December 22, 2014

Naughty or Nice?

Merry Christmas everyone!!

I hope you've been nice because Leaves for Chloe is out right on time for Christmas, oh yeah.

And HERE's a list of suppliers.



But if you've been naughty... well you better start making amends right now and hope for the best, Santa's a jolly nice guy after all *hohoho*

Ah my fingers are itching to draw more Chloe...

3 comments:

Sadami said...

Congrats, Teresa & Pat! Wish u a Merry and Happy Christmas. Best wishes, Sadami

RH Carpenter said...

A belated birthday wish for you for a fantastic year! Congratulations on the new book!

dedeurs said...

Terese,

I have no facebook/twitter account, so I hope this reaches you...

More than 10 years ago I approached you by email with the request to grant me the use of your 'Lost in wonder' illustration. I wanted to use the painting to decorate a poem of mine. indirectly the lost-in-wonder teddybear echoed my little piece of poetry perfectly. You said, okay, and didn't mind that I couldn't send you the poem as it was in Dutch. Attempts to translate it into English always failed. (I translated many a poem in English ever since, and it always worked quite well...)

Recently I gave it another try, and I failed again to catch the delicate, intimate flavor of "Nightwatch", and it's metric, rhythm and word-play turned out horribly once more.

Forget about poetic quality, I at least have here the story:


no sense of finiteness
his worries only micro
tucked away in the warm blanket
with his toy bear Teddy
he is ready for dreams
.
kissed asleep by moonlight
resting for his future
unaware how close by magic buzzes
in a lumpy gold-brown belly,
behind a furry face,
.
glass eyes that never close
a dusty grin full of secrets
wild playing thoughts
embedded in saw dust
by day, without power
.
I can chill, the wind hisses
a tree creaks, I can grab
the night spirit wets his
knives of darkly tinted
horror
.
the watchman stands prepared!
on his short thick legs
his plush paws rips throats
forever closed jaws tear, wailing
evil flees
.
a loser once more; the night
she blanches and leaves sulking
wall shadows freeze
child's breath changes
long eyelashes flutter

with a sigh and sandy eyes
the boy gropes for his teddy
lisps 'eddy,
did you dream weird too?
Teddy smiles glassily


Perhaps you now understand why this story complements you wonderful "sense of wonder" illustration so much.
Initially I had chosen Ida Outhwaite's boy sky-fishing while standing in the crescent arc of the moon , but your vision was much more emotional.

sincerely
Willem
aka dedeurs