"Autumn Robin" Illustration

Autumn and robins are two of the things I miss from my native England. I haven't lived there for over twenty-five years. We have our own very different seasons here in Thailand to both test and treat us but there is a strong root attaching me to the old autumn winds tossing browned leaves around and messing up my hair.

I love the magpie robins we get around our garden here, which follow me around expecting me to disturb insects like a buffalo. They are attractive, interesting and trusting and yet they will never quite have the same place in my heart as the European robin. This is mainly thanks to its song, which it sings all year and is a beautiful sharp melodic burst so perfect on a frosty morning. A sure winner if it entered the Eurovision song contest. It's a common natural sound and when I'm visiting it never fails to make me stop whatever I am doing and just listen for the few brief seconds it lasts. There is another bird call that does that for me in Thailand but I hear it less than once a month rather than daily.

Ahh, nostalgia. It's not what it used to be.

I have gotten into the habit of pointing out my favourite bit of each of these illustrations and in this one it is the cross on the church steeple bending with the wind. I could perhaps have bent the whole steeple but that seemed like stretching credibility too far. It almost looks like the cross is about to fall off but claiming it as a comment on declining religious belief in my homeland would be a stretch.

The other thing to say about this illustration is that I am not entirely comfortable with its lack of clear purpose. Why did I do it? I tend to like pictures that make a specific point, perhaps a joke, or illustrate an unusual moment but this is just a general scene. It does evoke a feeling in me and I do like it as it helped me learn some more about putting a composition together but every time I look at it I wish I had given it a little more subject depth, something unexpected. Next time.

Artwork available at my Redbubble shop.