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

A Place For Everything And Everything In Its Place

The title of this post refers to my having another mega clearout. This one is even more mega than the last one. I am going through everything with a fine toothed comb and I am being quite ruthless in disposing of things I don't need or use any longer. Life is far too short to spend hours rumaging through items to find something. Hopefully I will soon have everything in its place.

I made a bit of a blog booboo the other day. I pressed publish post instead of save and I had to delete my incomplete post. What a shame you cannot put a post back into draft. It would have saved me a lot of time. I will be very careful with that in future.

This is part II of The Woman Who Planted Trees series. It has been a long time coming and I bet you cannot remember what part I looked like.

I have produced 8 new bird drawings this week. Here are 4 of them. I will probably make them into greetings cards. Hearts are my favourite icon at the moment.
The birds inspired me to do a bit of practice bird embroidery. I found it a lot harder than I expected as my machine kept doing its own thing. You can tell it is a practice piece as I didn't bother to iron out the creases...haha.

This is one of the roses in our garden from summers past when there was a touch of sun and a little moisture. Pretty isn't it?

A greetings card I bought on holiday in Cornwall a couple of years ago. I was very drawn by the beautiful colours and the delicacy of the artwork. It is by Sam Lauren Smith and she is an artist who produces a lot of her work as greetings cards and prints. Her paintings are quite mythic in subject matter with lots of trees and birds (just up my street...haha). Here is her website.

Penny Williams is a designer/maker of handmade jewellery and metal-work. She has some gorgeous quirky pieces on her website here. The majority of her humorous characters are cats, dogs and chickens and she gives them lovely little personalities all of their own.

Leopard Brooch

It's A Dog's Life Pendulum

Flying Chicken Brooch

This beautifully whimsical print is Zebra by Angela Harding. Angela is a painter/printmaker with a beautiful style and a lovely website here.

Now that the rain has abated temporarily and summer has returned, it is once again time for tea in the garden. If you are eating from the chinaware below then you are very lucky indeed. There are so many gorgeous patterns and designs on everything these days but particularly china. These items can be found among many other delights here at Artedona.

This has to be my favourite design. These butterflies are exquisite. This is Filet a Papillons by Alberto Pinto.

A stunning design by Gien called Cherry but you may find it difficult to decide where the pattern ends and the food starts.

and tasting tea from these beauties but always with the little finger extended. This design is Frivole by Bernardaud and is deliciously elegant.

My eldest brother and his partner have gone away for the weekend so we have been kitten and cat sitting. The kittens are not kittens any longer but have reached that lovely sinuously skinny and leggy stage. They are into everything though and are probably the feline equivalent of the human toddler but without the tantrums. They are spending most of their time in the garden racing to the tops of trees, poking frogs in the ponds, jumping over the fences into the neighbours gardens , in fact, all over the shop and behind the counter. Suddenly all is quiet and they are fast asleep.

Abbey just coming awake.

I had to gently dissuade Poppy from taking a pot shot at the bee at the top of this plant. Stung kitty is not pleasant.

Licketty taking a short break from his mischief making.

If you love gardens and you love art you will adore the artistic gardens of David Suff. He is a highly acclaimed and awarded artist who uses the techniques of printmaking and coloured pencil to achieve his stunning results. I didn't realise that coloured pencils could look this vibrant and detailed. The depth of colour he achieves is outstanding. I could be very happy wandering leisurely through his art gardens on a summer evening. He gives his work intriguing titles too. You can see lots more of his work on his website here. Don't forget to click on the numbers below and to enlarge each of the small images to see the entire site, including the commissioned section. It is well worth it. The three images below are David's work.

Conversation In A Shadowed Garden

Where Time And Memory Merge

Strange Boat

Yuri Poberezhny is a Russian graphic pen and ink artist of great talent. I love his style, subject matter and the incredible detail he achieves. As primarily a pen and ink artist myself I can appreciate just how long it must take him to produce the images. His work has the look of stunning Russian fairytale illustrations although it also has a very contemporary feel. He works as a teacher in junior art school and his inspirations are garnered from the children, his town and his country and memories of childhood. You can find ten pages of Yuri's illustrations on the great Artnow.ru website here and he also has a page on the Saatchi website here. A great talent.

Vintage Greetings Cards and Small Designs

Fantasy flowers in watercolour

A pen and ink design I did some time ago but which I really like

This is a greeting card design with watercolour and digital colour

A very stylised sun design with spiral overload

Pen and Ink mermaid with digital colours

The bright little piggy really can fly

Pen and Ink stylised heron and decorative tree

The following are a selection of vintage greetings cards from my collection. Click on the cards if you would like to see them in large format.

This was my most expensive card. It has flowers painted in watercolours on the front and extensively inside the card. This must have taken someone a long time to create.

Violets are a very popular theme for vintage cards. These are all handpainted with watercolours.

These cards are all handpainted. The two bottom ones look as if they been made at home.

I don't collect many things but one collection I have been adding to over the years is my collection of vintage greetings cards. I started it about fifteen years ago and it has grown quite large now. At one time they were very cheap to obtain but prices have gone up these days but I think they are still worth it. My oldest card is dated 1884 and I have quite a few others of the late 1800s but the majority are early 1900 and some are around about the time of the second world war. It is possible for an expert to tell the age of a card by the style but I prefer to have the date inside - much easier. It is lovely to find cards which have the magic date but the majority are just signed. I must admit I never write the date in Christmas cards and birthday cards that I send.

The recipients of most of these cards seem to have mounted them in scrap books and therefore, when you buy them, most have the remains of glue on the back. I have seen entire scrapbooks full of these cards for sale on Ebay and in antique shops. I have even bought them at car boot sales.

My favourites are the hand painted ones, and surprisingly most of them are commercially produced and are not handmade at home. I can just imagine rows of ladies (it has to be ladies) sitting at benches and painting the designs in watercolour. I suppose in a way we have come full circle these days with the enormous interest in handmade greetings cards.

I have a few with distinctly art nouveau designs and some with images which became popular in the 1920s and 1930s. One very interesting one shows an image of a swastika and the card says "good luck". Quite a surprise really until I found out that the swastika image was in use in ancient times. It was hijacked by the Nazi's in the late 1930s and its original meaning was forgotten. This is obviously a card dated prior to the 1930s.

I hope you enjoy having a look at my collection. This is only a very small selection and I am always keeping my eye open for new (old) cards. I love to look through them every so often and read the notations and imagine the senders carefully penning their names. The cards come up quite large if you click on them.

I have been drawing and painting quite a few small designs this week which I hope you like. I was digitally colouring one of my large cockerel drawings and enjoying it immensely when the computer died on me and I lost a good half of what I had done. The moral of the tale is save, save, save your artwork in case the compu