Whimsical And Quirky

This is a digital drawing entitled "Escape From The Merry Go Round". Looks much better if you enlarge it.

While I was in London last week I visited the London Graphic Centre at Covent Garden and stocked up on some new pens. There are some Edding pens now which I haven't come across before. They are ultra fine (0.1mm) nibs and are in green, blue and red ink. I already have a very fine brown ink pen which I rather like. I also purchased a couple of extremely fine pencils in a pen casing which have replaceable graphite cores which you can change as and when. They are also lovely to work with.

These are the two whimsical drawings I produced using my new pens. It is very nice to work with ultra fine coloured pens instead of black all the time.

Green and Purple Bird - I like this colour combination and have used it quite a lot in my artwork.

Magenta Sundress (and an unusual hat)

Romeo and Juliette by Alex Malik

Flora Girl by Andrey Aranyshev

You may remember that I mentioned a quilt book called 2003 Masterpieces by Husqvarna Viking which I found in a charity shop a while back. It has some gorgeous quilts in it and I decided to post these three because of their beautiful colours and complex designs.

Walks In The Woods - Frieda Anderson

The Hard Core - Tally Ronly-Riklis

Feast of Fools 11 - Scott A Murkin

Some of you may remember that I featured the wonderful paintings and ceramics of artist Este MacLeod back on 8 November last year. She contacted me recently to say that she now has her own blog. You can find it here. It is a very interesting combination of her latest works and peeks behind the scenes into her world of art and is well worth a browse. Also if you click on the web links at the top of her blog it takes you to her other site with oodles of lovely paintings and ceramics. Este will also be exhibiting here in April/May 2009. This image below is one of her works.

The ceramics below are the work of Irish sculptor Christy Keeney. He sculpts mainly figurative pieces and heads. I would love to own one of these beauties. Christy has a website here but if you search on Google you will find lots of his work in galleries.

About nine years ago or so I visited Priors, a wonderful contemporary art and craft gallery in Barnard's Castle in County Durham. Visiting these sorts of establishments is one of my hobbies and is something I don't get to do often enough. I think I could create a career out of it given the opportunity. Anyway, Priors was (it is sadly no more) a tiny place but crammed full of gorgeous things. I bought three lovely handmade cards there by David England who is a printmaker. The cards are actually original linocuts on handmade paper in a wonderful contemporary graphic style. They were obviously made to be sent to someone but these are definitely remaining with me. I don't think he even does these anymore. I don't think they cost very much at the time either.

Frans Wesselman is the creator of fascinating art. He grew up in Holland and in 1979 came to England and worked as a painter/printmaker. On seeing the beautiful "Prisoners of Conscience" window in Salisbury Cathedral he decided to try his hand at creating stained glass. His style of art and subject matter is one I really enjoy. His work whether in painting, printmaking or stained glass is very narrative and imaginative. He is a great storyteller in images. He exhibits his work widely and is extremely popular and well recognised.

You can find out more about Frans Wesselman here. This is his own website here and you see masses of wonderful images at this website here.

All the images below are the work of Frans Wesselman.

Birds

Trixie

Fishing

Bird In Hand

Fishing (Coloured)

Islanders 11

Mermaid

Watering Pig

Rider

Shepherd And His Love White Deer

I have been quite poorly this week, due I think, to someone sneezing in my vicinity at the Byzantium Exhibition. Did you know that a sneeze can travel up to 12 feet. If anyone sneezes near me normally I hold my breath until I am out of their area but that was impossible this time. We were all in a smallish hall and it was so crowded there was nowhere to go. I now have a very nasty cold virus and a horrible cough and constant headache. I am blaming that person anyway although I might have caught the virus anywhere at any time. I haven't really felt like drawing either which is quite unlike me, but I have produced a few pieces and of course it is never difficult to find something amazing on the web.