Katherine Keenum

Blog post alert: The female artist, Fidelia Bridges, was brought to my attention by a blog post, A Method for Painting Botanical Subjects on Location. In a thirteen-minute video, James Gurney demonstrates his method of painting a blurry landscape, blowing it up to place at a distance from his easel, and then working on the actual canvas to paint a detailed botanical image of a milkweed plant in the foreground. I found it fascinating to watch, and it's interesting that he learned the method of combining two ways of seeing in one canvas from a 19th C woman.

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Website alert: For a story I'm writing, I wanted know how much armor a Renaissance knight's horse might have to carry. An Inside Look at Medieval Armor provided just what I needed. The terms on this diagram are too specialized for the glancing reference I need right now, but I'm tucking them away. If nothing else, couldn't two of them make good names for pets, giants, or other characters? For more, see also Arms and Armor.

Website alert: Christine Hadsel's prizewinning book, Suspended Worlds: Historic Theater Scenery in Northern New England, has just introduced me to a whole category of Americana: the big theater curtains that could be rolled down in town halls, granges, and opera houses for live performances in the period just before the movies. This could be invaluable for a story set in small town in, say—1908! You can see lots of examples and learn about them at Hadsel's website Curtains without Borders.

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Having just finished The Order of Time by Carlo Rovelli, I've gone back to reread the book to try to understand it point by point—that is, to work through my own confusions and queries. One way, of course, is to go slow and ponder. Another is to call in speculative fiction—to read stories that flesh out concepts that are quantified by physics and mathematics. Exhibit 1: Lifelode by Jo Walton.

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I came across Looking down to Horsleyhope Mill a while back. It seemed to me you could convert it to a hobbit village or imaginary farm in an earlier era as the setting for a story. I never got around to trying to sketch what I had in mind, but, by golly, John S. Goodall did a wildly better version in The Story of a Farm, one of his wordless books with cunning foldovers that show transformations. Luckily, our public library system has a copy. I borrowed it, loved it, and have just ordered a clean used copy at Biblio.com.

How often have I said, "You haven't read a book 'til you've read it twice"? Well, it's true. Having read Murder Most Royal by S. J. Bennett over Christmas, I went back and reread Windsor Knot, the first in this murder mystery series with Queen Elizabeth II as the detective. I liked it better the second time around and, incidentally, admire the way Bennett set herself up for a lifelong series if she wants it. (NB: Her upcoming A Death in Diamonds is set in 1957).What does this have to do with the chocolate biscuit cake?

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I was gobsmacked on Wednesday when I stumbled across this painting of a marionette theater in a garden by Liu Songnian. Even after editing four books on the Song Dynasty, I had no idea such puppets existed in China at that time! What I was looking for were reminders of late-medieval Western toys for my fantasy-in-progress. Now ideas are popping about some sort of magical Silk Road on which puppeteers might travel. Serendipity for sure.

An article, "This is a wake-up call': Booker winner Paul Lynch on his novel about a fascist Ireland, prompts me to write briefly about Lynch's deeply immersive novel, Prophet Song. What I have chosen for today's illustration, however, is The Great War, a wordless panorama by Joe Sacco. Why? Because, given the threats that loom over us today, I've been musing lately on how art can best capture the lived human experience of the nightmares we inflict on each other and ourselves.

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As we go into a stormy weekend, I'm posting this gentle illustration by Garth Williams from Little House in the Big Woods simply because I love it.

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We had to put our beloved Corgi down in November, but we have left his outdoor water dish for the birds and chipmunks who visit it from time to time. I hasten to add that our Palmer slept in OUR house, not a doghouse. All the same this picture made me smile wistfully. As for the artist, I can find little about Elisabeth Sinding (1846–1930) except that she was a Norwegian who studied in Christiana (now Oslo), Dresden, and Munich. No thought, no suggestion: sometimes a picture is enough.