages and endless possibilities. This book went everywhere with me for a while. I wrote my name in it, that's all, and thought about all the things I could write or draw.

So I filled this book with sketches and poems, tickets and receipts, photos, newspaper cuttings, snipets of children's book and my cat (well a drawing of her, you see!)

And I liked it ! I more than liked it! I remember being stopped outside a Post Office by someone asking for directions and being most annoyed they had stopped my daydream about what I was going to put next in this book!
So once I had finished the book I got a new one, the book was fine, thicker and more pages. But I was also given a pen. Not just any pen, a handcrafted Victorian fountain quill.

And more pens and more books! And I just kept filling the books, now full of drawings and just a few things people close to me said or funny things I overheard at the shops.
 Lots and lots of drawings - some sad and dramatic, some cold and wistful, some with cheerful faces but at the beginning they were rare. I kept these books by my bedside and I used them everyday and if you asked me nicely I'd let you have a look at some of the more completed images.

 And a few books in came the Owls, then birds, then an ill advised section of squirrels ( nah!) then the worried women and finally in my most recent book the lovely Tea Ladies. For whom Tea is everything and everything else can wait.

I love my little sketchbooks, I get quite panicky when I can't find one. They have recorded my thoughts for the past 8 months. I still have one by my bedside and more often than not one in my bag.

When I began enlarging these sketches I did it with the view to make the images look better, use more ink, rearrange them on the page and generally see them big. I'm honoured people have bought my work, that it's been so well received and I've had some amazing support from those I love. I'm not sure what I'll do with them all. I have only planned as far ahead as I can see, which most days is just past my nose, but watch this space because I've got a feeling it's just the beginning.

x Foxy