Still wet!

Phew, just finished doing the inkwork on a little picture for the back cover of Land of Fire, ready for the print edtion.  It's Bu, the character-filled dog from Muspelheim, for those of you who've read the book!  She's supposed to be some sort of Buhund ancestor, but I picture her bit more like a Karelian Bear dog.  

Here's the pencil sketch.  That weird yellow effect is from my lamp that I work by, but I liked it so I left it:

I've put her at the bottom of the page so I can wash the rest in reddy-orange to match the front cover, then add the blurb in Gimp.  I hope!

Here she is in ink with my trusty quill pen.  I must say it's a bit nerve-wracking to be using bulletproof black on something that matters so much to me. I know, I know, in a disaster I could redo the drawing and start again, but working at such a small scale you never quite get the character the same twice, and I love the character I've caught here!  

  Next is watercolour, but I need to make sure the ink is very dry before I start messing about with watery paint, so that's it for today.

Outside right now, I can hear the router going.  Andyroo is cutting out the soundboard that he glued to the frame of my Anglo-Saxon Harp/Lyre yesterday.  He called me out to see it with all the clamps on it and I had to take a photo of it.  Every clamp we have was in use!

In other writey news, I sent digital copies of Chicken Soup for Satan out to my usual first three readers.  Very exciting when my work finally gets an audience other than me, and since I don't show it to anyone or even talk about it much  till I am sure it is ready, I am always rather trepidatious by the time it actually goes out there.

So far, one person has finished reading it and says it is very enjoyable.  Despite the title, this is a rather light and fluffy story that moves along with a quick pace, just right for those times when you don't want to read anything too heavy. My reader is already asking for a sequel, and I must say the main character would be great to write into more stories.  I like him a lot!