Last Post Till 2010 - Happy Christmas Everyone

This is my last blog of 2009 so I will be back in the New Year. Have a fabulous Christmas and New Year everyone. (I will be popping in for visits though)

I have recently been introduced to a fascinating new leisure activity called Geocaching. It is basically hiding and seeking treasure. A little box is filled with "treasure" such as coins, spoons, badges, tiny dolls or anything else you have to hand. It is then buried or placed somewhere like a tree stump and the details are recorded at the Geocache website for others to locate. You need a GPS unit to find the location within 50 feet or so and then follow the clues left by the hider. Once you have found the treasure you record your name on the paper in the box, remove an item and replace it with one of your own and re-bury or hide for the next searcher to find. You then log on the website that you have found the item. Sounds simple - not always. We spent our second time hunting in local woodland, ferreting around under holly bushes and scraping over fallen leaves. We found three out of five caches though and got plenty of fresh air and exercise. The caches are always placed on public land and have different degrees of difficulty and any age group can join in . There are thousands of caches all over the country (and all over the world in fact). You can also elect to bury your own for others to find. I love it. You can find the website here if you want to take a look.

Autumn Bird is a digitally coloured drawing.

This is quite an old pen and ink study of a woodland copse near my home.

This is Party Girl in ink and watercolour.

The two seasonal lovelies below are by Florida artist Robin Maria Pedrero. I love the style of pastel shades and incomplete colouring that she has used here. Gorgeous work. You can find Robin here on her website and here on her Etsy shop. She also blogs here.

Partridge In A Pear Tree

Fancy Partridge In A Pear Tree

I found some gorgeous rag rugs when I was looking for santa gifts the other day. The site is called the Star Rug Company and you can find it here. They have some beautiful primitive type designs. I couldn't resist the sheep with a bird on its back...who can?

Lazy Sheep

and a couple of lovely seasonal rugs below

Santa and Reindeer Rug

Mr Snowman

I said I would post a photo of all the Christmas cards when they were completed and here it is. There are 111 cards here and they took a looooong time to do. I hope the recipients like them.

I took this a couple of days on our geocaching adventures. These are the sort of surroundings where a lot of caches are hidden. Great fun, healthy exercise and lots of tree photo opportunities.

I love this picture of a tree skeleton that I took a couple of years ago. It really showed white like old bones in the sunlight. It is almost sculptural in its beauty.

A final leaf caught on a branch.

I found some lovely work by ceramic artist Sue Tirrell the other day. Sue is a ceramic sculptor and potter working in Montana, USA who also teaches workshops. She has a very wide range of her work on her website here. Her inspirations are western art, contemporary and folk art. I love her almost linocut type images on her platters and pots. Very folky and graphic. You can also find her work here at Mudfire and here at Art Fusion.

Bird and Branch Platter

Goose Platter

Red Rooster Pitcher

Rabbit Platter

The three lovely etchings below are by UK artist and printmaker Laurie Rudling who works from her studio in Norwich. She admits to being an artist of landscape and the built environment. She produces etchings and collographs and has an lovely collection on her website here. I have seen some of her work in a local gallery and it is very subtle and beautiful.

Midwinter Calm

Rooks

Winter I

I found this wonderful book the other day about Textiles of the World. It is a large book and is jam packed with gorgeous colour photography and drawings. I have posted a few pages from the book but they don't do it justice. It covers all sorts of different patterns, fabrics, methods of production, tie dying, batik, embroidery, applique, molas. The list is endless. So much colourful inspiration I am overwhelmed. It is published by Thames and Hudson and is written by Catherine Legrand. A really monumental work. It is the sort of book you can dip into anytime when you have a few minutes. I have added this to my very extensive Amazon Wish List.

Molas

Indian Textiles

Guatemalan Textiles

Woven Textile Bags

Hester Cox is a UK artist/printmaker who produced the beautiful prints below. She lives in the lovely North Yorkshire area of Masham where she holds printmaking workshops. She is heavily influenced by the English landscape, myths and symbolism. I particularly like her work on the subject of hares - always close to my heart. She has named her artwork by the old names given to the hare in a fifteenth century hunting poem which has been translated by Seamus Heaney. You can find it here. It makes fascinating reading. I produced a hare drawing years ago with a lot of these names around the outside of the circle containing the hares. My favourites are: The Dew-Flirt, The Furze-Cat and The Purblind. You can find Hester's website here with lots of examples of her work.

Swift As A Hare

Protected

Rookery

The Lurker

The Messenger

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