Oodles of Whimsey

This is Perched, a bit of whimsical graphic art.

This is a rather a romantic bit of symbolism connected to spring. I am not too sure that the watercoloured leaves and flowers work though. It may have been better to have left the entire drawing unpainted. It is entitled "Contemplating Spring"

The inspiration for this pen and ink image came from Robyn of Art Propelled Blog who illustrates some wonderful art and crafts on her blog. One of the illustrations was of a podlike vessel with a human head inside. I then had the idea that I would like to draw human heads and faces inside natural forms. This is the first of the series and this one is called Dandelion Head. Self explanatory really. The whole of the dandelion is cross hatched in my finest nibbed Rapidograph pen and took quite a few hours to draw.

And here is the photograph of a dandelion by Karl Blossfeldt in my Dover book which gave me the idea. The book is called Art Forms In The Plant World and has some great photos of plants and seed heads. Karl Blossfeldt was born in 1865 and he was a sculptor and art teacher who had a wonderful eye for detail.

You cannot help but fall in love with the images artist Freya Ete produces. Her delightfully whimsical pieces all have intriguing little bits of text which give meaning to the image. Her style is partly folk, partly naive, innocent but also very contemporary. She says that the words she paints come first before she decides on the picture and she has notebooks containing bits of poems, sayings etc where most artists would have sketchbooks full of pictures. Whatever she is doing is certainly working well for her anyway. She is a very successful artist and has an Etsy shop here and a website here with lots more to see.

This angel painting and the lovely linocut below are the work of artist and illustrator Diana Ludwig. You can see more of Diana's lovely paintings and prints on her website here.

I cannot resist any images of people with birds on their heads. It follows, therefore, that I love Christopher Marvell's work. He is a sculptor of some wonderful works which you can find on his website here and also at Ainscough Contemporary Art gallery here. He lives and works in St. Ives and who could be stuck for inspiration in that lovely part of Cornwall. My other favourites are his hares and angels. This is Birdmanhead.

Bronze Owl Woman

I love this drypoint etching of Christopher Marvell's. It is so simple, contemporary and witty.

The two tapestries below were created by Finnish textile artist Aino Kajaniemi. She has a lovely loose technique and some of her tapestries look as if they have been drawn. The lines are beautifully delicate. She has her own website here which is well worth a look. Some of her work can also be found on the FibreScene site here.

This is a bit of intriguing carving that I discovered and photographed on the wall of St. Dunstan's Church, Monks Risborough a couple of years ago. The church has origins dating back to 1150 but this carving is obviously much more recent. There is very little to be found out about it though. It looks very stylised. What I particularly like about it was the lovely sandstone texture.

Guy Taplin has many admirers of his bird sculptures and I have joined the throng with this piece. It represents shorebirds and is wonderfully red and battered looking. I am not normally a fan of the distressed look but this is just right for these birds. The work looks as if it has been left to the elements for several years and has aged beautifully.

The exceptionally talented Jeanie Tomanek is the artist who produced the images below. Her work is full of myth and mystery. I find it quite magical. She is inspired by many things including folklore, literature and myths, feelings and dreams. She explains her work much better than I can on her Artist's Statement on her website here. If you like her work, you will love a visit to her website as she has over 150 paintings displayed in the gallery.

Evening

East Of Eden

Small Craft Warning

Between

House On A Hill

Diary

Quilt
Aren't hens and cockerels wonderful? I have always been fascinated by these birds. Such an amazing variety of sizes, feather colour and pattern, shapes of combs and wattles. So much going on with such a common, unassuming bird. They have provided myself and other artists with endless inspiration for all sorts of art and craft works. They are so recongnisable that they can lend themselves to heavy stylisation and abstraction and still we know exactly what they are. They are probably the most drawn, painted, etched, embroidered, linocutted, collaged, woven, sculpted and photographed of all members of the bird world. I think their gentle clucking to themselves is one of the most relaxing of sounds in the animal world. Such a shame we cannot all keep a flock of them at the end of the garden such as happened in times gone by. Until then I will just carry on drawing them.