Oxford Churches And Books, Glorious Books

I love drawing this simple black cat shape with crazy coloured backgrounds. I have used this image quite a few times for various pieces of artwork and it still has a lot of mileage left. I love the posture of this cat and the position of the tail.

A pointillist ink portrait of a young woman with a megalithic stone structure in the foreground. This took many weeks of work.

Pen and ink sketch of Art Deco bird and flowers

A selection of clay figures from my newly purchased book. There are another 495 like this. Click on the image to enlarge.

Eye candy for the artist - my purchases from Oxford

View of the beautiful box pews in St. Mary the Virgin at Oxford

I decided to make a visit to Oxford on Thursday. It is somewhere I haven't been for a long time but I decided I needed some me time, so off I went. It turned out to be a cross between retail therapy and church visiting. I love looking round ancient churches and Oxford has some lovely ones. The first one I visited was in a spot where a church had stood for over a thousand years. I love the feeling of sanctity of space in these places which has nothing to do with formal religion. The spaces which churches now occupy were sacred long before Christianity, but I think the worshipping of hundreds of thousands of people has increased the feeling. The second church I visited had some amazing old box pews still insitu. The majority of our parish churches have lost their box pews to conventional pews or chairs. I loved the feeling of cosiness tucked into my little box with the door shut. I should image the congregations of old could snuggle down to some sleep when the sermons got too lengthy.

My retail therapy consisted mainly of bookshops. Oxford has some great bookshops due mostly to the presence of the Universities. I have included a picture of my purchases which include a wonderful book called 500 Figures In Clay and another book which features lovely ceramics and shows step-by-step photos of how they were made. My third book was a Directory of Printmakers which details over a hundred printmakers with their work in full, glorious colour. I am neither a ceramicist or a printmaker but I love to look at the work of other disciplines and gain inspiration from them. I found some lovely greetings cards from another bookshop, but this time in Thame. They had a fantastic display of more designer-type cards and not just the mass produced ones. I could have bought lots more cards, but when I added up the cost of the books I didn't dare. Oh and I forgot to mention the two new pens and the "long" A5 sketchbook for doing my landscape sketches in. I think that just about covers everything. No clothes shopping - I didn't have time!

Lapwings and Digital Colours

A pointillism lapwing drawing which I used for a Christmas card design a few years ago. These runner ducks are one of my favourite motifs and I have used them in lots of drawings and paintings. I think they are just a lovely little composition.

A digitally coloured sketch of a tree which started out as a pen and ink drawing until I played around with colours.
Digitally coloured sketch of a very colourful, stylised tree

Two versions of "Flower of Friendship" - not sure which one I prefer.

I have been doing a bit of doodling with digital drawing this week. I have to be in the mood for drawing on the computer. It is very time consuming as everything has to be so large and can take hours to produce anything. The white runner ducks on blue drawing is a proper artwork but the others are just playing around with shapes and colours. I do like the matt effect of pantone colours and enjoy looking at work other people have produced digitally.

The pointillist picture of lapwings is one I did for Christmas cards a few years ago. I have always been fascinated by lapwings with their little feathery headpieces. I was lucky enough to see some in real life a few weeks ago whilst out with friends in Oxfordshire. It took my brother to point them out though, but once I knew what they were I recognised them...if that makes any sense. They were quite annoyed with us for walking in the vicinity of their nests.

The flower of friendship drawings were ones I did sometime ago which never quite got off the ground. I am sure everyone has some of these tucked away somewhere. I still like the design and will probably eventually complete it but I am not sure which colourway I prefer....decisions, decisions.

I also noticed today that my "love in a mist" flowers are about to bloom. I love these flowers and hope to get a few nice photos of them when they are in bloom. I have nurtured them from seedlings and they have done very well. The garden is very wet at the moment due to all the rain we have had today. Summer seems to have deserted us for the moment. I daresay it will return one of these days.

Dr. Who and the fickle hand of fate....!

This is a mermaid watercolour sketch I did recently. I do enjoy drawing and painting mermaids. I think I may have elongated her body a bit too much . Probably wishful thinking in my case. I am not sure I like the colours in the sea though. I may need to rethink that part.

This is Magda and she is just a figment of my imagination but I do have plans for her in a "proper" drawing at some stage. I like her hair and her rather fancy flower adornment. Definitely a stylish lady.

I enjoy producing pen and ink landscapes with very stylised trees. They are surprisingly quick to draw and have a lovely graphic feel to them.

This is a statue series which I photographed at a local garden centre and then photoshopped for some added drama.

I am a great fan of cats and really enjoyed drawing this pointillist tabby cat some years ago.

I watched a fascinating episode of Dr. Who yesterday which was all about fate and what could happen if we did one little thing differently in our lives and what huge changes there could be. Some of you won't know who Dr. Who is. It is an extremely long running (over 40 years) childrens' (and adult) series about a Time Lord who has control of a time machine and he and his assistants go whizzing through space and time doing good deeds. This episode featured his assistant Donna making a right turn in a car instead of a left turn and it resulted in changes on a global scale and the death of the doctor and many others, not to mention invasion by aliens. Very dramatic stuff. Can't wait for the conclusion next week.

I am sure that any changes which could have occurred in my life would not affect the earth but it is very intriguing to wonder what would have occurred in your own life if you just did one very small but very important thing differently. For instance where would I be now if I had decided nursing wasn't for me all those years ago. What would I be doing and where would I be? For some people it could the decision not to attend a party where they were destined to meet their future husband or wife, or even just deciding to walk along a different path from your usual and meeting someone you would never otherwise have met. So many possibilities and totally fascinating to think about them. I am a great believer in destiny and I think the really important things in our lives are meant to be and they will happen whichever path we take, whereas the smaller and lesser important things are left for us to decide. Anyway that is my theory and I am sticking to it. Nothing to do with art of course but I have been doing a bit of drawing and painting and the results are shown above for your perusal. I think fate and art make a good combination.

My Favourite Illustrator and Pointillism Animals

One of my favourite illustrators

The weather has been dreadful this week. Wet, wet and wet again and then wet somemore, but we are approaching an English summer so what can we expect...lol. The advantage of the rain has been to make the spring greens even more green than ever and everything is fresh and lovely and springlike. I wish this season could last until the autumn - my two favourite seasons of the year.

I have been out photographing as expected and I am very into aliums at the moment. They are one of my favourite flowers, particularly the globe variety and have huge potential for artwork. I can definitely feel an alium picture coming on. I have a fancy to do a "cat with aliums" picture specifically. A delightful combination - I hope anyway.

I have been thinking about showing folk a few of my art and inspiration books and the first one is childrens' book Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden by the wonderful English illustrator Jane Ray. I have seen Jane's work in the flesh so to speak and it is truly vibrant and charming. Her style is a cross between folky and stylised but always very elegant and she has a masterly command of colours. I have included a couple of pages from the book to show her work off. She is immensely popular in English childrens' book illustration with a well deserved reputation. I just wish I could draw and paint like that. I have several childrens' books which I bought simply because I love the illustrations (and I usually read the stories too). I am not so keen on the books for the very young because they are a bit too basic but age group 10 - 14 is usually excellent and quite adult. I hope you admire her art as much as I do.

I have included a couple of very detailed pen and ink drawings which I did many years ago and which are now framed in my home. I wish I had had prints made of them when I had the chance but it is too late now unless I go to all the trouble of unframing them. The fox is totally pointillism and really took about six months to complete. The hares are pointillism although so dark that they look black but the rest is various inky styles. I love the hares image and have toyed with the idea of doing a painted or digital version.

The other picture is a montage of my painted artwork that I originally did for handmade cards but they never quite reached that stage. I like to keep these little painted pieces because I never know when I might fancy going back to them and redoing them as a complete painting. I will get around to everything "one day" I keep telling myself. I am sure everyone else is the same.

Spring Muse and Inky Birds

Tree Doodles

Mute Swan Preening

Rooks In Winter

Grey Heron

Pink Tulips
Local lane

Narcissi

Spring is beautifully underway in England now and I am really enjoying the countryside and all the inspiration it provides. Everything seems so much fuller, fresher and more colourful in the spring after the starkness of winter. I have included a few spring photos to show you what I mean. We are lucky in England to be surrounded by so much rural beauty. We are having quite a wet spring this year and it is making everything quite green and fresh.

I was inspired to do a couple of new pen and ink pictures - one is the grey heron, a bird which is seen quite frequently in our locality, standing in shallow water and just waiting for some unsuspecting frog or fish to wander past. They look beautifully graceful flying with their long, long legs stretched out behind them. I drew the picture in the pointillist technique to show off the delicate grey feathers.

The other is a very decorative, four part, tree inking. Nothing special but I just liked the shapes and wanted to create different textures with the same motif. It was VERY vaguely supposed to resemble a palm tree but I don't think it ended up that way. At least unlike any palm I have ever seen.

Rooks are probably my favourite birds and always epitomise the English countryside for me. I love to hear their noisy cawing in spring, high up in the trees rearing their young and squabbling amongst themselves. My drawing is quite an old one of a rook in a winter setting and was one which I used for Christmas cards some years ago.

The last drawing is a swan inspired by one of my photographs. Swans are so beautiful that it is almost impossible to take a poor photograph of them. They always look so beautiful and graceful. I loved the way this one was ruffling his feathers and his beak was half hidden in the snowy down as he preened. I don't know why he is a he - just one of those things I suppose....LOL I need a bit of colour after all these monochrome pictures so I will have to get the paint box out again.

My linocut is still not ready to be revealed. I am having trouble with the inking process. Getting just the right amount of ink is very difficult: too much and it is blobby, too little and it is patchy. I am pleased with the actual linocut but that was the easy bit. Still, after a bit of trial and error I will have something worth showing hopefully.

PS The nicked and blistered fingers are just starting to recover now!