IMPORTANT NOTICE!

I have decided to retire this blog, but don't worry! Ella Bella is dancing her way over to :

http://james-mayhew-author-illustrator.blogspot.co.uk/

So news about Ella Bella and all my other work, is one simple click away. 

Nutcracker Concert - Tickets selling fast!

Hurry Hurry! If you have not yet booked for the Nutcracker concert on November 4th, DON'T DELAY. The 2pm performance is now very full indeed, and the 4.30 performance not that far behind. So for the best view... book as soon as possible if you want to come!

There will be a chance to WIN the illustrations I create LIVE ON STAGE during this performance of Tchaikovsky's magnificent music. The superb de Havilland Philharmonic will be conducted by Robin Browning.

The box office is open Monday to Friday 10 - 4pm. You can also book online - see links on the left hand panel.

SEE YOU THERE!!!

Going nuts for Ella Bella!

The new Ella Bella book will be published in the UK next month, and shortly after in the US.  Astonishingly, here in the UK,  the book is already being reprinted due to high demand. That's because so many shops have placed their pre-Christmas orders early and it must be the first time one of my books has demanded a reprint BEFORE even being published.

So this doesn't mean it won't be available - it means shops should have it in stock ready to go - but if you want to get your hands on a first edition - you'll have to be quick!

Ella Bella Ballerina and the Nutcracker is published on September 6th.

Launching Ella Bella and The Nutcracker!

I'm thrilled to tell you that Ella Bella's latest adventure will be launched in style, with concerts featuring Tchaikovsky's wonderful music, performed by the de Havilland Philharmonic Orchestra,

I will join them on stage to tell the story, by Hoffmann, of the Nutcracker & the Mouse King, which I will also illustrate live on stage!

The painting will be raffled for charity, so you could even win an original! It really promises to be a wonderful afternoon of stories and pictures and music.

The concerts are on Sunday 4th November at 2pm and 4.30pm. They will take place at the Weston Auditorium on the de Havilland Campus of the University of Hertfordshire in Hatfield.

Tickets are just £6 for children and £12 for adults. The Box Office number is: 01707 281127

Or you can book online by following the links on the UHarts website:

http://www.herts.ac.uk/about-us/arts-and-galleries/whats-on/music.cfm

BOOKING IS NOW OPEN!

Farewell Snowflakes

Well it's been a tough few weeks. A late fall of snow provided some real life inspiration for the Waltz of Snowflakes in Ella Bella's latest adventure. This image is the Waltz of the Snowflakes at a very early stage. It looks a lot more fun than the freezing slushy stuff I've been battling with outside!

And unfortunately it coincided with a series of school workshops which were either poorly attended (children would rather play in the snow!), or I myself was unable to get there. To cap it all, my early mornings, late nights and freezing cold studio resulted in a bout of the 'Flu, so the final stages of the book were shrouded in a whirl of fevers and exhaustion. But the book is FINISHED and has gone to Orchard books to be prepared for publication.

It's too early to say how it will all look. Until the three layers for each image is assembled, who knows? But I am a little bit excited...

Arrival in the Kingdom of Sweets

It should be every illustrator's dream: to create something as magical and dream-like as a kingdom of sweets. And in other circumstances perhaps it would have been. I certainly would have enjoyed researching more (ie: eating more candy!). But with a deadline looming, a wife with a broken wrist, and a string of 4 am - 11pm days, I certainly didn't need sugar to hallicinate! So how to capture something sugary and sweet in paint? In some respects my hands are tied by what has gone before with Ella Bella. Born out of a love of the lithographic feel of vintage books and printing processes, the technique I use (creating art in three layers) requires restraint and simplicity, where I'm longing to be lavish!

Recent playing with print making and lino led me to explore the idea of shape and colour more than line - something of a departure for me. And I'm a little surprised by the results, insofar as I really like the effects but recognise it's very different to anything I've done before. I think it's exciting. But it doesn't feel comfortable. I'm a little scared of it! But I've gone with it. Usually deadlines make me cautious. This time a wave of courage has convinced me to be brave and submit it!









I began with stencils and brushed paint onto paper. Lollipop shapes, I thought. And rubbers (erasers!) were cut into little tiny "stampers" with hearts and flowers and diamonds: sugar shapes. All were applied to my marzipan palace with a mix of inks and emulsion paint.

I supposed that the sweets popular in 19th century Nuremberg were a little different to sweets today. No flashy wrappers and chocolate bars. Chocolate was more often drunk and sweetmeats were things like nuts, hard (boiled) sweets and sugar shapes. Turkish delight, toffee and mints possibly; sugar plums and candy canes for sure.




When the sweets come alive in the ballet, it is mainly in liquid form: Tea, Coffee, and Chocolate. So my dancers, in national costume, hold drinks, except for chocolate, who has a cake.

When printed it will look very different to here... I just hope it captures the perfume of rose water and violets... the colours of candy and marzipan and the dazzle of sugar crystals. And now, if you don't mind, I'm going to brush my teeth...

A Christmassy few weeks

Buried away in my studio, sustaining myself with mince pies and a heck of a lot of chocolate, I have been progressing with Ella Bella Ballerina and the Nutcracker. Here are couple of glimpses. When printed the colours will be much stronger than here, as the three layers of art will be properly combined during printing...

More soon... AND HAPPY NEW YEAR !!!!

A Merry Ella Bella Christmas!

New pictures for the Nutcracker will be posted over the festive season. So why not stop by to take a look and see how I'm getting on with the new book?

Have a lovely holiday meanwhile, and thanks for your friendship.

X

Going Nutty

Here are a few preliminary sketches for Ella Bella Ballerina and the Nutcracker... to get you in a Christmassy mood!

Nutcrackers galore

Snow fell from the sky as I stepped from Edinburgh Waverley station and out onto Princes street, where a winter wonderland of fairground rides, ice skating and music welcomed me to Edinburgh this weekend past. I was there to launch the fantastic Art In Schools competition for the National Galleries of Scotland and their sponsor Tesco Bank at the newly restored portrait gallery.

But as I strolled along towards my hotel, what should I see? literally thousands of nutcrackers, and other toys, on stalls at a German market. If that doesn't inspire me to, er... "crack on" (sorry!) with Ella Bella, I don't know what will!

Remembering Scheherazade

At last the big day arrived! Sinbad and Scheherazade with Robin Browning and the de Havilland Philharmonic Orchestra at the Weston Auditorium in Hatfield... and it whizzed by in a whirl of music and colour and hundreds of children jumping around to Rimsky-Korsakov!

Other music was from Nielsen's Aladdin suite; and my astonishing costume was specially created, in silk, by Trina Bharwaney, and was worthy of anything by Leon Bakst!

Here are a few pictures of the day...

Ella Bella and Swan Lake... in Saffron Walden

Here are some pictures of the magical afternoon in Saffron Walden last month with the Uttlesforde orchestra. The programme included Peter and the Wolf, Bizet's "Children's Games" and ended with Swan Lake. As I was painting on a huge scale, I didn't do separate pictures for Swan Lake as done in Hatfield and Cheltenham. This time I did one big picture combining story elements.

Swan Lake in paperback!

Ella Bella Ballerina and Swan Lake has been out of stock since last Christmas when the hardback sold out. But from today, the paperback edition is available, so now there is no excuse to not introduce your children to Tchaikovsky's masterpiece!

And don't forget: I'll be illustrating the story, live on stage, with the Uttlesforde Orchestra in Saffron Walden on October 16th. The concert will also include Peter & The Wolf. Click HERE for more information!

I had expected - as October arrives - to be wrapped up in blankets in a freezing studio... Yet, an extraordinary heat wave has embraced the British Isles, an "Indian Summer", predictably coinciding with the end of the (so called) Summer Holidays, and less predictably with the new Ella Bella book.

And so I find myself sitting in my studio, sweltering in the heat, watching the garden dry to a frazzle (and combined with autumn, the colours are terrific). Yet my mind is keeping cool in the heat. For I am drawing wintry forests and dancing snow flakes and Christmas trees as I plan the pages of Ella Bella Ballerina and the Nutcracker. Here is an example of the first drawings...

A real life Ella Bella!

I love coincedences. I suppose a little girl called Ella, being nick-named Ella Bella isn't all that big a coincedence. Nor that she likes Princesses and Ballet. But when she goes to Ballet Classes held by a teacher called Miss Rosa... well, that really is extraordinary.




Her mother emailed me with the story, and to say how much she loves the books. I was so pleased to hear that, it makes all the hard work worthwhile!

So... roll up! And meet Ella Bella Ballerina, from the USA. She'll soon be celebrating her 4th birthday, and is celebrating with an Ella Bella Ballerina party at her dance school! How great is that? Wish I could go. I bet there'll be cake...

I'll be thinking of her (and the cake) as I begin the first drawings for the new Nutcracker book!

Sultanas for breakfast

I'm starting every day with a very healthy diet... of reading matter. Now that the Scheherazade concert is confirmed I am researching in earnest which stories by the Sultana Scheherazade I should tell around Rimsky-Korsakov's music. I've chosen my story to match the third movement "The young prince and young princess". It's a fabulous tale, I can't wait to be telling it.
Here's a Youtube link of this gorgeous music...

Booking opens on Tuesday August 30th, and there will be two performances, both on November 6th, one at 2pm and another at 4.30pm. Tickets cost just £5 for children and £12 for adults. Some of the stories are a tiny bit scary, so perhaps not suitable for tiny children. Otherwise, it should be perfect for girls AND boys of all ages!

Box office number: 01707 281127

Hope to see you there!

Wolves in Walden

Barely is the paint dry in Cheltenham than I get invited to perform with another orchestra. This time in lovely Saffron Walden with the Uttlesforde Orchestra. Joining Swan Lake on the programme will be Curzon's Robin Hood, Prokofiev favourite Peter & The Wolf, and an oddity: Patterson's version of Belloc's Rebecca Who Slammed Doors for Fun and Persished Miserably.

As usual I will be narrating and drawing all at once, so it should be a really fun afternoon. The concert is at the Friends' School Hall in Saffron Walden, Essex, at 3pm. To book call 01799 523456.

Ella Bella at the Cheltenham Music Festival

I confess I was nervous about the Ella Bella event in Cheltenham, at the prestigious Music Festival. Because of the distance, it wasn't possible to have the usual run of rehearsals I have in Hatfield, nor be familiar with (and reassured by) technical arrangements, or get to know my colleagues and their needs. Furthermore, the music had to specially arranged from orchestra score to string quartet - would it be playable?

I arrived the afternoon before the Saturday morning concert, and more or less straightaway went to meet the quartet (at that stage only a trio). This was the first time they had seen the music. And it is a fitting testament to their skill and talent that they were able to grasp it all so rapidly. The musicians were all members of the Gloucester Youth Orchestra, and they were admirably accomodating. Some bits just didn't work; they were cut. Later that evening I zipped over to the Parabola arts Centre - a wonderful new theatre opened last year, part of Cheltenham Girls' College - for a technical check. All that was fine, so I returned to my hotel to practise the drawing and storytelling. Because of the musical cuts, and with some pieces taken faster, not all the drawings I had planned were a good match for the music - or the timing - I had prepared.





I finally went to bed around 1am, got up at 5am, and started practising again, too nervous for breakfast!

The time soon came for my 9am arrival at the theatre. The string players (now a full quartet) went over their music while I set all my paints and my easel, practising which brush for which colour for which music and which moment. And in the twinkling of an eye it was 11am, the theatre was filled with girls in tutus and princess outfits (and a boy dressed as Spiderman!). And it had begun.




As always the time on stage whizzed by. I had decided not to use a script, and to tell the stories of Sleeping Beauty and Swan Lake from memory instead. I think it's more communicative, although a lot for my little brain to remember! There were one or two instances when I had to pause and think... "where am I up to again?". But the "Dolce Quartet" did a sterling job, I dashed off 11 paintings (well, sketches really), Ella Bella herself appeared for the encore (a dance from The Nutcracker, whetting the appetite for the next book). And so I think with everyone working together, we pulled it off!


I was given sterling support as always by Sarah from Hachette, supplying the necessary chocolate (and moral suppport) to get me through the event. And everyone in Cheltenham was so warm and friendly and appreciative, including the lovely audience, who kept me chatting and signing books for a full hour after the show. All in all it was a really worthwhile event. I'll be back in Cheltenham in October for the Literary Festival, this time with Katie!

Cheer for me in Cheltenham!

With the concert in Cheltenham just days away, I am full on practising for the event at the Parabola Arts Centre. It feels quite different being on stage compared to the safety of my studio.

Scheherazade

The name Scheherazade immediately conjurs an Arabian Nights fantasy of flying carpets and magic lamps, geniis and princesses and beautiful palaces. These are the things that inspired Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov to write his extraordinary symphonic suite of the same name in 1888. It was a great success and remains his most popular work for orchestra. Rimsky-Korsakov was a genii himself when it came to creating orchestral sound pictures with a narrative. He considered himself really an operatic composer, and many of his operas (alas, rarely performed in the West) are based on folk tales and legends. Fantastic tales and magical beings appealed to his imagination, and nowhere is that more obvious than in Scheherazade.











There was another influence too: the sea. For Rimsky-Korsakov had spent many years at sea in the Russian navy, and the music he created for Sinbad is full of the surge and sweep and energy of the ocean.

Although he gave the four sections titles (the first is "The Sea and Sinbad's ship"), these he later withdrew, preferring the listener to be imaginative and to be swept away by an Oriental kaleidoscope of storytelling. The solo violin represents Scheherazade herself, spinning out tales for a thousand and one nights to win the love of the Sultan and so save her own life. At the end he renounces the vow he had made whereby he put to death each of his wives after just one night of marriage, a punishment upon womankind after his first wife betrayed him.




But after Rimsky-Korsakov died in 1908, the ballet impresario Diaghilev had other ideas. In 1910 he took the music out of the concert hall and into the theatre when used the suite (heavily cut) for a new ballet. Although titled Scheherazade, he used the prologue to the Arabian Nights, in which we witness the infidelity of that first Sultana (here called Zobedia), with the "Golden Slave", a role created for the legendary dancer Nijinsky. Ida Rubinstein danced the part of the Sultana, and with designs by Bakst that challanged colour theory and theatrical design to it's limits, the adult nature of the erotic storyline created a sensation. Gone in one stroke was the elegant, refined and feminine world of ballet. Here was something aggresive, masculine, sexual and violent. At the end, the sultan captures the lovers. The Golden Slave is slain. Zobedia kills herself. Scheherazade herself does not appear...

The designs are now an iconic view of Oriental splendour. Indeed Paris - where the ballet premiered - was swept up in a new fashion for hareem style drawing rooms, turbans and hareem pants, such was the influence. And the designs are superb.

But Rimsky-Korsakov's family were furious. The ballet imprinted a specific (and they felt inappropriate) story upon his suite. This was not what Rimsky-Korsakov intended at all ("Heaven forbid they would dance to my Scheherazade" he wrote just before his death). The ballet and the concert suite have both remained popular... although the ballet now seems quaint rather than shocking. I adore the music and personally find many more interesting stories hidden in it than did Diaghilev.





This autumn, on November 6th, I'm really hoping that I'll have the chance to restore the original stories (as far as possible) to Scheherazade at the annual children's concert in Hatfield. So expect to hear all about Scheherazade. See pictures of Sinbad. Discover the Kalander Prince. And most of all, introduce a child to the wonderful music of Rimsky-Korsakov... as long as we get the go ahead!