If music be the food of love… what about lemon drizzle cake? As Ella Bella is all about the storytelling magic of music, I suppose it is entirely appropriate that my most recent distraction was the annual children’s concert I do with the de Havilland Philharmonic Orchestra. (You can read about that on my other site, Katie’s Picture Show). I am always extremely nervous before an event on this scale. So imagine my delight when I went into my dressing room and discovered a beautiful vintage cake-tin (which looked like something out of an Ella Bella book). My joy increased when I discovered the Front-of-house manager (my old friend Nadine) had hand-baked a Lemon Drizzle Cake (to which, as she knows, I am very partial), with fresh eggs from her own hens. It is a large cake so it is now helping me get back into Ella Bella and Swan Lake after the heady excitements of Sibelius, Grieg, Mussorgsky and Saint-Saens on Sunday. I wish you could smell the cake from here… it is divine.
Meanwhile, today I will send off revised roughs to my (patient) designer at Orchard Books. And then I shall relax and eat another slice of cake. I reckon I need a layer of fat to keep me warm this winter anyway…
In my studio there is paper, paper everywhere… The Ella Bella roughs are coming together well (I think), and the few problems with composition are now pretty much resolved. What I next need to consider is the construction of the images which will, as usual, be made up out of three layers of art, not digitally but by hand. I’ll post about that very soon, when I’ve finished the cake!
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