Drawings and happenings ..

My book is due this month so I'm working very hard to tie up all the loose odds and ends,  bring it all together chapter by chapter, zip the files up and send them to my Publisher.  It's hard work and all consuming but no pain no gain !

One of the difficulties is pictures.  Where do I get nice corsetty pictures for my book, without infringing any copyrights, or having to pay through the nose?  Well .. most of the book is tutorial, which means photos and video taken as I go.  The intro chapters, and the bits where I talk about corsetry through the ages, are a little more challenging, but for this I have found a few copyright free images, and the rest, I have drawn myself using a nifty piece of software called Artrage.  I love it because it's much more like proper drawing than other arty packages such as Illustrator and Photoshop but it still uses similar technologies such as layers.  Here's one I 'drew' earlier to illustrate the archetypal Victorian corset shape - small waist, rounded bust and hips:

I have also been in touch with a local museum to see if they would let me photograph some of their items.  They said yes, and waived a large part of their copyright fee, but more excitingly, they put me in touch with a lady who has a private family collection.  I went to see her last week, and though I can't show you what she showed me - because I haven't got any pics - I can tell you that I spent an entire afternoon with her, clutching the most exquisitely carved and polished 1795 stay busk which would have been slotted into the front of a pair of stays a little like this:

source

.... and examining a huge huge pile (and I mean a mountainous pile) of beautiful Victorian and Edwardian underwear and dresses which had belonged to her grandmother!  Not only that, but the lady was able to show me pictures of her ancestors, wearing the very clothes I was looking at!  It was a surreal afternoon I can tell you, and extremely enjoyable.