Winged, Horned and Spined:

I am Val Littlewood and next week I will be starting the first week of the Beautiful Beasts blog that I am sharing with Sue.  We will be taking a week in turn to explore the fabulous world of Beasts in prose, poetry and art. It will be a truly rich source of inspiration for our work.
I draw, paint print and make things. You can find more about me and my work at Pencil and Leaf and Printdaily.

And I am also very fond of bees so I have chosen my first and only woodblock print Fly Bee Night as an introductory image. It was made a couple of years ago and you can see my blog post here.

I had included Hardy’s poem at the time as I had been thinking about bees flying late into the night but it also reflects some of my own feelings about our tiny insect friends. An “August Midnight” seems a long way off at the moment, but the celebration of the “winged, horned and spined” will feature very much in my work. I am also hoping that the Earth may just reveal a few more of it’s secrets to me along the way. “Earth-secrets”… how lovely.

 August Midnight by Thomas Hardy 1899

A shaded lamp and a waving blind,
And the beat of a clock from a distant floor:
On this scene enter--winged, horned, and spined -
A longlegs, a moth, and a dumbledore;
While 'mid my page there idly stands
A sleepy fly, that rubs its hands . . .

Thus meet we five, in this still place,
At this point of time, at this point in space.
- My guests parade my new-penned ink,
Or bang at the lamp-glass, whirl, and sink.
"God's humblest, they!" I muse. Yet why?
They know Earth-secrets that know not I.

Fly Bee Night. 2 colour woodblock print on hosho paper. 12 x 16 inches