Fiery Fred and where do ideas come from

Domestic upheaval in the form of the annual gas safety checks for the boiler has prevented me from posting to my blog for a few weeks: the reason being that having moved everything around to enable access to the boiler,  the scanner was inaccessible! I am planning to have some images in hand on my computer to post when such events happen in future, as inevitably they will. Or to live somewhere much larger, so that giving access for maintenance does not create quite the domestic chaos that are the product of shoe-horning my busy creative life into a relatively small flat.

In the meantime, I have been working on Fiery Fred for the diploma course: the brief was for to paint a vignette to show a "young dragon who is not yet fully in control of his flame, and to show his bafflement at having set fire to a thatched roof".   A fun brief for someone who likes to draw dragons! As usual, I found myself making up much more story, hence the top picture.  The idea and story evolved over a few days (often being pondered when travelling on buses, or walking), interspersed with some sketching out of potential ideas and layouts to see which worked best.

The fire brigade bears appeared because I wanted the occupants of the thatched cottage to be visible and responding to the fire, and I then realised that the occupants did not have to be humans! 

Bears, and teddy bears specifically are occupying my drawing thoughts quite a lot at the moment: (Research for a children's picture book which I have written and drawn the first draft of, and which am now working to improve). So at the beginning of February, when  I spent a morning at the Museum of Childhood with some friends from the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, I focussed mainly on sketching some of the fabulous teddy bears in the collection. I will post some of the sketches another time. Hence bears seemed to be a good choice for the occupants of the cottage, especially as I could then have fun playing with the roof shape!