The A to Z Challenge kicked off yesterday with an Assortment of illustrations by me. Today I’m continuing the illustration theme with pictures of Castle Buckmore.
I’m Jemima Pett, author, blogger, illustrator and guinea pig wrangler. My interests are in fantasy, environment, science (inc. fiction) and thrillers, to name a few things. This is my nth AtoZ Challenge. Mostly I talk about books. This time I’m talking about something I do without much thinking about… my illustrations.
The Princelings books and the two for younger readers, Messenger Misadventures and Cavies of Flexford Common all have illustrations. Most are chapter headings. Cavies is designed for younger readers (c 7 yrs old, Key Stage 1 in UK educational parlance). That has illustrations throughout.
This month I’m picking out one or more illustrations each day to talk about. Except Sundays — we skip Sundays in the A to Z Challenge. Some will be from the books, some from other sketching projects.
Feel free to comment below!
And … the A to Z is a blog hop, so do go to other people who are doing it. You can find the links (and join in until 5 April) here
The Ins and Outs of Castle Buckmore
Castle Buckmore is the home of Prince Lupin (who’s really the king), who is arguably the most important person in the Realms. There are many castles, each responsible for an area and the people within it, although I’ve never counted how many castles there are. Like countries or dukedoms, the leaders of each area are often referred to by their castle names. “What does Buckmore think?” is shorthand for “what does Prince Lupin think?”
I started this using pencil (Derwent Cassell HB or 2B) on paper. Then I used an inkpen over to create the line drawing (I have a set of three Pilot Drawing pens, nos 01, 03, and 05). After that, I usually erase the pencil. In this illustration (and the one of the window, below) you can see lots of pencil underneath the inked areas! At the time, I didn’t realise how bad it looked. It was just one reason for doing a new version a couple of books later.
I had a general concept that Buckmore was more like a fortified grand residence than an English castle. I found what I was looking for in a programme on Italian gardens. The next version had more greenery about it, although the basic shape had to remain. But… I had gone over the original drawing to do the second version, adding in some foliage, and I hadn’t erased the lines under the original, so it was a mess!
So then came the third attempt…
I find it interesting to compare several things. I think the third one is much better. Not only have I started again from scratch (my copying the skyline is good, but not perfect) but I’ve improved on the sense of place. There are still places that exist in my mental map of Buckmore that I can’t see in this picture, but maybe they hug the inside of the wall nearest us!
If you’ve read J Lenni Dorner’s Preparing to Write Settings That Feel Like Characters (links to my review), you’ll understand what I mean by saying I’ve given it better identity.
I’m still not happy with my representation of Castle Buckmore… but it’ll have to do.
Inside and out
Although my heroes Fred & George visit Castle Buckmore in the first book, they then live there for a while. So they started to know its secret ways, including a passage hidden behind a fountain. We start book 3 with someone flying a biplane in from their own castle, and the boys seeing it from their window. Flying machines are entirely new to the Realms, and George falls in love with them (come back for F!)
When I got to book 7, Willoughby the Narrator, I gave him a whole year working as Narrator in Residence at Buckmore. That gave me scope for developing new views, including a building where all the business and parties took place. It’s central to my distant views, and it was fun developing the hall to be a place in its own right.
All were done in the same way as before. These come from books 1 The Princelings of the East, 3, The Princelings and the Lost City, and 7 Willoughby the Narrator .
Some of those details are really cool! I like your drawing style 🙂
It’s interesting (to me) to see how I’ve developed. I assume I’ve also developed as a writer… I hope so anyway.
I like seeing the progress on the images! And the main hall looks very fancy 🙂
The Multicolored Diary
Thanks, Csenga
I love the detail in your images 🙂
Ronel visiting for A-Z Challenge Bast the Protector & My Languishing TBR: B #AtoZChallenge2025 #Books #Bookreview
Hi Jemima,
Fortified gentleman’s residence ?
Might be like one just down the road, which seems to have dropped the Castle element of their addtress. (Sizergh)
Never, ever, time to read enough, or write enough. Love the illustrations too –
Esther
You’re such a talented artist. I love the details in the one of the big house.
Looks like you have a lot of fun creating those sketches.
Your drawings amaze me – and I know how much time goes into them, since I do mine the same way.
The second drawing of the castle looks much cleaner and the perspective is better. The first one seems to be leaning a bit.
Some of the other drawings are blank for me. I wonder if it’s my firefox browser? Sorry to come up with another problem!
The images will probably display properly if you close my website and then load it again. This is a problem I inflicted on my site when some clever person decided that speeding it up was necessary in a software upgrade, and when I realised, I couldn’t undo it fully. It happens to me too, but I found that reloading (not refreshing) the site works most of the time. But it’s a pain. Sorry.
Thanks for sharing. I also couldn’t see all the the pictures, but the ones I could see really engaged my interest. @samanthabwriter from
Balancing Act
Hm, that’s worrying, since you probably hadn’t been here before to start the problem off (see my reply to Kristen). Ironically it’s loaded perfectly for me today.
But I can’t comment on your blog because it will only let me comment if I sign in to Google/blogger
I love your drawings, and it’s fun to see your progression. I do illustrations for some of my kids books, but yours are a lot more impressive. 🙂
Now, I have a feeling I’ve read one of your books, and was impressed! Can’t remember the title, though.