Enigma

This figure has been making her way across the Dragon's Eye pages this semester.  Even I am a little mystified about her identity, so detectives will have to wait for the summer adventures to find out if she's friend or foe.  The Dragon's Eye backstory is in a very intriguing state of flux as I craft things for the launch in Maine.

I suspect that my old detectives (some of the very first detectives are now over 30, so "old detectives" means more than just "past detectives" now) might guess at her identity--and they might be right.  I refuse to say any more about it.  All secrets have their own time and place.

Should any of my former detectives make their way to this place, please write to me and tell me who this might be from your memory of former cases.  Let me just say that if this is who I think it is, this individual caused a lot of trouble for the detectives.

Year of the Water Dragon

Dragon Trio with Pearls of Wisdom
R McNulty, 2012
Micron pen on paper

It's funny that Dragon's Eye is coming together in the year of the dragon.  This is a cycle that comes around once every twelve years, and the element shifts.  I didn't plan it this way, but maybe someone did.

Dragons in China are associated not so much with fire as with clouds, rain, rivers and the sea.  They bring pearls of wisdom from the depths, and in the right order, are benevolent.  They do have their destructive sides, with monsoons and droughts both being the result of dragons.

It interests me that dragons in Europe are so heavily associated with fire, and those of Asia with water.  Personally, I'd like to see the dragon hunts go the way of hunting whales.  I think Ursula Le Guin is onto something with her dragons from the Earthsea series of books and short stories.

Dragons have something to say to us, something deep and ancient come round to meet us again.

Complexity on the High Seas of Imagination

Blackheart's Compass Rose
Excerpt from map for "Blackheart's Ruby"
R McNulty
Colored pencil & acrylic on paper

Story helps us sort through the complexities of life on an internal level.  Whatever our age, we face many challenges in defining who we are and who we would like to be in the world.  While we may never have the literal experience of walking the plank, we've all been forced off the ship, into the cold waters at some point in our lives.  We've all had to define ourselves against the wave of pirates threatening to take us over, or even against the imperial navy trying to keep us under their control.

The forces of chaos and order are ones we know intimately in our daily lives.  Freedom vs. responsibility.  This is a conflict we'll wrestle with all of our lives--and the answer may be more complex than we would like.  Hence the growth of the pirate with a penchant for saving lives, the scoundrel who comes through at the end, the vampire with a heart of gold.

We're not living in a black and white world--and our mythologies are growing more complex to reflect this.  Darkness is the source of healing and the time of the greatest growth for biological life.  Chaos is a necessary part of the emergence of new life and worlds.  It's not as simple as darkness & chaos = evil, and light & order = good.  Hitler rose to power out of a deep, collective desire for order in the country--and we see this again and again with dictators--a mistaken grasping for a narrow order in their worlds that leads to some very evil choices.

This doesn't mean that there isn't evil that cloaks itself in darkness--merely that good and evil take many forms in the world.  So in my mind, we need many stories to tackle the complexities of life from many angles.  That's why our storytelling doesn't end when mythical childhood ends--it keeps going because we are all trying to learn who we are, what our purpose in life is--and the answers are not carved in stone but written in flowing water.

The hero become king must one day be conquered in turn--what was once alive and thriving has it's natural time to end--and we must take up the next layer of the journey.  What we once thought was a wicked witch in the forest has yet another face to share at a deeper level, if we're willing to brave the chaos and order of the high seas once again.

Brochure

A new brochure is available for the summer program and workshops.
Here's a link.  I'm using Scribd to post these online--it's an interesting site for publishing.  Something to explore in more depth as Dragon's Eye gets going.

I'm also using Behance to create portfolios for both the Dragon's Eye and Ravenscrawl artwork.  Visit the Dragon's Eye portfolio by clicking here.

Image & Word I

I am learning Photoshop.  Now, this may not seem to have much to do with an adventure program, but I have found that art and story are intertwined for me--so bear with me as I share something delightful that came to Dragon's Eye via Photoshop.

Dave McKean, illustrator and filmmaker extraordinaire, talks about the discoveries that occur when playing with layers of images in Photoshop.  I had one of those moments recently, when these two images ...

... came together on the page.  I'd played with them for days, moving them around the page, trying to find the right placement.  And then one day, I put them together and the layers just happened to be on translucent settings, so that the sun was suddenly a lens through which the eye peers.

This was the result, a happy twining on the page:

This is the kind of image that informs the writing.  I find there's a feedback loop between the writing and the image that keeps the story growing in ways that really enhance the whole.  My writing would be less without the images, and the images all seem to come trailing stories that want to be told.

There's a mystery about this kind of creative process--a sense of something moving through us.  Happy accidents bring unlock unexpected depths--and here, two images begin to speak to one another.  I knew they were linked before, but the images had to show me how.

Open House & Mini Adventure I

Various artifacts, including Secret Keepers,
the Bone Ruby and a coded stone.

Artifacts by R McNulty
Sculpey, glass, beads & acrylic paint
Fabric, beads, stuffing & yarns

On Saturday, February 11, 2012, Dragon's Eye Ventures will host two events in Lamarche Gallery of Smith Union at Bowdoin College.  The first is an Open House for parents and young people ages 9-11 (ages 10-12 in summer 2012).  I'll be on hand to answer questions about the program, and to share artifacts, maps, Books of Secrets, and other artwork related to the program.  The Open House will run from 9 AM to Noon, and is free.

From 1 to 4:30 PM, I will offer a Mini Adventure for those young people and accompanying adults who want to give the program a try.  This program costs $40/person, with a limit of 12.

More information may be found on the "Upcoming Events" page.  Click on the tab above, or here.

This is the first of a series of Open Houses and Mini Adventures designed to introduce the Summer 2012 program to the local community.  The next Open House/Mini Adventure will be held on Saturday, February 28.

Postcard II

Here are the final designs for the postcard going out in January.