Many summers ago, as a curious child, I asked my mother what she was reading. It turned out to be a Sci-fi book, by an author called Boland, about an apocalyptic world with snow in August. It’s a marked memory because that very afternoon, on a picnic, there was a freak summer storm with enormous hail stones that whitened the countryside in seconds. I thought the world really would freeze up. New Ice Ages were a “hot topic” in the newspapers in those halcyon days before Global Warming became fashionable.
Forty years or so later, and I’m reminded of the idea of snow in August as I paint snowflake after snowflake for Katie’s Christmas book. Slightly less threatening – the story takes place on December 24th – but in this long awaited hot Summer of ours (a real scorcher), it amuses me to be sitting in shorts, devouring ice lollies and listening to The Nutcracker. Which was of course the theme of my previous book (Ella Bella) set on another Christmas Eve. Like Narnia, it seems I am stuck, illustratively, in perpetual Winter.
These pictures are work in progress. Brrrr…
And now I’ve just been asked to consider illustrating an anniversary edition of Dylan Thomas’ A Child’s Christmas in Wales. I’ll have to think about that for a while… But if I go ahead, at least I’ll be illustrating snow in the Winter at last!
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