Byzantium Exhibition And Waterstones Of Piccadilly

I have had a very busy week and therefore little time for drawing. This is a pen and ink design called "Embrace".

This is my pen and ink drawing entitled "Into Each Life A Little Rain Must Fall". Quite a quirky piece really.

I love Vivienne Moir ceramics. They are delightfully quirky and folky. This is "Girl With A Bird"

"Queen of the Garden" also by Vivienne Moir

This is "Blue Trees and Black Birds by Nikki Monaghan.

This beautiful picture is Moonlit Loch by Dionne Sievewright.

We visited my brother and his partner today to see their three new kittens. My photos of them weren't brilliant so instead I will show you a picture of my cat Jack pretending he is still a kitten.

From a real kitty to two who are not so real. This is "Blue Cat". These two linocuts are by Richard Bawden.

"Sasha"

These are some of the lovely blooms received by my parents for their wedding anniversary.

I visited the wonderful five floors high Waterstones bookshop in Piccadilly when I visited London. Five floors of books was totally irresistible and the 1930's building is also quite amazing. It was once the department store Simpsons and is now the largest bookshop in Europe. I found a brilliant artbook about printmaking there. It describes in detail all the different forms of printmaking and has the most gorgeous illustrations. I have posted a couple of pages from the book below. I have to thank friends Hannah, Keiran and Alice for my lovely book token which went towards the purchase. I am so glad this book has come to live with me...lol.

As for Waterstones Piccadilly - I will be back!

Michael Morgan is an extraordinary artist. His images take watercolour to a new level, filling his paintings with depth and texture and brilliant colour. I love the way he does his trees; it reminds me very much of John Blockley's trees which I also love. John Blockley was Michael Morgan's mentor and they both seemed to have shared a love of trees and isolated farms in the landscape. Michael doesn't just paint what he can see, but adds his own special sense of design and artistry to make the scene even better.

The images below are all the work of Michael Morgan from his first wonderful book of the same name and in collaboration with Simon Butler. I can thoroughly recommend his books if you want a collection of wonderful images. This one was borrowed from the library but I intend to get my own copy asap. You can obtain his books from Amazon. Michael's work can also be seen here.

Autumn Morning

Melted Snow 2

Isola d'Elba

Nightfall

Pembrokeshire Farm 3

November Farm

Farm With Five Trees

Michael Morgan

I found this lovely Kelly Hyatt card for Lagomdesign in Scribbler in London. Very vibrant and contemporary.

Below are some of the images in the Byzantium exhibition found on the Royal Acadamy website.

Illuminated manuscript 1100 to 1150.

Church shaped incense burner dated 10th to 11th century.

Ivory with Archangel 525-550 AD

12th century icon of Archangel Michael

I had a lovely day in London on Thursday. I had gone specifically to visit an exhibition mentioned by another blogger acornmoon who had visited it and was very impressed. It is called Byzantium and as its title suggests, it is a large collection of the most exquisite decorative items from the Byzantine period. This period stretches from 300 /400 AD to 1400/1500. It is located in the area around what was formerly Constantinople and then became Istanbul.

The items on show included icons of all descriptions, painted, jewelled, plastered, gorgeous intricate jewellery, the most detailed ivory carvings I have ever seen, illuminated manuscripts etc. It is wonderful to gaze at the writings of scribes from the dark ages which have survived in almost perfect condition. The intricacy of the decoration is impossible to describe and has to be seen to be believed. It must have taken the craftsmen concerned years of painstaking work to produce a very small item. There were quite a few beautiful mosaic exhibits too and some micromosaics. Creating those must have been very hard on the eyes.

The exhibition was very well worth the visit and my only complaint was that there were too many people there to make the tour comfortable. I can understand that they would want to get as many people in as possible in order to balance the books, but you didn't feel that you could linger too long in front of one glass case because there were dozens of people waiting to get a look too. I just managed to visit in time as it finishes on Sunday.

Christmas Is Fast Approaching

This is the coloured version of my pen and ink drawing posted last week. It didn't take too long to colour either. Not sure why blogger is making it blurred. You may need to click on it for a larger version to see it better.

I love the old retro cloche hats of the 30s. I wish they were still popular today. These two are definitely over-the-top but I think the idea is ok.

This is just a quick fantasy drawing I did today. I love these colours and may use them for other pictures. This piece is entitled The Headdress.

This is another Christmas card design using the same tree I posted previously under a different guise. I am not too sure whether the gold star looks right but otherwise I think it is quite a pretty image. This is an actual London tree.

This is the finished Christmas card which I am using for my brother's cards this year. Quite minimal but wintry I hope.

Lovely contemporary image of deer by Caroline Gardner cards. Lovely modern palette.

This was a previous Christmas card from Caroline Gardner cards but far too nice to send to anyone...lol.

This is an Oxfam Christmas 2008 card. Not sure who the designer is but it is beautifully detailed and full of inspiration for those of us who love trees and leaves. Oxfam seem to have gone over to much more contemporary cards this year and I think the designs are a great improvement. I overheard one of the elderly ladies who serve behind the counter saying she hated them though. Still you cannot please everyone.

The following images are paintings by the English artist Clare Shepherd. You can find here website here.

Christmas is getting ever closer and I have been on the lookout for new and interesting Christmas card designs. There was a time when I used to buy lots and lots of packets of cards, usually charity cards. But times is 'ard these days and now I only purchase the designs I cannot live without and leave the others on the shelves for wealthier members of the population. I find greetings cards on the whole to be extremely expensive, especially when you think that they cost mere pence to produce en masse. I don't mind if a decent amount of the profit goes to the charity concerned, but sometimes I wonder if that is the case. Why am I buying cards anyway, I can hear you thinking, when I have the means to produce my own. Don't ask. I think it is something to do with the grass being greener on the other side of the fence or perhaps other designers' images being better than mine.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, I have long admired Caroline Gardner cards and I have posted a couple with deer images. One is this year's and one is from a previous year but was too nice to send...hah hah. I don't think you can beat a nice coloured deer at Christmas. You might want to check out her website. She is another person who seems to revel in lots of lovely colours.

How many sketch books do you possess? I have a few and some of them have pristine pages. Why? Because I find it very difficult to sketch in a sketch book. I tend to sketch and draw on lots of odd bits of paper and old envelopes etc and then I may stick those in the sketch book. Alternatively, I will do my first sketch on rough paper and then produce a slightly better sketch in the sketch book. I find it nearly impossible to do a completely new sketch in the right place first time. I think it has to do with not wanting to mess up lovely white pages and also worrying about filling up the book too quickly as I produce a huge amount of sketches at a time. My brother's partner, Lesley, has just given me a lovely sketchbook with beautiful quality paper but this time I am determined to draw in the right place. Hmmm.... we'll see.

My featured artist this week is Clare Shepherd who is an English artist living in Dorset. She also enjoys teaching art. She has a wonderful colour sense and her paintings are very contemporary with lots of light and colour. She uses shapes to advantage and these veer slightly toward the abstract. Her work covers a very wide spectrum and on her beautiful website here you can find a huge quantity of artwork. I especially enjoy her landscapes of Dorset and Exmoor.