T is for Two o’clock #atoz2025 #booksky

Two o’clock in Castle Powell was the first thing that sprang to mind for T. It’s the A to Z Challenge, and I’m continuing the illustration theme. I’ve also got at least one of my sketches from my art group for you.

My ten 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.

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The A to Z is a blog hop, so do go to other people who are doing it. You can find the links here.

Two o’clock in Castle Powell

This comes quite late in the Traveler in Black and White, one of my favourite books, where Lord Mariusz tells his own story… he’s got mixed up in some espionage and paranormal activity, and he has an appointment to meet a secret agent, Montgomery, at two o’clock in a castle not too far away from Buckmore, where he will learn something to his advantage. In fact, they find a still, brewing something unknown.

I had a lot of trouble with my illustrations involving night scenes in both Traveler in Black and White and Talent Seekers. I eventually decided that careful line shading was the best approach. I’m not normally the neatest of sketchers, but these were illustrations, so more care was needed. We had another example of this style yesterday, for S.

A short excerpt (c350 words)

We waited, listening, for over an hour. I seemed to do a lot of hanging around with Montgomery in strange castles in the middle of the night. There must be something more productive to do with my life.

Eventually the door of the room opened and we heard Solwith walking along the corridor. He was quiet, but the place itself was even quieter. We peeked around the corner when we figured out that he was going away from us, then slid into the room. The still was cooling down, but there were still drips coming from the tap, falling into a beaker recently placed there. Presumably, Solwith had enough of whatever he had wanted to brew. I put my nose close to the beaker and sniffed.

“Almonds, something acrid, something sweeter,” I said quietly to Montgomery.

He chewed his lips and looked around a bit more.

“Any ideas?” I prompted.

“I’m looking for a delivery method. I assume it’s a poison, but I’d like to have some idea of how he’s planning to administer it.”

I stayed still and looked around the beaker, and around my feet. If I had been administering something I would have fixed it here, not moved the poison around. I bent down to look at something I didn’t want to touch.

Montgomery came around to look at what I was looking at.

“Don’t touch it!” he warned, as if I would.

“I think we may be dealing with a poisoned dart,” I said. “Either that or a demented fisherman.” The remains of some feathers were at my feet.

“Ok, well, let’s find out where he’s gone,” said Montgomery.

I found it a little odd that one of us hadn’t followed Solwith as he left the room. Was Montgomery setting me up, making sure I saw lots of evidence, lots of clues? I was taking him at his word a lot that night. I reminded myself to be even more cautious, and patted my garlic and my gun. Oh, yes, I had stowed that exceptionally carefully.

Traveler in Black and White Chapter 14, Jemima Pett

More Illustrations for T

Mariusz also seems to have had a treasure chest among his illustrations. On a lighter note, there is Treshnish Bay, where Dylan and his brother Dougall live in Messenger Misadventures and Princelings of the North. We also had the prompt of ‘Tins’ during my art group February Challenge.

The prompt for tins, or cans, got me to carry out a task I needed to do before my kitchen got revamped (they’re about halfway through, having started on letter H day. H for for Havoc, of course.) I needed to clear my cupboards, and more importantly, I wanted to find all the cans and jars squirreled away behind other things, and start using them up in the intervening month. So I build a tin tower, and drew that on the iPad. I also discovered my missing stock of homemade marmalade – eight jars of it!

I start by using pencil (Derwent Cassell HB or 2B) on paper. Then I use 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. By book 9 I was doing all my illustrations on the iPad, and I could take a JPEG copy of a hand-drawn castle, and amend it, or change it about a bit, rather than start again. At present I’m using the iPad from scratch for all my sketching, using the Tayasui Sketches app with my iPen.

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.