Out with the old, in with the new.

Or, as Elvis once sang, "the future looks bright ahead".

Who knows where the time goes?

It is one year since the publication of my first book, “46 Contemporary Poems in Various Styles”.

It’s been a year of sketchbooks, keeping my Twitter / X page active, as a place to promote my book and my art. One might say it’s been a year of promotions. But it’s also been a year, at least the last few months, of starting my second book. And this I have done.

So, I’m thinking the New Year is going to be in need of a new blog. The blog you are reading now is totally public. The new blog won’t be for a while yet.

All text and photographs copyright ian gordon craig.

#Sketchbook November.

 

Top to bottom: Parliament Oak, the Major Oak, a witch, and Byron's Oak (only the stump remains).

All artwork copyright ian gordon craig

#Sketchbook October.

 

A woolly hat might be a good idea in the cold weather, but perhaps not in blue...

All artwork copyright ian gordon craig.

#Sketchbook September.

Sketchbook pages from my walks around Thoresby Park.

 All artwork copyright ian gordon craig.

Twitter / X musings.

 

More Twitter / X silliness. The challenge was to interpret a famous art work.

All artwork copyright ian gordon craig.

Aliens.

 

Some silliness on Twitter / X, when I know I really should be writing. This is the problem with social media, even when one is not really sociable. The urge to get noticed overrides all sense.

All artwork copyright Ian Gordon Craig

My garden.

 

Top: If garden benches could only speak, what stories they could tell.

Bottom: I had to replace the heavy stone with an alternative arrangement in my tree-stump sculpture.

All artworks & photographs copyright ian gordon craig.

Spring 2024.

 

All artworks copyright ian gordon craig.

Looking at things a different way.

 

 Bored (for a while) with observational drawing, I decided on marker pens, imagination, cardboard sheets, and see what happens.

All artworks copyright ian gordon craig.

Landscapes in March.

 

March is my favourite month. The bleakness of January and February hopefully passed.

All artworks copyright ian gordon craig.

My first book's reception.

 

I personally regard my first book as the most important thing I’ve ever created. In my own opinion, my artworks aren’t always as successful in achieving what I was trying to say. I like to think that those persons I especially wanted to read it, did so. Little else matters. Certainly not any hopes of commercial enterprise.

The reception was very positive, albeit at the same time rather silent in some quarters close to home. C'est la vie. I am now intending on a second book, either 46 short stories or (more likely), the novel I’ve been toying with for years. Art is now taking a back seat called sketchbook, rather than canvas and exhibitions.

All text & artwork copyright ian gordon craig.

Pastels in the Park.

 

Weather was fine enough to visit Thoresby Park. I needed a bit of an art reset. So, oil pastels on large, cheep brown wrapping paper was the challenge of the day.

All artworks copyright ian gordon craig.

Published.

One might think that having done all the writing & editing work, then the Kindle Create and upload stage would be easy. No.  However, all is done now. I am published: "46 Contemporary Poems in Various Styles".

My original idea was to include 47 poems, the family's lucky number, but I rejected one piece. Reading one’s words on Kindle, as opposed to all the weeks of reading through them on my laptop, is a little odd at first. Seeing them through the "lens" of a Kindle screen, as indeed the audience will, takes a bit of getting used to. But by bedtime, I got over that.

I am thinking ahead now to a possible "46 Short Stories & Pros"...

All art and text copyright ian gordon craig.

Writing through October.

 I have spent the past couple of months preparing for self-publishing an eBook of my poems.

I think the earliest piece comes from the late-80s, but all the rest certainly from 2007 – 2020. However, everything chosen has been re-edited and improved. A lot of my writing used to be basic, stream of conscious stuff that I put on Blogger or sometimes even set to music. Those original posts provided just a starting point to now edit, embellish, or indeed mix together to make new works.

Today, after reading various self-publishing guide lines, I reached that point where all are now “ready to go”.

All text & Photographs copyright ian gordon craig.

October sketchbook.

 Bridge over River Maun, Ollerton; clouds over Thoresby fields; Thoresby Park country lane. On the look-out again for new subjects. It's getting tricky!

 All artwork copyright ian gordon craig.

September sketchbook.

 I enjoy my sketchbook, and still have no plans at all to ever return to painting. Also, it keeps my Twitter page active, which might be useful to publicize my intended poetry book.

All artwork and photography copyright ian g craig.

47 poems.

 I set myself a target and a deadline, and I made it.

47 poems is the idea. (The number 47 has a family history). The challenge was that, even though I had a lot of writing to sift through, much of it was intended for song lyrics, or basic "stream of conscious" pieces from old blogs. All of that needed a lot of editing and re-writing.

Break now to do some sketching for a while before getting my head around e-book self publishing.

Looking for subjects to sketch.

 It's getting difficult to find new places to sketch. Seen here are a lightning tree in Thoresby Park, Nottingham Rock Cemetery, a bench on a hill in Thoresby Park, and a path leading to Perlethorpe Church.

All artwork copyright ian gordon craig.