Help Defeat Real-Life Demons, Game Therapy UK

Post author:Stephen Wendell
Post published:June 7, 2022
Post category:Authors & Other Artists

Are you a military veteran? Are you also a Game Master? Would you like to run role-playing games as a therapeutic tool for fellow veterans suffering from psychological trauma?

Game Therapy UK is starting a pilot project you might find interesting. It’s a volunteer project. They are to offer several training modules, from basic through advanced, including mentorship.

From their website:

Game Therapy UK is an exciting new charity providing innovative, evidence-based therapeutic games (“Dungeons and Dragons Therapy”) to groups across the UK, including people experiencing homelessness, people in recovery from drug and alcohol addiction and military veterans exposed to psychological trauma/PTSD.

Military veterans of any country are eligible to participate, whether it’s to run games or to play.

For more information, visit Game Therapy UK and sign up for their newsletter.

Defeat demons with D&D!

My Favorite Character, Literary Podcast

Post author:Stephen Wendell
Post published:April 9, 2022
Post category:Authors & Other Artists

Old friends doing new things! My Favorite Character is a literary podcast, in which Jennifer Spirko gets together with creative types to talk about the heroes and anti-heroes they love most.

In the first episode, Jennifer interviews one of my own favorite characters, her husband Rob, who is—I’m on record saying—the smartest person I know. By the second episode I caught on that Jennifer knows something about doing an interview. I’m excited about where this is going!

Rob and Jennifer are also authors. Their debut fantasy novel, under the byline R. J. Spirko, is coming soon: Horn and Heartsword.

Littlelot celebrates the discovery of the Great Horn

Post author:Stephen Wendell
Post published:October 25, 2017
Post category:Authors & Other Artists Littlelot Petit Lot Previews

I am thrilled to present the final rendition of the illustration for the cover of Petit Lot et le Grand Cor de la licorne.

Petit Lot fête la découverte du Grand Cor

Littlelot celebrates the discovery of the Great Horn

11.5” x 15.5”
Watercolor, gouache, colored pencil
David Jones

During our biweekly progress meetings I had occasion to talk with David about his art. He quoted an early twentieth-century painter by whose work he’s inspired:

“I have inherited that strange love for things remote.”
—N. C. Wyeth

“I imagine a more romantic time before the Internet,” David said, “before television and the telephone—even before photographs. Characters in this environment are less distracted. They interact with the world in a more tangible way, and the interaction creates stories that transcend the setting.”

David prefers to illustrate for narrative works, including book cover and interior illustrations, comics, and graphic novels, as well as articles, poems, and book excerpts. He tends to use traditional, old-school media: gouache, watercolor, acrylic, and pen and ink.

In the painting above, as in much of David’s work, there is no digital rendering.

See the illustration at previous developmental stages in the category Couverture on the book’s website. Tomorrow on that site I’ll show the book cover for the electronic edition.

For more of David’s art, browse his website.

David Jones

Born and raised in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, David Jones crossed the country to study art on the West Coast. He graduated from the Academy of Art University in 2016 and makes his home now in San Francisco. David’s art is influenced by John Bauer, N. C. Wyeth, and Arthur Rackham, painters from a more romantic time.

Stephen Wendell is the author of the Littlelot series of books for children and the grown-ups who read to them. The English translation of his latest title, Petit Lot et le Grand Cor de la licorne, will be the next book in the series: Littlelot and the Great Horn of the Unicorn.

Petit Lot
et le Grand Cor de la licorne
Stephen Wendell

Electronic edition, October 27
Paperback edition, November 3

Peregrine Publishing

The Hammond Sketch

Post author:Stephen Wendell
Post published:September 6, 2017
Post category:Authors & Other Artists Petit Lot Previews

“The hero is a boy magician,” I said. “The object of the quest is a musical instrument that grew from a unicorn horn. And there’s a dragon.”

I recited the legend of the Great Horn of the Unicorn and went on to describe the image I had in mind. I knew exactly what I wanted for the book cover. The difficulty lay in putting the image into another mind—one attached to an artist’s hand.

The target of this latest attempt was the mind of Cris Hammond, who now pulled a graphite point across rough grain paper. As a kind gesture, he agreed to make a sketch I could show to potential illustrators.

Sketchpad on knee, Cris began to draw. He guided the pencil, held between thumb and two fingers, in smooth broad curves and quick strokes. The wrist remained fixed, the elbow supple. The artist directed the work from the shoulder. I listened to the scratching of pencil on paper and resisted the urge to peek.

Twenty minutes later, Cris held up the pad. “What do you think?”

“That’s it. That’s the image in my head!”

The Hammond Sketch

This sketch by Cris Hammond is being further developed by another artist to become the cover illustration for

Petit Lot
et le Grand Cor de la licorne

November 2017
Peregrine Publishing

Cris also gave me the name of an artist he thought capable of realizing the illustration. In October, we’ll see the finished drawing by David Jones.

Friday, we’ll have a sneak preview of the Prologue (French). Meanwhile, you can read la légende du Grand Cor de la licorne (French).

San Francisco Bay area artist and writer Cris Hammond earned fame as a nationally syndicated cartoonist with “Speed Walker, Private Eye” in the 1980s. After one career in special effects design at Industrial Light and Magic and another as a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, he navigated the rivers and canals in southern France aboard a barge with his wife, Linda, mooring for a few years at the Port de l’Arsenal in Paris. There he painted landscapes of the French countryside and wrote a memoir of the journey, From Here to Paris. Cris is also the author of Short Pours: The Stan Chronicles, a short fiction collection set on the U.S. west coast.

Returned to the homeland last year, Cris and Linda are planning their next adventure from Sausalito, California.

Bruce Nellsmith, Artist & Mentor

Post author:Stephen Wendell
Post published:July 12, 2017
Post category:Authors & Other Artists

Bruce Nellsmith

Now that the statute of limitations has run out on aiding and abetting escape from an institution of higher education, I can make it generally known that Bruce Nellsmith was my mentor and art professor at Newberry College.

For three semesters, Bruce and I drank Chock full o’Nuts from the all-day pot and discussed philosophy, the nature of art, and the artist’s challenges. Mixed aromas of burnt coffee, turpentine, and linseed oil filled the studio, and Lou Reed jangled lyrics over guitar rhythms, while I pushed thick paint across canvas and plotted evasion.

In those days, Bruce painted over-sized pieces, which only galleries could accommodate. The artist justified the choice, “This isn’t the kind of thing somebody’s going to hang on a wall over the sofa anyway.”

Indeed, critics raved about the abstract images in earth tones until, looking closer, they understood the subject matter. Then they were outraged by the socio-political themes and wanton violence.

Blue Church in the Bend

18” x 20”
acrylic on panel

Bruce’s art has evolved since then. These days he spends a few weeks in France every year, touring the country and drawing inspiration from meandering streets and shady avenues, crowded markets and bridges over languid rivers. He winds up the tour in Paris, where he and I got to catch up last month over drinks at a terrace café in the Marais.

Quillan Clock Tower

12” x 8”
hand pulled monotype

I asked him what happened to the enormous canvases and grim topics.

His reply: “Eventually, I decided to paint what appeals to me, what moves me, and let go of the political statements.”

Bruce told me about his current exhibit, “A French Connection,” at Ellis-Nicholson Gallery in Charleston, South Carolina, which showcases work from his tours in France. It’s more colorful, less controversial, and it fits conveniently on a wall above the sofa.

The images here are from that show.

Women at Market II 60” x 48” acrylic on canvas		Winery on the Mediterranean 22” x 22” oil on canvas
Fabric Market 24” x 30” acrylic on canvas	The Paris Wedding 24” x 30” acrylic on canvas

Bruce Nellsmith is Professor of Visual Arts at Newberry College, South Carolina. He splits time between teaching in Newberry and working at a studio on the beach in Edisto, where he lives with his wife, Kathy.

See more of Bruce’s work at www.brucenellsmith.com. Visit Bruce’s current show at Ellis-Nicholson Gallery and, in February 2018, at City Art Gallery, Columbia, SC.

An art degree stuffed inside his shirt, Stephen Wendell escaped from Newberry College over 25 years ago. Now a writer, he enjoys working with more talented artists to make beautiful books. His latest collaborative endeavor, The Way to Vict’ry: Haiku Illustrated by Cristina Basile, is available this month in ebook and paperback editions.

Thomas Henry Museum

Post author:Stephen Wendell
Post published:March 22, 2017
Post category:Authors & Other Artists Barbizon Further Afield

Twenty year-old Jean-François Millet went to study painting in Cherbourg, where some 70 years previously Thomas Henry was born.

Though educated in commerce, Henry had a taste for art. In his early career he went to Saint-Domingue, a lucrative French colony on the island of Hispaniola. He was a merchant there until a successful slave revolt, now known as the Haitian Revolution, put an end to the colony and created the Empire of Haiti in 1804.

The Conversion of Saint Augustin by Fra Angelico, ca. 1430; donated to the town of Cherbourg by Thomas Henry, 1835

Having proved himself in business, back in France Henry went to Paris and became a painting restorer, then an accomplished artist as well as a successful art dealer. From this time onward he collected paintings and sculptures from the major movements in Western European art of the previous four centuries. He became a celebrated connoisseur, his opinion of a work’s provenance and of its quality being highly regarded.

By 1831, he had lost both sons and sensed his own life’s end. He began donating—anonymously—portions of his collection to his native town.

La Justice, original by Pierre Subleyras, ca. 1740 (left); copy by Jean-François Millet, 1837

After receiving a significant number of these artworks, the Cherbourg town council decided to open a museum. An investigation revealed the donor’s name, and the Musée Thomas Henry opened its doors in 1835. Among its first visitors was Jean-François Millet, who came to copy the works of the masters as part of his studies.

Petit génie de la peinture (Little genius of painting), Jean-François Millet ca. 1842; part of the Ono donation, as was Millet’s Justice above

A later donation, that of Millet’s nephew Paul Ono in 1915, would add to the museum’s collection a large number of Millet’s early paintings. Among them were many of the student artist’s copies, which museum visitors can see beside the original.

Today, the Thomas Henry Museum holds the third largest Millet collection in the world.

Beat Generation at the Centre Pompidou

Post author:Stephen Wendell
Post published:August 5, 2016
Post category:Authors & Other Artists Paris and Environs

This poster caught my eye the other day in the street. Before the hippies of the 1960s, there were the Beats of the ‘50s. In the later half of that decade, three works emerged to become the Beat manifesto: Allen Ginsberg’s Howl (1956), Naked Lunch by William Burroughs (1959) and On the Road, Jack Kerouac (1957).

I read the story of Kerouac’s great American road trip as a young man, when we should read such stories. When there’s so little of our own road behind us and so much of it stretched out before us in wide, wavy, criss-crossing lines. When we can go anywhere, do anything and meet anybody. When we have no clue what it is we want to do, so we just go to where our feet take us and we meet people and find out where they’ve been and what they’ve been doing. Like that, we make our way until one day we finally discover what it is we want to do, what we’ve always wanted to do. Deep down, we knew it all along. But it takes the journey to wear away the layers of our soul, to expose our true self and show us just who it is we’ve been traveling with all our lives.

So I hopped aboard a passing train and went to see the exposition.

On the Road

“I first met Neal not long after my father died. I had just gotten over a
serious illness that I won’t bother to talk about except that it really had some-
thing to do with my father’s death and my awful feeling that everything was
dead. With the coming of Neal there really began for me that part of my life
that you could call my life on the road.”

— excerpt from the manuscript of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road

On the Road (Viking Press, 1957) follows Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty on their mad, wild journeys back and forth across postwar America. It’s a mostly autobiographical account of Kerouac’s encounters with his overexcited friend, Neal Cassady. They hitch-hike, they jump rail cars, they sleep nights under tarps or in seedy motels and sometimes at the homes of friends or acquaintances. They stay in one place just long enough to make a little cash, working odd jobs, for the next leg of their adventure. And all along the way, they sleep with girls, smoke tea and live life as fast as it will go.

I didn’t think about what I might see at the show. I had heard the legend about Jack Kerouac bashing out his novel on a manual typewriter and one long scroll of tracing paper in a delirious stream of consciousness. But I had no idea the relic might yet exist and even be seen by mortal eyes.

So coming through the turnstile, I was surprised by the long narrow box table stretching to the far end of the gallery. It hit me in an instant and I let out a “Wow!”

The Scroll

As one does with books that grab you from the start, I had memorized its opening lines a long time ago. Reading now from the top of the scroll (excerpt above) and comparing the text to my hazy memory, two things stood out. One is that in his draft the author still uses the real name of Neal Cassady, the real-life person who becomes Dean Moriarty in the book. The other is the cause of the serious illness. In the published version, it isn’t his father’s death but “after my wife and I split up” that his serious illness has something to do with. I remember thinking when I first read the book that “feeling that everything was dead” was unusually drastic for a break-up.

I learned from the display tag on the box table that the scroll is, in fact, the second draft of the novel and, perusing the 120-foot length of the thing, I noticed that it’s actually eight shorter scrolls, taped together.

Some sections have pencil notes written at the bottom. Of which I could make out not a single word.

Note the left margin. Apparently, a sheet of paper 15 feet long necessitates occasional adjustment in the typewriting machine.

Beat Philosophy

Excerpt from the introductory text to the exposition (photo right):

“Rejecting consumerism, social conventions, racism and homophobia; defending a libertarian ethic and resolutely pacifist but emancipated from any doctrinal commitment; nurturing a profound attachment for big open spaces and shamanic spirituality through which man becomes an integral part of the Cosmos, the Beat Generation inspired not only the hippy way of life and the psychedelic culture, but also opposition to the Vietnam war, support for civil rights movements, and the revolts of young people during the Sixties in Berkeley, Flint, Columbia, Chicago and Watts.”

Couldn’t we have another go at this?

Beat Art

Drawings by Beats, including Gregory Corso, Philip Whalen, William Burroughs, Jack Kerouac and Peter Orlovsky

What stuck me as I wandered through the sizable exposition: The Beats weren’t just writers and poets. They were also photographers and film-makers, sculptors and musicians. They made drawings, illustrations, collages and paintings. Mixing together these media, they created a wonderfully diverse body of work.

A Thimble of Goodbye (A Film Poem), Paul Beattie, 1960	Photographs by Fred W. McDarrah and John Cohen
Paintings by Jack Kerouac	Haiku by Diane di Prima, 1967
Pull My Daisy, a film collaboration between Robert Frank, Alfred Leslie, David Amram and Jack Kerouac, 1959	The Game for Angels (1963), Curve Book (1964) and Hand with Z (1960-65), Paul Beattie
The Mouse’s Tale, Jess, 1951-54	Get Rid of Government Time (Poem Machine), Liliane Lijn, 1962

Scroll’s End

Kerouac wrote the scroll draft in April 1951, but he began writing the first draft of the novel as early as 1948. Several revisions and several rejections from publishers later, On the Road was finally published in 1957. It was his second novel.

The end of the scroll has worn away. I could make out the words, “…ambulances merely come through at…,” which corresponds to text on page 301 in my copy of the book, nine pages from the end.

Safe under glass in the box table, Kerouac’s scroll seems out of context. I imagine dim yellow light on the peeling wallpaper of a New York apartment; a whiskey glass on the table, cigarette smoke hanging thick in the humid evening air as the author in sleeveless t-shirt bangs away on a noisy machine. Clack, clack, clack. The end of the novel and the author’s success are far off.

And between here and there… the road.

Beat Generation through October 3 at the Centre Pompidou, Paris.

James A. Owen’s Meditations Trilogy

Post author:Stephen Wendell
Post published:March 19, 2016
Post category:Authors & Other Artists Reading Lists

Every now and again as we go through life, something comes along to change the way we look at it. It might be a book we read or something someone says to us or a mountain-top revelation that gives us a fleeting glimpse of something bigger than we might have imagined or had ever thought possible.

That happened to me again last month when I heard this guy's talk at a seminar. James A. Owen is a graphic artist who has had some tough breaks in his own life. By tough breaks, I mean life-threatening breaks and breaks that might have been career-ending for a normal human. Despite multiple challenges, James is still living and he's still an artist.

Among other works, he makes graphic novels for children. When his publisher sends him out to talk to kids about his books, he talks instead about some of the obstacles he has faced, how he overcame them and what lessons he learned from the experience.

Lessons like: What we really need in life is for someone to believe in us, someone who will support us, someone who will catch us when we fall.

Lessons like: If you really want to do something, no one can stop you. But if you really don't want to do something, no one can help you.

That's the talk I heard and when I heard James tell his story, I didn't get just a fleeting glimpse of something bigger; I got a panoramic view. And it wasn’t fleeting, the view is persistent. A door opened and I stepped through it.

I see now, in very real, concrete terms, that life is not a straight line that we have to go through. It's a wide open field that we get to explore. And if we really want to do that, we just have to recognize and acknowledge our fears — those fears that keep us going along the obligatory straight line — then pluck up our courage and believe in ourselves to overcome those fears and strike out on our own. We also have to believe in, encourage and support the people we choose to go exploring with. Because those people will believe in us, they'll support us, and they'll catch us when we fall.

That's what heroes do. And we can all be heroes, if we really want to.

James has been giving that talk for several years now. A few years ago he wrote it all down in a book of meditations, called Drawing out the Dragons, which is available in paperback and ebook. Since then, he has written two more books of meditations, The Barbizon Diaries and The Grand Design. These last two have previously only been available in ebook.

James is currently running a kickstarter project to put out all three books in a nice hardcover set. At different reward levels you can get one, two or all three of them for a reasonable price.

Through Monday, you can download all three ebooks for free on Amazon (links above). Have a look at them and consider supporting James's kickstarter: The Meditations Trilogy.

And if you ever get a chance to go hear James speak, do go — and take your kids. He's a great guy to go exploring with.