A new character Illustration in my New England series: Hazel Cod

Hazel Cod too her craft seriously. Growing up on the Cape, she'd spend countless hours sketching and dreaming up drawings. Despite her humble life in a little cottage by the docks, she'd managed to find her way to an Art Academy in Boston.

Hazel now stood firm before her easel, paint at the ready. She'd just had to have "words" with her Uncle Algernon, the old salt, who was fussing about. He'd wanted to be painted in his daily garb, which besides being riddled with stains from the docks, held a unique odor of the self same.

Hazel Cod may have started out small, but she'd big plans. Her paint pots and determination were going to get her away one day, off to Europe where real Artists lived and painted.

Her dreams were broken again, as Uncle Algy began loosening his neck tie.

"Uncle, dear, DO be still,"she ordered, What was a young artist to do with such models?

The sketch before color is aded.

In very much the pattern my illustrations have taken, when I finally decided to create my seagull, Algernon, whom I see on the daily in real life, his "Story" came to me that he was dressed up but not of his own accord.

With that realization, I imagined A determined neice, whose ideals had got "improved" after attending school in the "big city". Thus was born: Hazel Cod, Painter extraordinaire, the neice to Algernon whose painting prowess is the reason he'd have to sit still in his dress blues.

Hazel Cod in GIF form.

I'm looking forward to peopling my art journals with more New England folk.

And as I want my characters here to mix and mingle with my English characters, what better way then a young up and coming artist from a simple background dreaming of adventures overseas?

Again, I've no real plan to make these into concrete stories, but the more they become fleshed out and real, one never knows. I'm working on making over my little Summer studio in the boat house and I've a plan to lay out the characters on the wall in a sort of 'family tree' and that might spur me on to pen a proper story with beginning, middle and end.

I hope you've enjoyed this latest creation and that you get a moment in your own day to indulge in your own passions.

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Bunny Portraits

• Josiah H Bunnywort
• Ermentrude Bunnyfoot
• Miss Regina Sourfoot