A Mixed Bag

I hope everyone enjoyed their Halloween. We had a fairly uneventful trick or treat evening. We only had one tiny little person who was quite unrecognisable as a human being until a little voice piped up "trick or treat". I thought it safest to agree with a treat. Some years we have a flurry of rings on the doorbell and other years we don't have any.

I actually managed to get my linocut finished this week. It has been on the go for quite a while. When I am not sure how to proceed with a particular piece of art I tend to leave it for a while and then go back to it and see if something springs to mind. Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't. I have pieces of art that I haven't been able to finish for some months. I find, on the whole, it is helpful to go back later and see the piece with fresh eyes.

The Apple Seller

This is a watercolour of a Red Kite that I drew for a friend. I have just added a digital background but the original was on white paper. Getting the feathers right was very tricky but luckily Red Kites have now become very common (whereas once they were virtually wiped out in Britain), and there is lots of reference material around.

This is the linocut I started when I had my little blog "holiday" a few weeks ago. No it didn't take that long to do. I just put it aside because I wasn't sure what to do for the background. I decided a bird on her head would look good. My art motto could be described as "when in doubt draw a bird". I quite like it but I think I may rework the stars. They look a bit clumpy.

Every so often I like to put some of my designs on greetings cards for my and my family's use. This is the latest batch.

I was searching for something in vain the other day among all my art accountrements when I found my long lost charcoal sticks. I used to use them quite a lot years ago but then they disappeared into the great black hole that is my workroom. I can see they were bought years ago because they only cost £1 for a pack of about 20 sticks. Anyway, I decided to give them a whirl and I came up with these two very sultry ladies. I like them for doing spontaneous drawing. Most of my work is very precise and considered and it is good to break the bonds now and again. Mind you I was very dirty after this little effort. Now I remember why I stopped using them - ohh and I didn't find what I was originally searching for either.

This gorgeous graphic illustration by Mikki Rain is one of my favourites. So beautifully designed and great colours.

I found these two great card designs by "Alice Palace" which is a small company producing greetings cards in Evesham in Worcestershire. It is run by two sisters Alice and Liz and the emphasis is very much on fun. The cards have little bits of text here and there and sayings to make people feel happy and lots of magical designs. They have a wonderfully crazy website here and that includes a great blog with lots going on. I shall certainly be visiting again.

Two autumn inspired pieces - the lovely ceramic plate is by Etsy seller SayYourPiece. She produces some great ceramics here...

and a wonderful piece of graphic art by Semen Kapralov entitled Riddle Of Autumn.

I visited a local town's antique shops the other day and one of them features lots of Christmas goodies like Gisela Graham. I love her wonderful figures. There is a large range now and they are all lovely. I couldn't resist this tin Rudoph with his stripey legs and scarf and upright antlers. Here he is with my brass Rudolph that I bought from a charity shop ages ago. They seem to be getting to know one another and I am sure they will soon be firm friends...

and these are two lovely Gisela Graham girls that I bought last year. I have posted this picture before but I thought you wouldn't mind seeing it again as they are so cute.

The trees are all knee deep in their autumn colours now. Lots of beautiful browns, golds, yellows and oranges. These are all views from my locality. I think walking in autumn is the best time of year, perhaps even better than spring. I would be quite content in a world of spring and autumn only. I just wish the gorgeous colours would last longer. The weather forecast tonight is for rain and gales and that will soon bring the leaves off the trees...sigh.

I love quirky - and these pieces by Jenny Southam definitely fit the bill. Jenny creates her ceramics in hand built terracotta which is then glazed. Her characters do delightfully prosaic things like drinking tea in the orchard and painting toe nails. She has a website here with lots of her ceramics on show and a view of her wonderfully busy studio.

Pew Couple With Hearts

Lovers In An Orchard

I found a lovely card whilst out shopping the other day by an artist I am not familiar with. Her name is Lisa Hooper and she is an artist/printmaker who produces beautiful images of wildlife and nature. Her curlews are a delightful linocut and so is the wonderful hare image below. Lisa was born in Hampshire but now lives and works in Dumfries and Galloway - a beautiful area of lowland Scotland which I have visited a number of times. She also creates handmade books, and paper batiks and other forms of printmaking, as well as teaching workshops. I wished I lived up there and could take one of her workshops. You can see what she does on her interesting website here, and there are lots more of her artwork displayed at the Rockcliffe Gallery here.

A Head Of Curlews

Machars Hare

The work below is by very talented artist/printmaker Guiliana Lazzerini. Her work is very varied both in media and subject matter but one theme which is recurring is her love of her homeland in Italy, although she now lives and works in Yorkshire.. The soft, bright colours of her landscapes are beautiful. She also produces monoprints and other monochromatic scenes, and birds feature a great deal in her artwork. You can find her work in lots of galleries if you enter her name into a search engine but her own website can be found here.

Young Dreamer

Birds Watcher

Southern Village

The Messenger

Forest Breeze

Art In Action 2009 (Part One)

The is the first of my posts about Art In Action at Waterperry. Hope you enjoy it.

This is a digitally coloured drawing called Freedom. I found the deer image in my copyright free book of animals.

I am really into boats at the moment. This is The Navigator and is a pen and ink drawing. Probably not a terribly sea worthy vessel. If you enlarge the drawing you will see that she is holding an owl. The navigator is, of course, the cockerel.

This is called The Butterfly Collector. Of course she only collects butterflies to draw and paint them and then she sets them free. No nasty pins and glass cases for this lady.

Here it is in detail

I was very pleased to be able to get to the Art In Action event this year. The weather was quite kind to us too. Art In Action is an art and craft show where nearly every artistic discipline is demonstrated by experts. There were 250 artists present at this year's show. Sadly I didn't get a chance to see everything because there were over 35 huge tents and marquees to visit. You would have to take advantage of the 2-3 and 4 day tickets. If I lived closer I think I would have definitely gone back for another day. There was so much to see and experience. What I did see was wonderful and I hope the photos below give an indication of how great it was. This is my first post on the show and I will do a second next week.

One of the first marquees I went into on reaching the fair was the Illustration area where I met Jackie Morris. I have featured Jackie's art in a previous post and I was very keen to see some of it first hand. I was not disappointed. Her work is beautiful when reproduced but it is even more superb when seen in real life. The colours are quite incredible. Jackie was just as I imagined she would be. She was very busy with book signing and answering questions about the piece she was working on etc. Her husband was also present to lend his support. It was quite difficult to get close enough to see all her work as there was quite a press of interested people examing the pictures and books. The photo is of Jackie chatting to an interested spectator.

These are two Jackie Morris cards which I bought. They show her technique really well. Her ability with watercolour is amazing. They are handmade by Jude Howells.

This is the stand of Rosi Robinson who is a batik artist. Rosi was in the "Market" section of the show which meant she had a display stand for sales but didn't have to demonstrate her craft. She has a website here.

This is the Italian artist Michele Del Campo who was giving a painting demonstration. His work is bright, colourful and super realistic and he produces huge canvases. His website can be found here. I wish I could have had so much more time there in order to stand and watch all the artists and craftspeople demonstrating their art, but there was just so much to see.

This is the fabulous beaded African Crucifix. It was created by the Ubuhle artists. They are a group of African women who use tiny beads to create wonderful images on cloth. These ladies live a very poor lifestyle in rural Natal in South Africa and put their heart and soul into their craftwork. This piece was an incredible 7 and a half by 4 and a half metres and the detail of the beading was incredibly beautiful. If you enlarge the picture you can see the size of the piece by relation to the people below.

The story of Ubuhle is a wonderful one whereby many women have been taught to bead and make jewellery and other items in order to create an income for themselves and their families and to improve their lives. You can read all about them on their website here.

Detail of African Crucifix

This is a close-up of the beadwork but you will need to enlarge the image to see it properly.

In amongst all the art and craft it was necessary to feed the parts that need feeding and here is a shot of the afternoon tea table. All very yummy.

These are views of Robert Race's stand. Robert is a designer/maker of toys and sculptures made from wood. His work is delightful and I loved those quirky little birds. You can see some more pieces on his website here.

Jane Hickman was displaying her wonderful collection of batiks and cards. She is such a talented artist with a brilliant sense of colour. I posted earlier about my little collection of her beautifully batiked birds which I have prints of. I mentioned a new one which I really wanted and guess what... here it is. So beautiful. I love these colours. You can find Jane's website here.

Purple Partridge

The Mexican marquee was full of bright colours as you can image. It was a wonderful display of the native arts of the country.

Arturo Sosa Perez is one of the best crafters of tin ornaments in Mexico and was demonstrating his art. He had a wonderfully bright display of his craftwork. The colours were amazing as you can see here. The cut paper work above is by Adriana Amaya and the art is known as Papel Picado.

These sculptures are by Miriam Ladron De Guevara. She had some lovely work on display. She told me that she had only arrived in England a day or so ago and had come straight to AIA to demonstrate her work. I bought these two images below on cards but I had to help her out with the currency.

Juan Alcazar was another artist in the Mexican marquee. He is a painter and printmaker and his etchings are quite beautiful. There were quite a few I would have liked to carry off home with me. You can see more of his work here at the Davidson Gallery

Hojas al Viento

Nocturno

Caminando con las Miradas

A Big Welcome To 2009

Hello Everyone. Nice to be back after the holidays. I hope you all had a lovely time and enjoyed Christmas and the New Year.

Here is my first offering of 2009. I so liked the little angel dog on the woman's shoulder in the picture below that I decided to give them a whole page to themselves.

I received these lovely little fabric collages in the post after winning them on Colette's giveaway. Colette makes wonderful printed and fabric items and collages from her own designs. Lots of lovely birds too. Have a look at her great blog here.

She also has a delightful Etsy shop here which is well worth a peek. Thanks very much for these pretty items Colette. I am very lucky to have won three giveaways now. Unfortunately this image won't click to increase the size. I find that Blogger always does this at least once in every post, but you can see Colette's work more clearly on her various sites.

This is just a quick fun drawing I did on the computer while messing around in PS. I liked the result. Pen and ink and digital colour nearly always produces an interesting result.

I really enjoyed doing this pen and ink and fibre tip pen artwork. I like the cute little dog too. Not any breed I recognise though.

This is Princess Lily. I decided, quite by chance, to use a different colour scheme here, and I must say I quite like it. It is a little like a brown paper collage on blue backing paper, but it isn't. One of my all time favourite films is Ridley Scott's "Legend" with Tim Curry as the evil devil and a very young and crooked toothed Tom Cruise who falls in love with Princess Lily. This picture doesn't resemble Mia Sara at all but it gives the general idea. The film is full of forests of improbably huge trees (where did they get them?) elves, fairies, unicorns and wicked goblins and butterflies and blossom drifting on the air. Delicious escapism.

The pictures below are from this new book about embroidered textiles of the world. It is a huge, beautifully illustrated book with sections devoted to geographical areas such as India, Eastern Europe etc and also cultures, past and present. There are oodles of gorgeous photos and pen and ink drawings of patterns. Very inspiring. You may need to click on the pictures to get a clearer view. Tons of inspiration to be had here. Very glad it came to live with me..lol.

These are three of my winter tree photos to illustrate stand alone trees, although technically speaking this one below is a two together tree. Just a minor point.

The following images are the work of printmaker and artist Hannah Firmin. Her work is very popular and well known and I have posted a couple of links below where her work can be found or just type in her name in a search engine and you will come up with lots of hits.

Well I hope everyone has had a lovely Christmas and New Year and has come out the other end unscathed. It has certainly been a cold one in England. We have had lots of frost at night and lovely, sparkly white mornings. I love hoar frosts when all the trees and bushes are covered with white sparkles. Makes lovely photos if you can get up early enough before the frost disperses.

I love the trees at this time of the year. Spring and summer trees are beautiful of course, but skeletal winter trees are so interesting because you can see their form much more clearly. I really enjoy seeing their individual shapes and the way each species' branches grow. I think I prefer to draw winter trees, partly because they are much easier...ha ha.

There are lots of wonderful tree groups on Flickr where you can immerse yourselves in tree photos to your hearts' content. One of my favourites is the "lone tree" group which, as the name implies, illustrates lone trees in the landscape. Wonderful. I have included a few of my winter photos which you might like.

My artist this week is Hannah Firmin. She is a very well-know English illustrator and printmaker who has illustrated many products, magazines, books etc. She is probably best know for her illustrations of the No 1 Ladies Detective Agency. I expect everyone will recognise these artworks from the bookshelves. Her work is colourful, detailed, graphic and dramatic and covers a huge range of subject matter. A selection of her work can be found here and here.

I actually met Hannah at the Art In Action event at Waterperry in Oxfordshire a few years ago, where she was demonstrating printmaking. She is very interesting to watch and listen to as she knows her profession really well and can impart lots of useful titbits of information which is useful to us "less than perfect" linocutters. She made it all look so easy and of course it isn't...lol.

Sorry about the quality of some of the scanned images as my scanner is really playing up.