Keeping The Kitties Calm

We had Guy Fawkes or Bonfire Night a few days ago when effigies of Guy Fawkes are burned on bonfires, and firework displays take place all over the country. As children we were thrilled with bonfire night and loved saving our money to buy as many fireworks as possible, but these days, sadly, I think it is just a waste of money. The fireworks are very expensive and many of them don't last very long. A large public display is the best way to see the very best fireworks. Personally, I prefer to stay at home and keep the cats company. One of them is deaf but the other finds the noise very distressing, especially the really loud bangers.

I haven't done much in the way of new artwork this week as I am still knee deep in Christmas cards. Making that is, not writing - that will be the next thing.

I thought I would draw some fallow deer instead of red deer for a change. I like their palmate antlers. We have herds of fallow deer in a forest estate a few miles away and it is good fun to drive through the area and see if you can spot the deer. It is a vast area so you are very lucky if you can get a glimpse of them. This picture is called "Sheltered".

This is Mischievous Bird which is the coloured version of the pen and ink drawing I did a while back.

Lindsey Hambleton is a Derbyshire artist who paints beautifully vibrant and colourful images of the English landscape. She builds up her paintings with textures and glazes which give a lovely sense of light. There is lots of gorgeous art on her website here (don't forget to check out the archives). She is also involved in painting scenes from an ancient trackway in Derbyshire called The Derbyshire Portway. Details of which can be found on the website also. I used to live in Derbyshire myself for a short period as a child and the scenery and landscapes of the Peak District are simply wonderful.

Cattle On The Horizon

Ilam Church

If you are like me and love a nice cup of tea, what could be more fun than making it in one of these gorgeous teapots. I think in this day and age of instant teabags in cups and mugs, the poor old teapot is losing ground. It is great to think nostalgically of times past when the teapot sat on its trivet, centre table, with its woolly hat on and the tea left to steep. Yuck...I loathe strong tea. I actually do make tea in a mug and the bag is left in for seconds before being whipped out. I still like the idea of a nice teapot though...! These pots are from Onehappystore here.

Funky Rooster Teapot

Garden Dance Teapot

Frizzle Chicken Teapot

I took a stroll past a local church the other day and took some pictures of my favourite lime trees. At least I think they are limes. They were just starting to turn a beautiful greeny, goldy, brown colour, and looked beautiful against the grey stone of the ancient building. The church dates from 1140 AD but stands on ground which was revered before that date.

I have discovered a new greetings card producer whose work I totally love. Her name is Diane Williams and she goes under the name of "Bird". You can check out her website here. She paints the most gorgeous animal and bird images in gouache and acrylic and also produces greetings cards from them. Below are the three I bought. There are lots more in the series but the shop I bought them from only carried about 6 different designs. If I had owned the shop I would have stocked them all. Diane's paintings are so beautifully delicate, colourful and detailed and each card is signed by her in pencil. The trouble is you would want to keep the cards for yourself instead of sending them to people.

I have used watercolour for years but never really tried gouache. If these are the results you can get I think I will have to start using them.

Geese

Cock Pheasant

Brown Hare

I first came across Grainne (pronounced Grawn-yuh) Morton at the Chelsea Craft Fair which is held in the in the Old Town Hall, King's Road, Chelsea. This was quite a few years ago because I haven't visited for some time now. Her intriguing metallic contemporary jewellery made quite an impact. She uses lots of miniature pieces of found and vintage items to create her beautifully designed work. Go here to find lots more jewellery and other items.

Row Of Flowers Brooch

Blue Horse Collage Brooch

Butterfly Bracelet

The two images below are the work of artist/printmaker Rosemary Farrer. Rosemary admits to being inspired by nature and it shows in the beautiful work on her website here.

First Worm

Snow In Kew Gardens

I love these cushions by Rustique Interiors. Lovely and "folky" tweed with appliqued hearts. They can be found, among other lovely items, here.

Some people will already know of the work of Elaine Pamphilon as she is well-known and represented in the UK's galleries. Her work is beautifully naive and contemporary and full of colour. She paints what she loves which is an excellent reason for painting. Much of her inspiration comes from the lovely coastal area around St. Ives. I love her spontaneous and free style of painting mugs especially, and, of course, her delightful birds. So quirky and whimsical. You can find a huge display of her work on her website here and also at the Bircham Gallery site here.

Blackbird And Berries

Mug And Spoon St. Ives

Molly Talking To The Birds

Sea Song At St. Ives

Bird

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.

Quilts, Chickens and Susan Seddon Boulet

This is my latest cockerel (rooster) drawing. This is the simplified version with a white background. Quite uncluttered compared to the one below.

This is the full version. I am not too sure about this one though...it seems a bit busy to me.

This is a digital drawing with a slightly different palette to the one I use normally. A change is as good as a rest though.

This is a pen and ink drawing with a touch of digital colour. It is called "Conversation With A Black Bird".

This is one of a series of tree guardians that I created some time ago. It is pen and ink and watercolour.

I came across a book recently about the work of a wonderful American quilter called Ruth McDowell. Her quilts are amazingly complex and she does wonderful things with patterns...lots of them. I love her chickens quilt below. You can find here website here where she has a large display of quilts.

Part of another Ruth McDowell quilt

A local hen

I know how this woman feels. There are days when your hair just won't go right.

Nice beads and stripes. I think I bought this gift bag just so that I could take a photo of it.

This is the Michael Babcock book which has been written about the beautiful artwork of Susan Seddon Boulet. I discovered this book whilst on holiday with a friend in Cumbria in the 90s. I didn't get my nose out of it for the rest of the holiday...lol. The following images are the artwork of the late Susan Seddon Boulet. There are lots of links to Susan's work on the Internet but this site has an excellent display of her work. Just click on the images to get a larger version.

Pele

Athene

Changing Woman
Bird Woman

Ix Chel

Kaltes

Selene

Psyche

Titania and Oberon

Tlazolteotl

Triple Goddess

White Shell Woman

There is something very endearing about poultry....hens and cockerels that is. I love the little muttering noises they make when they are rooting around on the ground. It is a very comforting sound. My mother tells me that she used to keep hens and cockerels at one time but they had to stop because of the problem of rats with small children. Such a pity as I would have liked to have grown up surrounded by these quirky little birds.

As an adult I am still enthralled by them and I photograph them whenever I can. We have a rare breeds farm in the vicinity and they have some beautiful old English varieties. The plumes and tail pieces and feathery feet are probably not the best accountrements to have in English wet and muddy weather but they make great photography. My favourites are the huge, proud, strutting cockerels keepiing a close check on the female contingent. I like to draw the tail feathers particularly....the more outrageously bouffant, the better.

My cockerels this week are not too outrageous but I enjoyed drawing them. I decided to put them in with some totally surreal and colourful trees. The wonderful thing about colouring drawings digitally, is that you can save the original and then try different looks on a copy and delete it if you are not happy. You have to be much more careful with watercolour. No changing your mind with that medium...lol.

My featured artist is the late, great, Susan Seddon Boulet. She was a San Francisco Bay artist who died of cancer in 1997 aged 55. She was a huge loss to the art world in my opinion. Susan was English by descent but born in Brazil when her parents emigrated there from South Africa. She was always enthralled as a child by the world of fantasy and nature. After marrying she used to sell her early work in her local park...I wish I had been there then...lol.

Her work is primarily heavily layered oil pastels with ink. It is this layering which gives her art that beautiful, shadowy, mysterious feel. Her favoured subjects were anthropomorphic images of mythological and legendary figures such as Merlin, Athene etc. The images I have posted are from the book of her art by Michael Babcock which I bought years ago.