Caroline Ireland and Stained Glass

I went for a slightly 20s hairdo here. The flowers are fibre tipped pen colours. Don't you just love Staedtler fine tipped pens? I am not sure if she is wearing anything apart from the flowers though...!

I like stark white trees on coloured backgrounds. Could be a bit Christmassy with a wee bit of a tweek here and there.

Pen and ink illustration of a woman and a tern. I love terns with their cute black caps. I will have to try and get my ladies to "smile". They all look far too serious for my liking. Mind you having a bird about to entangle itself in your hair is probably quite a serious matter.

Pen and ink with digital colouring. I had high hopes of this one originally but it didn't turn out as I intended. I suppose it is an example of co-ordination with nature. Oh well, you win some and you lose some.

Some examples of stained glass windows found local to my home. You probably need to click on them to get a clearer version.

The following images are of artwork by Caroline Ireland and are produced using a combination of wet watercolour and pastels. I think my favourite one is the bird in the tree. It is a magical explosion of colour.

Sunday again and time for another blog. I spent some time doing one of my favourite things this week, and that is looking in old churches. I love everything about old parish churches and even better if they are over 500 years old. I think so much prayer, meditation and thinking of others in churches becomes embedded in the atmosphere, and I must say I have never been in a church and felt uncomfortable. I particularly love looking at and photographing stained glass windows. Admittedly much of the stained glass we see in our churches today is Victorian or later. The very first churches had plain glass windows. I stand and gaze in awe at the artistry and craftsmanship of the men and women who designed and made these beautiful objects. A bit like wonderful monumental sculptures of angels in churchyards, they are often overlooked. Not by me though. A church local to me actually has a tiny stained glass window dating from the 1300s. Isn't that incredible?

I have posted a couple of my photos of windows that I have discovered in my travels. Stained glass has a unique quality of colour that cannot be replicated by any artistic media that I know of. It has a intensity and vibrancy all of its own and although we all try to replicate that, we never can. I certainly cannot anyway. I have quite a few books on stained glass which I like to browse through now and again when I am looking for inspiration for colours. I particularly like the depictions of angels with the fabulous colours and patterns of the wings and the robes.

Anyway, to change the subject; my featured artist this week is Caroline Ireland. I have long been an admirer of her work but it is not for the minimalist. Her artwork has colour in spades. In fact, I think she probably uses every single shade of colour known, in each picture. I love them for their vivid, beautiful colours and patterns and mystical subject matter. She can be found at the totallyessential website here. If you click on the artists directory at the top, then click "I" on the alphabet, it will show you Caroline's name second down on the list. Some of the pictures I have posted are no longer on the website but she has lovely work there and it is well worth a look. She does with colour what none of us would dare.

Well, that is all from me this week. Hope you enjoy my artwork. I have placed it well away from Caroline's....lol.

Inuit Women's Art and yet more trees....!

This is the finished three tree drawing. I really enjoyed this piece. Looks a million times better in real life but don't they all....lol

Guess what...another tree design. I am not too enthused with this one for some reason. I may improve upon it in the future.

This is a very decorative and stylised leaf design I drew sometime ago. It made a nice image for a greeting card.

Young Mother And Children from Inuit Women Artists. This is my absolute favourite from the book. I love the bold, graphic quality of the illustration and the cute little children, especially the tiny one on her shoulder.

Affectionate Mother from Inuit Women Artists

Bird Landscape from Inuit Women Artists

Red-necked Loon from Inuit Women Artists

Woman Proudly Sewing from Inuit Women Artists. This is one of my favourite illustrations from the book. I love that little baby cuddled into his mum's neck.

I have an extensive (some say too extensive) library of inspirational, art and craft books. One I have had for many years is "Inuit Women Artists" and is a very large book filled with wonderful illustrations, many stone carved, of inuit or eskimo life in the Cape Dorset area of Baffin Island. There are about 9 women featured and it details their beautiful artwork, inspired by their culture and their environment.

It is a whole world away from what we understand and their lives can be very difficult due to the extremely harsh elements they survive in. Until I bought this book many years ago I had never even thought of the inuit having any artistic or craft traditions, but they do and they are wonderful Their work is quite naive and primitive in some ways but quite complex in others and has a lovely graphic quality. I hope you find these illustrations as inspiring as I do.

I was so pleased with my three pen and ink and watercolour trees from my last post that I decided to work the image up into a finished drawing. The trees came to represent spring, summer and autumn because of their tones of green and I added a contemporary figure to fill the picture our a bit more. I am quite pleased with the result. I am becoming a real fan of ink cross-hatching these days. Prior to this I always added tone to a drawing using pointillism (tiny dots of ink) but that technique is so laborious that it takes about an hour to produce a small square (1") of drawing. Cross-hatching is wonderfully quick and you can see the drawing taking shape much more rapidly. I still prefer pointillism for realistic looking animals or birds and portraits though.

My First Collage

My very first collage

Pen and ink and watercolour trees

Stylised pen and ink drawing of rooks done a couple of years ago

Spring is passing much too quickly for me. I haven't enough time to appreciate all the lush beauty and colour of this, my favourite season. I would like to hang on to it but I know that we are heading quickly for summer and a totally different shade of green. Still, each season has its own particular beauty to appreciate. My aliums in the garden are blooming beautifully and I have seen some truly wonderful ones in other peoples' gardens too. I have posted a picture of aliums near our local churchyard. I really must get around to producing an alium inspired piece of art.....hmmm....will have to think about that.

I love drawing, with my very fine pens, on watercolour paper and then painting parts of the drawing. My "very best friend" paper of the moment is Arches 90lb watercolour paper. It is quite fine and tends to cockle if it is painted over the whole surface, but is perfect for the odd touch of watercolour here and there. I love the crisp texture. I drew three stylised trees and painted the leaves of each with different shades of green. I love fine, delicate painting best. I am not so good with covering large areas with washes and I think that is why I am no landscape artist. I cross hatched the trunk and branches of the trees in ink. I go off into a world of my own when I am cross hatching with one of my rapidograph pens. It is so soothing and relaxing and is wonderful on a good quality paper. I will probably do a "proper" piece of artwork with this design but will put some birds or little animals in somewhere. It does look a trifle bare.

I also decided to try my hand at collage. I have always admired this technique when other people do it and thought I would have a go myself. I used an old copy of Asiana magazine which has some wonderful photographs of highly colourful and richly decorated saris. I must say I found cutting up some of the shapes very fiddly and got a bit stuck up with pritt stick sometimes but I am quite pleased with how it turned out. I like the contrast of drawing in some of the features and collaging others. Not a bad try for a complete beginner even if I say so myself....lol.