My Favourite Illustrator and Pointillism Animals

One of my favourite illustrators

The weather has been dreadful this week. Wet, wet and wet again and then wet somemore, but we are approaching an English summer so what can we expect...lol. The advantage of the rain has been to make the spring greens even more green than ever and everything is fresh and lovely and springlike. I wish this season could last until the autumn - my two favourite seasons of the year.

I have been out photographing as expected and I am very into aliums at the moment. They are one of my favourite flowers, particularly the globe variety and have huge potential for artwork. I can definitely feel an alium picture coming on. I have a fancy to do a "cat with aliums" picture specifically. A delightful combination - I hope anyway.

I have been thinking about showing folk a few of my art and inspiration books and the first one is childrens' book Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden by the wonderful English illustrator Jane Ray. I have seen Jane's work in the flesh so to speak and it is truly vibrant and charming. Her style is a cross between folky and stylised but always very elegant and she has a masterly command of colours. I have included a couple of pages from the book to show her work off. She is immensely popular in English childrens' book illustration with a well deserved reputation. I just wish I could draw and paint like that. I have several childrens' books which I bought simply because I love the illustrations (and I usually read the stories too). I am not so keen on the books for the very young because they are a bit too basic but age group 10 - 14 is usually excellent and quite adult. I hope you admire her art as much as I do.

I have included a couple of very detailed pen and ink drawings which I did many years ago and which are now framed in my home. I wish I had had prints made of them when I had the chance but it is too late now unless I go to all the trouble of unframing them. The fox is totally pointillism and really took about six months to complete. The hares are pointillism although so dark that they look black but the rest is various inky styles. I love the hares image and have toyed with the idea of doing a painted or digital version.

The other picture is a montage of my painted artwork that I originally did for handmade cards but they never quite reached that stage. I like to keep these little painted pieces because I never know when I might fancy going back to them and redoing them as a complete painting. I will get around to everything "one day" I keep telling myself. I am sure everyone else is the same.