Artists and Artwork

I was already connected with Gary and had seen some of his other artwork and the amazing carvings, smithwork and a multitude of other things he seems to do quite effortlessly.  When I approached him to create the album cover, he was immediately taken with the idea and all the ideas I had for it came to life quite magically under his hand.  The idea was to create a gatefold single cover image that flowed seamlessly from the front to the back.  This he achieved, going way beyond my expectations.  The full cover is best appreciated in its full glory on the original gatefold vinyl album (available via Bandcamp or the Music page on this website).  Gary is equally at home working with wood, stone or paper and is a prolific archer in his spare time.

Gavyn is an illustrator/animator from the South, living in the North with a penchant for metal, mysteries and scrumpy cider. 

Gavyn responded to a post I put up on the Dark Ink Facebook page for an artist to depict the song "Snowbound" and totally fulfilled the brief.  The image he created was both lyrically and aesthetically perfect, flowing with the storyline and adding touches of darker narrative.  The sorceress has two aspects, one fair and the other ancient and the knight's long hair, beleaguered, vacant expression and tarnished armour tells of his long enchantment.  His hand clutches a winter rose from which he is bleeding unaware of his pain and loss.

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Natalia Drepina was born November 19, 1989, in Lipetsk, Russia. She is a self-taught photographer. Natalia specialises in female portrait photography and emotional self-portraits. Her style is characterised by the bleakness, fragility and minor mood of the past. Her work is a visual poetry about wounded souls who cherish the bizarre universe within themselves and who find beauty in darkness, loneliness and death. Her work has been featured in a number of specialty journals, including Beautiful Bizarre, Bleaq, Literary Orphans, to name but a few.  

Trawling through the internet on a hunt for the perfect image for Woebetide Hill, I was fortunate to come across her prodigious work.  

Esther created (under her maiden name of Remmington)  the design for the lyric sheet for Songs from the Uglee Meadow for me.  She was so much fun and so intuitive to work with and the final result is stunning.  The ivy, fairy and mushrooms on the home page are from this design.  Please see the Gallery for zoomed in images from this wonderful piece of whimsical art.

Esther is now creating full time with her husband, Martin, making fantastical leather creations and artwork from their Somerset home.  The enterprise is called Triba Mythica and their work is stunning and inimitable.

James is a young graduate artist / animator from Medway College of Arts.  He also happens to be my nephew :). I had been very impressed with his artwork and particularly his stop-frame animation, so I set him a new challenge - to create an animated trailer using the cover art.  I had no idea if it was even possible!  But he took it on and did an amazing job.  Some of the tech in his own words ... "Everything in the video is cut out digitally from the original artwork except the cocoon hanging in the tree and the earth at the beginning screen.  I used the cutouts to create separate planes, which allowed me to create perspective and, of course, more trees.  I also managed to animate a few features of the artwork".