Historical the fox has gained a reputation as being cunning, wily and sly. In fact Field-Marshell Rommel was known as the “Desert Fox”.
Foxes are not seen as evil in the same way as the wolf, they are considered roguish and caddish. The fox is represented in folklore as a trickster. One of Aesop’s Fables “The Fox and the Crow” illustrates this. It is a caution against listening to flatterers and goes like this….. The fox notices that a crow has a piece of cheese, he flatters the crow, telling him how beautiful he is and whether he has a beautiful voice to match his beautiful looks. The crow lest out a caw, the piece of cheese falls to the ground the fox eats the cheese. The earliest surviving versions of the fable, in both Greek and Latin, date from the 1st century.
This watercolour makes heavy use of two colours I love, qinacridone gold and rose madder genuine.
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I have already produced a hare screen print (see here) but thought it was about time i did a watercolour. People seem to love them. This one is legging it from something! Probably a pack of dogs! In fact hare’s after foxes are the most numerous prey of hunting activities in Britian, about 1600 are killed annually by packs of dogs. What a way to go! Run, run for your life. Apparently the Hare has a greater volume of blood in it’s body than any other animal its size. This makes its meat very dark, it also presumably is necessary to carry enough oxygen arround its system to supply its running legs!
Hares have long been associated with people with hazardous occupations, Fishermen for example will not utter the word “Hare” while at sea. They might not even get in their boats if they see a hare on the way to them. Miners similarly will not set foot in the mine shaft if they encounter a hare on the way to work.
One of the most common british old “hare” beliefs is the association with witchs. It was thought that witches were capable of turning themselves into hares, presumably in order to do a runner from the trouble they had a hand in or a pointed nose in.
Below in the painting in progress.
All images © Daniel Mackie
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This watercolour of a cat in a japanese garden is finished , you can see it in progreess on my earlier post here.
So how did your moggy become your moggy? Well, tiddles, fluffy, Derick, Steven or flossy came from Egypt, and without doubt arrived by sea. Cats are no sailors but on board ships they can catch rats and mice, so they were part passengers, part crew members. The domestication of cats is believed to date back some 9,500 years, and the practice of taking cats aboard boats and ships began not long afterwards. The Ancient Egyptians took cats on board Nile boats to catch birds in the thickets along the riverbanks. Cats were later carried on trading ships to control rodents, and that concept was adopted by traders from all nations.
Unsinkable sam was a black and white patched cat. Serving on board three vessels and surviving the sinking of all three during the second world war. He was very lucky! In May 1941, the cat owned by an unknown german crewman boarded the battleship Bismarck to wage war against the royal navy during the second world war, as you may know the Bismarck, the pride of the german navy was sunk on 27 May 1941. The British destroyer HMS Cossack rescued the cat from the ocean and named him Oscar.
Oscar became the Cossack’s ship cat until on On 24 October 1941 when she was torpedoed by a German U boat outside Gibraltar. The cat once again survived this ordeal and was taken to Gibraltar where he was reasigned to the aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal, Sam (or Oscar) was to find no luck here, on 14 November 1941 The Ark Royal was torpedoed by another german u boat. Sam survived, but his seafaring days were over, after a spell at the govener’s office in Gibraltar sam went back to the UK and spent the rest of his life curled up by a fire in a seaman’s home in Belfast.
Image © Daniel Mackie
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Very cute don’t you think? I discovered how Disney make their animals so cute while painting this painting, It’s all in the eyes! You can see this painting in progression my earlier post. here The Golden snub nosed Moneky is native to China. They are an endangered species.(classified as such by the IUCN) They are found in a number of protected Reserves, including Baihe Nature Reserve, Foping Nature Reserve, Shennongjia Nature Reserve and Wanglang Nature Reserve.
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This is a three colour screen print This is an Edition of 36 printed on japanese Atsukuchi paper, which is only 57gsm. Light but very strong. Print size 485mm x 320mm.
As you may have noticed if you read this blog I am a fan of tattoos, they have been a big influence in shaping my style. The home of the tattoo is on the sailor and the sailors tattoo is the swallow. Historical, swallows were symbols of a sailors experience, if a sailor were to have a tattoo of one swallow if would indicate he had traveled 5000 nautical miles, two swallows, 10000 nautical miles, which in the early days of sailing was no mean feat! So the swallow tattoos denoted a very experienced and valuable sailor.
Swallows later came to mean other things as well, if you drowned your swallows would raise your soul to heaven. They have also become symbols of hope.
One of the most recognisable names in Tattooing is sailor jerry, who amongst other things was a sailor and a tattooist and you can read about him here.
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Robins are lovely, don’t you think? They are familiar to many people simply because they are happy living in close proximity to human beings. For anyone who has recently dug their flower beds over, no doubt you spotted a robin close by, monitoring proceedings. It is perhaps because they are happy living so closely to man that they crop up so frequently in poetry and literature. Wordsworth cleary rubbed shoulders with a robin:
“Art though the bird whom man loves best
The pious bird with the scarlet breast.”
One story that has become familiar is the marriage between the robin and the wren; they are, “God Almighty’s cock and hen”.
The most famous of all robin rhymes is the peculiar, “An Elegy on the death and burial of Cock Robin.” It was first published in 1744, and is said to be a political commentary on the downfall of Robert Walpole’s Govenment in 1742. Though maybe the story is older, for it is said to be depicted in a fifteenth centry stainglass window in a rectory in buckinghamshire…
The poem famously starts:
“Who killed Cock Robin?
I said the sparrow,
With my bow and arrow,
I killed Cock Robin.”
It goes on, with all the birds and beasts offering their servies for the burial of Cock Robin, and ends:
“All the birds of the air
Fell a sighing and a sobbing,
When They heard the bell toll
For poor Cock Robin”
Poor Cock Robin!
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Aptly named, the litte Owl. Guess what? The little owl is small!
The Little Owl is not native to Great Britain. It was introduced in 1842 by Thomas Powys and is now naturalised there.
As any of you who read my blog will know I am a fan of mythology and folklore. One of Aesop’s Fables, The Owl and the birds is a good one. You should listen to the wise, they might only tell you once!
An Owl, in her wisdom told the rest of the birds that it would be a good idea to pull the acorn out of the ground before it can spout, because if it grows into a tree mistletoe will grow upon it, bird lime would be extracted and use to capture them. The Owl then advised that the birds pluck out the flax seed as soon as the men had sewn it, if it grows, men will make nets from it to use to catch you. lastly the Owl warned the birds that the archer was their deadly enemy and that he used darts guided by their very own feathers to kill them. The birds dismissed the owls warnings, in fact they thought her a mad old bird and laughed at her. However everything she foretold came true and the birds changed their minds about her. They considered her knowledgable and wise and they seeked her council. The Owl no longer gave her advice, she kept it to herself and was sad for the folly of her kind.
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Well, The 
The Cavalier King Charles Spaniel is a smaller version of the king Charles spaniel. I wrongly thought that the breed was given its name because of its resemblance to Charles II, if you have seen a painting of him you might agree! However I was wrong! In fact King Charles II was so fond of his spaniels he could not be parted from them. He made a decree that “King Charles Spaniels” must be allowed in any public place, including the House of Parliament. This decree is apparently still in the law books today. So the dog was named “king Charles spaniel” because the King loved his dogs not because they looked like him.
I prefer the lookalike version!
In 2012 a study was presented at the annual meeting of the British Psychological Society. It found dog breeds reflect certain facets of their owners’ personalities. Toy dogs (a category with the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel fits) tended to be owned by open intelligent people who were also creative. This goes against the idea that toy dogs are owned by air heads.
In fact Isaac Newton owned at toy dog (a Pomeranian) and he was no slouch when it came to cognitive gymnastics! His dog was called Diamond, it was pretty smart as well. Apparently, the dog discovered two theorems in a single morning. Newton is quoted as saying, “one had a mistake and the other had a pathological exception. Isaac, it seems had a sense of humor as well!
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I have just finished my fist trade show at Top drawer. It went better than I could have ever expected. I have lots of orders to fulfull and have had to initiate another large print run. Great news. My cards were very popular. Interestingly the 5 most popular were, The Hare, The little Owl, The Fox, The Rooster and the cat licking it’s paw.
I now have a collection of 21 cards 16 of animals and 5 of repeating patterns of birds.
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This is another of my repeating pattern designs, repeats are a bit of a brain twister to design, but they are lovely! This one is of owls. Owl’s are typically solitary. However in this design I have a parliament of owls. The literary collective noun for a group of owls is a parliament.
Apparently the collective nouns for creatures stems from an English hunting tradition of the Late Middle Ages. By the beginning of the 14th century this creative use of language was already in place. The trend it seems came from France. It became a courtly fashion to extend use these terms and by the 15th century, this tendency had reached exaggerated proportions.
In the Book of Saint Albans (1486) 165 terms are listed, most of them collective nouns for creatures but some for humans,” a fightyng of beggers”,or “a gaggle of women”
The Book of Saint Albans became very popular during the 16th century and was reprinted frequently, some of the collective nouns for creatures have entered the english language, for example, a gaggle of geese, or a swarm of bees.
Some of the more creative collective nouns are less well-known, for example, a Murder of crows or bouquet of pheasants.
Below is the painting in progress on my desk.
For the green background I used a mixture of prussian blue and hookers green to get that deep lovely green!
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Two Owls, a black cat and an cat licking it's paw are four of the ten creatures up on dispaly at Domalis cafe in Crystal Palce South East London. The Prints are an open edtion,They are 24 x 18 Inches. They only went up last week and two have sold already! I have used a white wooden frame that comes from Italy and they have been double mounted on acid free consvertaion board. Very clean and crisp looking.
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The Swallow has long been associated with Folklore. European folklore has a long list of good and bad luck stories, from bringing death if one were to land on your shoulder to bringing good fortune if they nest on your roof. One thing that is universal is that if you see a swallow then summer is on the way.
One of the most interesting aspects of the applied meaning of swallows is that of navy tattoos. I have talked about this before on this blog. Swallows, represented for sailors, land. Back in the olden days when sailing wasn’t a precise an art as it is today, the sight of a swallow sparked hope. If you’d been at sea for a long time probably relief as well. Swallows being land-based birds indicated your were near the shore. the birds have been used as tattoos to represent a specific amount of nautical miles sailed, for example, two swallows indicates a journey of 10,000 nautical miles.
swallows have long been used as a representation of speed. it has had influence in the world of aeronautical thought since antiquity.
The world’s first operational transonic jet fighter,The Me-262 Schwalbe, takes its name from the swallow.
The japanese named it’s fighter plane the Kawasaki Ki-61, the flying swallow,
Here you can see the painting on my desk, almost finished. This repeat is a square tile.
Here is the single tile.
and here it is in repeat.
This design is available as a card at The DM Collection
This painting continues with my theme of animals with their natural habitat depicted within them.
In 1953 philosopher Isaiah Berlin published an essay called,”The Hedgehog and the Fox” in it he expands on the simple notion attributed to the ancient Greek poet Archilochus, “the fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing”
He divides writers and thinkers two camps, those who view the world with one defining idea,(Hedgehog) Plato and Dostoyevsky for example, and those that believe the world can not be distilled down to one idea.(fox) Aristotle and Shakespeare for example.
Archilochus ancient quote has filtered down through the years, I don’t know if it influenced the story of the fox and the cat, but, “the many things” aspect of the story marry up with Archilochus quote. A cat and a fox are having a chat about how many tricks they have up their sleeves. The fox boasts that he has many. The cat says he only has one. When hunters arrive with their dogs, the cat quickly climbs a tree, but the fox can’t decide which trick to employ and is caught by the hounds.
The hedgehog is often depicted as a wise creature, The story, The Hedgehog and the Hare by the brothers Grim illustrates this. The hedgehog outsmart’s the hare with is brains and runs the hare off his legs! read about it here
In This story from Romania, the hedgehog is represented as wise, but an introverted grump!
During creation the earth god had made no room for the oceans, rivers and lakes. God did not know what to do, so he sent the bee to the hedgehog, the wisest of all animals, to ask advice. The hedgehog refused, however, The Bee was smart, he knew that the hedgehog was in the habit of talking to itself. The bee crept back up to it and heard it murmuring, “God does not know that he must create valleys and mountains in order to make room for the waters.” The bee hurried back to God with this advice, enabling him to complete his creation. To reward the hedgehog, God gives it a coat made of needles.
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The finished painting of a hegdehog, and below the same painting in progress.
The hedgehog’s dilemma is an analogy about the challenges of human intimacy. It goes like this, An Array of hedgehogs are getting ready for their winter hibernation, they start to snuggle down into their nest and cuddle up to each other to conserve heat. But they must remain apart. They cannot avoid hurting one another with their sharp spines. Oh dear!
Sigmund Freud used The Hedgehog’s dilemma to describe the individuals relation to others in society. The hedgehog’s dilemma suggests that despite goodwill, human intimacy cannot occur without substantial mutual harm. We all have to have some pain from each other to enjoy some intimacy.
This painting of a hedgehog continues with the theme of animals in their natural habitat. The Hedgehog with a grassy bank depicted on his back. The clover flowers bringing out the green of the grass and vice a-versa.
I Studied Albrecht Dürer watercolour, “Great Piece of Turf”, which is a truly astonishing painting, to get some inspiration for the grass. and I continued my thread of influence of japanese prints and the arts and crafts to decorate the belly of the hedgehog.
Image © Daniel Mackie
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The Butterfly effect. It goes like this, a butterfly flaps it’s wings in say, Canada, the a couple of weeks later in south east Asia there is a hurricane.
The Butterfly effect is also known as Chaos theory and it has captured the imagination of writers and creatives, a good example is the 1946 film, A Wonderful Life, An Angel shows George Bailey how rewriting history would detrimentally affect the lives of everyone in his hometown. In a subtle butterfly effect, snow falls in one version of reality but not the other.
“A Sound of Thunder” by Ray Bradbury, the killing of a butterfly during the time of dinosaurs causes the future to change in subtle but meaningful ways, read about it here
But Chaos aside, butterfly’s have come to represent love and the soul, The ancient Greek word for “butterfly” means “soul” or “mind”.
In Chinese culture, two butterflies flying together symbolize love. And in Japan, they are representation of a person’s soul.
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In 1975 the British Royal Navy banned cats on its ships and put an end to a tradition that had been in place for hundreds of years. For example in Louis XIV’s French Navy in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries all French ships were ordered to carry two cats for rodent-control duties.
Rodent-control was the reason cats were put on ships. All trading nations adopted this practice. It is believed that Cats arrived in Europe by boat from Ancient Phoenicia (maritime trading cultures on the african coast of the Mediterranean). They set their paws down on european soil in about 900 BC.
Gradually cats became worlds travellers, eventually reaching nearly all parts of the world accessible by ship. Over the centuries their offspring developed into different breeds according to the climate in which they found themselves and the mates they took, as well as the deliberate selection by humans.
Cats have long had a reputation as magical animals and amongst the sailing community it is not hard to see why superstitions solidified, sailing was a dangerous business, and if a cat were to bring good luck then all the better! British and Irish sailors considered adopting a black “ship’s cat” because it would bring good luck. As a result most ships cats received a high level of care to keep them happy and to keep the ship lucky.
Famously a cat called Convoy aboard HMS Hermione slept in a hammock! Convoy was so named due to the number of trips he had successfully made during the second world war. Convoy’s luck ran out on 16 June 1942 when a U-boat sank HMS Hermione, sadly killing Convoy and 87 crew members.
This ships cat is watercolour, I used a lot of prussian blue and davys gray.
Below, you can see the painting in progress.
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