Richard Bell's nature sketchbook since 1998
‘Not a creature is stirring . . .’ in my Night Before Christmas scene but how do I imply that the mouse isn’t going to end up as a midnight snack for the cat?
I’m going for more of a cartoon look for the mouse.
Although I’d follow Beatrix Potter’s method of not adding much in the way of costume when she needed to emphasise the animal nature of her character.
We’ll be setting up the Night Before Christmas display in the Redbox Gallery on Friday and, as a break from constructing the scenery out of foamboard, I’ve moved on to the sleeping dog character.
‘No creature was stirring’, says the poem, so that’s the mood I’m going for here.
There isn’t room for all that we’d like to include in our Redbox Gallery Christmas show, but I think that we could fit in a few Christmas Creatures:
'T'was the night before Christmas, when all thro' the house, Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse . . .'
Card for an engineering student. We met some well adjusted members of the Wing-Nut family last year.
A musical interlude.
A birthday card for one of my more energetic relatives.
What birthday card do you get for someone who’s just passed their HGV?
Arkan Sonney, the Isle of Man’s lucky hedgehog, makes a return appearance, along with his chums Moddey Dhoo a.k.a. the Black Dog of Peel Castle and the Buggane, everyone’s favourite Manx bogeyman, on another of this week’s homemade cards.
A Kafkaesque take on Gary Larson’s domestic scenes of insect life in my latest homemade birthday card.
I often do quick roughs of these cards, not usually as elaborate as this one. I was going include a suggestion of the interior with a Gary Larson-style curtain and an open door, but decided to keep things as simple as possible in the final version.
My first homemade birthday card with a greeting in Manx.