Summer Flowers and Chickens

I popped this one back into PS this morning and changed the pinky coral tree to a white one. I think it balances the image more and the chicken's comb doesn't get mixed up with the tree anymore but stands out. A definite improvement I think. The sharp eyed amongst one may remember these chickens with a different background and different colours. I felt I could improve on it and I think this does. I am pleased with it anyway.

I enjoyed drawing this pen and ink kitty. His face reminds me of Felix in the Purina cat food adverts.

Found this beautiful angel etching on Eleanor Healy-Wills website here. She has some lovely etchings displayed.

I was tagged the other day by blogging friend Lesley of Sea-Blue-Sky & Abstracts to give a list of 6 silly things I like.

1) Walking through quiet woods and touching the trees as I go past.

2) Picking up beautifully shaped leaves from our local town where they have some wonderful trees in the high street. I press them and use them for drawing.

3) Sitting out in the back garden at midnight just to take in the peace and quiet.

4)Watching the night sky for meteors or satellites.

5) Scaring myself silly watching ghost films on TV late at night.

6) Re-reading my old copies of Fungus The Bogeyman and When The Wind Blows by Raymond Briggs.

I am really into retro colours and designs. I love this retro ceramic found on Etsy user PardonMyVintage's site here.

Lots of lovely flowers around this summer but the weather has been down in the dumps. It is quite funny really because in spring we were told with great glee by the media that the long range weather report was forecasting a "barbecue summer" with very high temps. We did have about a week of very hot weather and since then it has rained and been quite cool. A typical summer really. The weather office are now back tracking and stating that they said there was a 65% chance of a hot summer. Don't you wish sometimes they would not try to predict the weather weeks ahead? They admit that they can only accurately predict it a week ahead anyway. A number of people decided not to go abroad for their holidays this year because they thought the English summer would be exceptional. Having said that we have now been told that the next week will be getting warmer again. We shall see.

These are some hedgerow dogroses from a while ago. Common flowers but they are so pretty.

I photographed these in a garden centre a couple of years ago. Gorgeous blues.

It is only early August but a lot of the crops have been harvested and I think there is a tiny hint of approaching autum. I suppose it makes sense really considering that all the seasons seem to be a month ahead. I spotted some fully ripe blackberries in a hedge recently. Surely they are far too early.

I happened to find myself in a local town the other day with one of the Oxfam shops entirely dedicated to secondhand books. What a little paradise. I was in there far too long but I found this little gem. I have mentioned before how much I love the Lark Series books. I have quite a few now but this is one I didn't think would appeal. Once I looked inside though I was amazed and fascinated by the types and styles of work by contemporary basket makers. Some of them are so incredibly imaginative that you wouldn't even think to call them baskets. The most amazing thing of all was that the book was only £3. Such a bargain couldn't be ignored. Here are three fascinating and beautiful examples of contemporary basket art I found inside.

Amy Lipshie-Amphora. This beautiful artwork is created from cereal boxes.

Barbara Walker-Les Petales. This is woven from bleached and unbleached linen cords made by the artist. This is a beautifully designed piece.

Jo Stealey-Fruits of My Labour-Fertility. This lovely artwork is created from waxed linen, reed, handmade paper and silkworm cocoon. Jo's website is here.

A few years ago I came across printmaker Roger Harris (at Art In Action but I will say it quietly as everyone is probably tired of it now...ha ha) I was very impressed by his beautiful mezzotints. Mezzotints are etchings where the metal plate is prepared beforehand by use of a tool called a rocker. The rocker has tiny teeth and is rocked back and forward over the whole plate. Basically it is a very time consuming method of producing a print of exquisite quality and depth of colour. I was entranced by his detailed work which is absolutely gorgeous in real life. He very patiently explained the whole process to me although he had probably already explained it to at least a million people beforehand. It must take a true love of printmaking to go to such trouble but so very worth it. You can see more of Roger's work here at Iona Gallery.

Lady Godiva

Spirit of the Wood

I have a long-standing love affair with etchings and trees and when the two come together so beautifully as in the etching/aquatint by Jo Barry, I am in heaven. More of Jo Barry's work can be seen here at Iona Gallery also.

These are my flower photos from some little while ago. I thought I would do a little nature colour coordinating. Apparently purples and lilacs and violets are very popular colours at the moment. I was mentioning to someone the other day that I have difficulty in assigning names to the colours in the purple/violet range of the spectrum. I am quite good with reds and oranges and greens and turquoises but those purple, mauve, lavender, lilac and violet colours fool me.

These beautiful bracelets are the work of Shropshire based craftswoman Lana who admits to being obsessed with colour (I know how she feels). She certainly has a wonderful sense of which colours to combine. The bracelets are made from cotton, silk and merino yarn. Lana also creates other textile lovelies and can be found here on Etsy as "easternsky".

The paintings below belong to the highly talented English artist Anna Pugh. Anna lives a modest life in the countryside where she paints extremely lovely images of animals, nature, the countryside and things around her. She has a particular affinity with dogs and plants, but I love her hens and cockerels best. Her style is bright and detailed folk art and she has a huge following. You can look at her paintings for ages because each one has so many different elements and scenes within scenes, but the whole picture gels together as a complete entity. You can find a large collection of her work at Lucy B Campbell gallery here. I was also lucky enough to come across her book of paintings a few weeks ago. The book is dedicated to showing off her artwork rather than text, but the paintings speak for themselves.

Last Set

Mountain Pool

A Change Of Heart

The Challenger

Two Partridge

More To come

Cool And Interesting

Rooks - Work In Progress

I am pleased with how this one has turned out. It shows two of my favourite birds - rooks. It is a pen and ink drawing using multi-directional cross-hatching to build up the tones. I find it quicker than pointillism. This is just to show that I can draw traditionally as well as stylising. It is in progress at the moment and I am not sure how to continue but that is where the value of a scanner lies. I can try out various backgrounds without ruining the original. What did we do before scanners?

Little White Bird

This is a pen and ink drawing with a digital background called "Medieval Lady". I found a lovely book in a charity shop a while ago about church brass monuments, how to do brass rubbings etc and which churches to find them in. It has lots of lovely illustrations and photos of the brasses and the medieval garb of the people represented on the brasses. This picture is inspired by some of the beautiful costumes and headgear. Many churches have brasses but are a bit reluctant to have them used for brass rubbing as it can wear away what is usually a 600 to 700 year old piece of art. I think they are just lovely to look at.

I have been listening a lot recently to the very talented violinist Andre Rieu. There is a lot of videos of his concerts on Youtube and I also have access to quite a few DVD's. One of his soprano's is Brazilian Carla Mafioletti and this one is called "Once Upon A Time In The West". I can guarantee you will love it.

The beautiful creature is a relief print found on theoddgallery on Etsy. It is the shop of the artist John Steins. He has some lovely prints on there and also at his website here. He has a journal site on his web page where he blogs about his art and printmaking. Very interesting stuff. I will have a much closer look when I get two spare minutes to rub together!

I really love this Jill Barker print of resting sheep.

This is a scabious flower head I photographed in a bouquet at an art show. A bit of PS later and quite a nice result. Gorgeous colour.

Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens - well no whiskers on show at the moment but I photographed this rose in our garden a while back after a heavy shower.

The artwork below was created by Louise Davidson but there is practically nothing about her on the web except for a page of her gorgeous work here at Handmark Gallery in Hobart. Perhaps she is as mysterious as her beautiful etchings.

Hidden Things

The Art Of Reading Flowers

Last Sunday we went for a long hike starting in the village of Bledlow in Bucks. Bledlow is a quintessentially English village beloved of film-makers. It has a wonderful church which has been the centre of nasty goings-on in the Midsomer Murders detective series with actor John Nettles and also Agatha Christie's Miss Marple. Two favourites of mine. Holy Trinity here at Bledlow is an ancient church dating back to the 12th century and the churchyard is surrounded by lots of huge mature trees.

This is the most wonderfully photogenic cottage. It is just opposite the church and believe it or not, a road runs between the tree and the cottage. I am standing in the churchyard for the photo and our car is parked in the road but because the bank is so high it cannot be seen. Anyone who has watched the Midsomer Murders will recognise this as the cottage in Badger's Drift where the first victim lived. I now have this on my computer desktop.

A row of lovely cottages near the church. This would make a great pen and ink drawing if I had the time. I have drawn a few buildings like this in the past and they take ages to do as everything has to be in proportion and perspective.

I love these cottages with the huge chestnut trees in the front gardens and the pillar box on the wall. Very English.

This is at the end of our walk coming back into Bledlow. We walked through several fields of crop like this. The sound of the crickets was deafening.

Matte Stephens is well known artist and illustrator. He produces some very witty and quirky artwork. I love this gouache painting from his Etsy shop called "Lilian Playing With An Abstract Thought" - gorgeous. He has a great palette of colours.

I like this angel illustration by Julia Luchkina.

I recently discovered the work of an Irish ceramic artist that speaks to you. The artist is Fidelma Massey who has a studio in Co. Wexford in Ireland. Her works are mythical, symbolic and very individual. She seems to often work with themes of birds and trees which are my favourite art subjects also. She wants her viewers to be uplifted and stirred and surprised into a sense of wonder. I think her work does all this and more. It is stunningly beautiful. If money were no object I would buy all her sculpture so that I could look at it all the time.

You can see much more of her work on her website here and also at the following galleries:

Imagine Gallery, Greenlane Gallery and Kilcock Art Gallery.

Dancing Eve detail

Watermother detail

Shrine For Mother Of Birds

Mother Of All detail

Sweet Chestnut detail

Fish Girl

Crowing Hen

Textiles and Linocuts

It is my first year Blogversary next week and I will be having a blog giveaway again. I will probably have three winners but I haven't created the prizes yet...ha ha. All will be revealed as they say...next week.

I got my paints out this week and had a dabble with watercolour. This turned out completely differently to how I planned but I like the result. If you have ever wondered what hides beneath tree roots, now you know. It is the "Spirit of Trees". The golden accents are from a wonderful gold leaf pen I bought from the stamping tent at a local craft fair. It cost an arm and a leg but is the best ink resembling gold that I have ever found.

This is a pen and ink drawing called "The Woman Who Planted Trees". I really enjoyed all the detail on this. I may decide to do some more versions with different women and different trees.

This is a closer look. The textured body of the tree is thousands of tiny circles.

This is my second attempt at a linocut. It is the best of quite a few tries. I find the cutting fairly straight forward but the inking up and printing very difficult. I always seem to have too much or too little ink. This is actually carved from one of those soft pink speedball pads which are wonderful to cut through (no cut fingers) but I don't suppose you can get as much detail as with the more rigid lino. Still, I don't think it is too bad for a beginner.

If you like finely detailed and complex images then this one by Georgian artist Nick Japaridze should appeal. His style is incredibly fine and the colours glow like jewels. He has a technique whereby he multi-layers oil paints. He has lots more like this on his website here.

I really like the colours in this contemporary image by Edward Vardanian named "The Eden".

Love this touch of vintage plate design with a folksy feel. This is a Norweigian plate and is from Etsy seller EyeCandi.

Some more delicious spring flowers. These are grape hyacinths.

I popped over to my brother and his partner Lesley's home today to see how the kitties are getting on. There are three of them but they are notoriously difficult to photograph. This is the only picture that came out reasonably. This kitten is cute perfection itself. I love his big feet and spotty belly.

Sheba is a very elegant and superior sort of cat with some awesome claws.

My mind has been turning to linocuts this week. You can see my effort at the top of this post. I had a good old browse on Etsy to see what other people were producing and found some lovely images.

These two images of crows are by artwellspring on Etsy and I absolutely love them. I love black birds anyway but they are so beautifully textured and very simple and graphic. Just what linocuts should be, although these are linocut and woodblock combined. I will just have to keep practising. It is a technique I find very enjoyable but the printing seems to be a bit difficult.

Another nice contemporary linocut over collage image by ciaobirdie on Etsy. I particularly like the palette she has chosen.

If you like black cats you may be tempted by blackcatsonly on Etsy. She has some lovely linocut images of cats and they are reasonably priced too. I love this one especially.

At one time I used to see a lot of Roger la Borde greetings cards around but I haven't seen any for ages until I spotted these two little gems in a local bookshop. If you want to see some more of their designs the website is here.

I found some lovely gift wrap by Caroline Gardner the other day. Her work is so gorgeous. This is Caroline's website here.

The following images are all tapestries and embroideries from some wonderful textile artists.

The following 5 beautiful hand stitched embroideries are by the Finish textile artist Riitta Liisa Haarvisto. These must have taken months to stich by hand but they are so lovely that it was well worth it.

This is Soul Birds by my favourite tapestry weaver Kirsten Glasbrook. You can find Kirsten's site here.

This tapestry called The Norns is by Faroese tapestry weaver Marianna Matras. It depicts the Nordic goddesses of fate who weave the fate of mankind at the foot of Yggdrasil, the world tree. It is a beautiful iconic piece - simple and graphic and is inspired by a painting by William Heinesen. The Norns would make a good subject for a drawing I think.

Beautiful tapestry by Inge Flierl who is a German tapestry weaver. You can see a few more of Inge's tapestries here.

Tapestry by Murray Gibson called Visitation. I love this piece, especially the central motif and the way it fades at the edges. You can find masses of Murray's lovely complex tapestries on his home page here.

Tapestry by Liza Collins. I love her bright, spontaneous, organic pieces.

Easter is with us once more and has brought in some wet and drizzly weather with it. Lovely word, drizzly and exactly describes that irritating, persistent light rain that is "neither nowt nor sumat" as they say up north. Apart from being an important Christian festival, it is also a time for families to do things together and I feel really sorry for all those people who have arranged family days out only to find that the weather is inclement to say the least. Nearly all Easter events take huge amounts of someone's time and effort to arrange and unless they are under cover, they can get ruined at the last minute. Such a shame.