Ceramic Figures and Stripes

This is a digital drawing called Dreaming In Stripes. I have drawn quite a few stripey artworks lately so I will probably have a rest from them. I do like stripes though...!

It has been a while since I posted a quirky drawing so here it is. Balancing On Buttons.

A little bit out of season but this is Winter Fox in ink and watercolour

Does anyone else stockpile greetings cards to keep handy in case of necessity? I have a wonderful collection but unfortunately I like most of them too much to part with them. So, a large collection of cards but only about a fifth of them available for sending to people. My two latest cards are both by Canns Down Press from their Royal Academy range but they do lots of other cards in other ranges. You can find their site here.

Sussex Landscape by Eric Ravilious

Bird's Nest Pattern by Edward Bawden

Harking back to Waterperry; they have some lovely statues in the gardens and these are two of my favourites. Miranda from Shakespeare's The Tempest is below. She resides at one end of the long pond and was sculpted by Tanya Russel. She is well liked by the local spiders judging by the webs on the detail picture.

Lamp of Wisdom by Nathan David. This lovely girl is holding court in the formal garden.

Another lucky charity bookshop find recently was the embroidery book by Verina Warren below. Verina Warren is one of the most talented textile artists in the UK. I have met her at shows and seen her work first hand and it is fabulous. Photos could never do it justice. She paints her backgrounds and then stitches into them to create beautiful textiles. She has a wonderful sense of colour and design. I was pleased to find her book, which, although written in the mid-80s is still very interesting and applicable today. She shows lots of ways in which natural surroundings can be used for contemporary design and embroidery. The book is published by Batsford and can be found here at Amazon UK. But, amazingly enough, I see there are several copies for £0.01. That is even better than my charity shop find. Aren't Amazon amazing for finding out of date book bargains? Verina has a lovely website here with lots of images of her stunning textiles.

Pages from Landscape In Embroidery

Embroidered textiles by Verina Warren.

Dorset Hills

Daisy Field

Music Of The Wind

Has anyone else got a passion for alliums? I think they are absolutely gorgeous flowers. Strange that they are related to the very humble onion. We have quite a few in our garden but there is always room for more and luckily they do spread quite easily. I always ensure a thorough shaking of the seedheed at the end of summer just in case. I expect the slugs feast on them when I am not looking but it makes me feel I am doing something to increase the yield.

We start off quite early in the spring with this beauty.

And going swiftly to this (which is actually not in our garden at all but in a local churchyard).

And stopping off by this on a VERY wet day. (This is one of ours and the poor bee did dry out eventually and live to tell the tale.)

And finally to this which I think is just as beautiful in its own way and very photogenic. I also have a passion for seedheads and alliums are particularly fine. I think I can feel an allium drawing coming on...!

I found the intriguing work of Zoe Rubens whilst I was looking for someone else on the Internet. I was amazed at her talent at both printmaking and ceramic and metal sculpture and altered art. She has developed her own techniques and produces very distinctive and quite complex work. Zoe works from a studio in East Anglia. She has a website here and also a very comprehensive display of her work on her Flickr site here. Well worth a visit.

The Lioness Tamer's Tea Party

I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings

Angel In The Bath Etching

These gorgeous ceramic sculptures were created by the very talented Elya Yalonetski who studied ceramics in Russia before moving to Israel, Moscow and Berlin. I find her work enormously appealing because she likes to sculpt similar subjects to the ones I like to paint and draw ie. angels and ladies with birds on their heads. Her work is whimsical and quirky but beautifully detailed. Elya has an Etsy shop here and you can find lots more of her ceramic delights on the Abramtsevo site here and also on Flickr here.

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