Morning.

Steps:

1.  Outer Space

• what do you need to do to prepare the space around you?

2.  Inner Space

• what do you need to do to prepare the space within you?

3.  This is a copying drawing.

Choose:

• sketch out the entire image, calmly and purposefully – fill in with detail if you have time
  or
• zoom in on one aspect and draw it in detail, aiming for precision

This is another Margaret Jones illustration from The Mabinogion, this time from the second branch, “Branwen, daughter of Llŷr.”  In this scene, the captive Branwen has taught a starling how to speak and sends it with a message to her brother in Wales to help her escape from her unhappy life in Ireland (spoiler alert: everyone dies).

If you want a high-res version that you can zoom in on, right-click on this to open it in a new tab or window after you get the music going.

Before you begin, press “Play” below to hear the utterly enchanting 2nd movement of Mozart’s “Concerto for Flute and Harp in C Major,” which may offer a blast to the past and bring you briefly back to the head-warm confines of Room 105.

Start when the music starts; stop when it stops.  Keep your pencil in motion for the entire time in between.

4. Title: “Branwen’s Messenger,” by Margaret Jones.

5.  Date it.

6.  If it’s on loose paper, file it somewhere safe and organized so that we can look at it together later.

Now that you’re done, what can you do to ride this calm, focused energy into a productive day?  But before you leave this page, is there anything in that image that might be helpful for your work with The Black Cauldron?

See you at 10:00!

PS: want to see photos of the original written version of these Mabinogion texts (remembering that these legends existed in oral form for hundreds of years before they were committed to print)?  Go here to see The Red Book of Hergest!  And the translated version of this branch can be read here.

PPS: Anyone remember how to pronounce the double-L in Welsh?  Doesn’t it seem like about 5000 years ago that we learned that??  Time flies when you’re stuck inside the same four walls for six weeks – except when it doesn’t…