Saturday, March 7, 2009

Hannah Cole and The Industrious Art of Blogging

This is simply called "Arches" for obvious reasons. I fiddled with this design for ages adding circles to represent fruit etc but in the end I decided to keep it simple.
This is a pen and ink drawing with a background of digital colour to make it appear more "apple" like. If you haven't already guessed - it is Eve and the Apple.

This is my black tree digital image. I originally made the tree and the bird white but they got lost in among all these colours so I changed them to black to make them more prominent.
I liked the above design so much I took the bird and branch out and redid them for a greetings card image. This is my "Neopolitan Bird". I think I prefer this colourway.

And this is the box where I got my colour palette idea.
This is the second design I did for greetings cards

This is a beautiful mermaid relief print by unknown artist. It is a greetings card with an original etching or linocut - not sure which. It is initialled but I am unable to read it. I love mermaid images and have produced quite a few of my own over the years.

Another delicate mermaid etching which is also a greetings card. Unusual to find an original etching card. Needless to say, this one will be staying with me also. It is by Mark Crowther. I love the way the colours bleed into one another.

Pretty jewels from my bead box. I love running my hands through these tiny glass beads of every conceivable colour. I have used them for a couple of projects in the past but I don't think I could ever use all these up if I beaded from now till domesday. Lovely to look at though.




If you are an owl, or a bird, or a rabbit fan, (or any other animal come to that) check out UK artist Helen Musselwhite's website here. Or her Etsy shop here. She has lots of delightful cut paper sculptures and collages which she mounts in display boxes. Her work is very colourful, graphic and folky. The papers she uses are lovely and it must take hours of patient work to cut and assemble the artwork. Hats off to Helen.
A quirky white rabbit
A delicious blackbird with flowers

I found this beautiful textured leaf a while back. Usually I press leaves inside heavy books to flatten them but I am glad this one got forgotten because it has dried into a lovely shape all by itself.

My featured artist is Hannah Cole who hails from North Devon in the UK but now lives in Brighton. Her images of the British seascapes are very well known but she also paints landscapes and other work. Her painting style is extremely popular with the buying public and I have bought quite a few of her greetings cards in the past as I really enjoy her work. She has a great love of the English countryside and seaside and this is reflected in her lovely paintings.

Her paintings are built up in layers of colour in which she makes marks. Her views are often her response to a scene rather than an actual representation of that scene. I love her soft, gentle, almost pastel palette and the almost naive quality she imparts to her work. She has the ability to produce a beautiful scene without lots of decoration (not like me..ha ha) oh, and I love the quirky dogs which often appear in her work. Hannah has her own interesting website here where you can browse her work, or you can find more images at the Seascape Gallery or her greetings cards at The Whistlefish Gallery. I was in John Lewis yesterday and saw some beautiful seascape pictures and thought they looked very much like Hannah's work....and they were!


Moroccan Pink
Watching And Waiting
Red Boat, St. Ives
Moroccan Memory
Ditchling Beacon
By The Windbreak
Winter On The Downs
Waiting To Play Ball
Low Tide, Polperro
Devon Fields
I wonder how many trillions of blogs there are out there. I was checking out the next blog feature on blogger the other day and was amazed at the number and variety of blogs in every language under the sun. Whatever your interest in life you can publish a blog about it. I am drawn to art and craft blogs myself and there is plenty of choice to immerse myself in. Blogger has nearly 60 different blog categories and some of those have sub-cats. There are even blogs about....well, blogging. Where did all this spare time come from to keep our blogs up to date? There is no doubt that blogging is very time consuming. Some of the bloggers I have come across recently have several blogs on the go...one person has ten. Amazing. One thing I have noticed is that I am inclined to pass over very wordy blogs for those with interesting pictures. With everyone rushing through their blog visits at speed, it is vital to have great images to catch the attention and slow people down. Just off to take some new photos....!

16 comments:

Sandy Mastroni said...

Eve and the Apple is .....
SO SO SO good
I love it !
have agreat week Cathy !

Gillian said...

Hi Cathy - your Eve drawing is fantastic - love Helen Musselwhite's work - will have to check out her shop. Thanks for introducing more great artists to me!

Caroline said...

You've been really industrious as well, Cathy! The girl in the apple is a lovely image - such fine detail. I really love those bird cards too - both colourways are delicious! Well, I suppose I love it all really - the mermaids, Helen Musslewhite's paper cuts, that crips leaf and Hannah Coles's lovely clean looking work! Keep up the good work - it's such a pleasure to visit your blog!

Cathy said...

Thanks Sandy. I love anything to do with Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden.

Cathy said...

You are welcome Gillian. Helen Musselwhite has some amazing work on her website and shop. Very talented lady.

Cathy said...

Thank you Caroline. I have been extra busy drawing this week. Somestimes the art all comes together and sometimes it doesn't...ha ha.

Holly Zemak said...

Eve and the Apple, very clever and a perfect background color.I also like the Neopolitan Bird, either color combo will make a great card. I enjoyed looking at Hannah Coles work, especially her cards, she has a very unique style. Enjoyable post as always!

Anonymous said...

I love how you 'found' a color scheme and made something unique and completely different with it. That is really smart.

I like that tree with the bird btw, as well as the 'source' box.

Old World Primitives said...

Hi Cathy,
I really adore all of your bird/tree digital images this week! I love both color palates but do like the second one a little better too. I also like the box that inspired it!

Helen Musselwhite's paper sculptures are really amazing, I must check out her Etsy shop. I really like Hannah Cole's paintings too - Low Tide, Polperro is my favorite.

Stephanie

Cathy said...

Thanks Holly. I might do those bird designs in some more colour ways now I am on a roll...lol. Hannah's work is lovely, simple and fresh with a great palette.

Cathy said...

Thanks very much Rose. It is funny how colours and ideas just come to us from things we come across everyday. I have had that little box for ages and never thought about using it as inspiration for a picture.

Cathy said...

Hi Stephanie. I love all Hannah's work. There is something about coastal scenes that grabs the attention. Glad you like the bird images. I really enjoyed doing them.

bunnits said...

I always enjoy your posts. Thanks for sharing your work and the work of all the other artists you include. I especially enjoyed Musselwhite's paper sculptures.

Cathy said...

Thanks Melissa. Glad you enjoy the posts. I love finding new people on the internet. Such an amazing resource.

~ Phyllis ~ said...

Hi Cathy,
Absolutely loved the Eve apple.
Hannah's seascapes are beautiful. Thank you for the link.
You are correct about blogging being time consuming. I can't imagine having ten blogs. It's hard enough to keep up with one. Where do they find the time?

Cathy said...

I am not sure Phyllis. They must have loads to write about though. Sometimes I have to wrack my brain to think of something to write each week...ha ha.