Art to Inspire

As an artist and with a love of drawing, photography and painting, I find turning to art very inspiring when I come to writing.

This is something I discovered when I wrote The Secret Weapon, my first complete novel. As my first foray into writing, this project was something of a learning curve. I felt that I wanted to get to know my characters better. As such, I began to draw them, to give them faces as well as names. I created character profiles to give them a personal history before their appearance on the page.

Cover Illustration for The Secret Weapon

Yet even before this, a drawing partly inspired that story (and indeed the whole series). Those stories chiefly came from a trip to St Michael's Mount that I took with my family as a teenager. But on that trip I sat and sketched the castle. it was a rough drawing with a pen on the back of an envelope! Yet every time I saw it, I was motivated to tell the story.

The envelope sketch

I used this drawing in a variety of ways. It became a part of my art work towards my degree, and I also used this first sketch to create a more in depth drawing and then a mixed media painting.

A more detailed drawing of St Michael's Mount

I also then included it in my portfolio of drawings I was building whilst writing The Secret Weapon.

In the first edition that I released of this book, I included some of these illustrations inside to help my readers visualise what I was visualising. I have since taken the decision to remove these in subsequent editions.

But my drawing continues. As places inspire me, so too does art, as I undertake it. I have learnt a more condensed process, often taking photos of places I see on my travels that cause a spark in my mind. Sometimes these places are not convenient and my long suffering husband is very adept at stopping suddenly (and safely!) on a road so that I can take a picture of a view, building or flower!

When it came to writing my most recent novel, I also drew some sketches to help inspire the writing process. Some of these were from history books I read and some from places I had visited, whilst others came entirely from my imagination.

Bear at Culloden - for Beyond the Heather

Writing is a process that is so much more than creating words on a page. And I want to keep using my love and skill for art in the any future books I write and stories I tell.