K & S Show Part Two And Lovely Christmas Cards

Christmas is drawing ever closer and we have had a reasonable fall of snow already. The temperatures have been bitter (for England anyway). We have had a brief respite over the weekend but further icy weather is forecast. I hope everyone is feeding the birds.

I have always wanted to create a drawing with the title Ship Of Fools, and here it is. It is a pen and ink drawing with a digitally coloured background. Yes, I know it is more like a shallow boat than a ship, but that is artistic licence for you. I rarely draw men and I know they are a bit effeminate looking but they are men. Perhaps I need to square off the jawline a little...!

Ship Of Fools

The latest offering from my sketchbook project. I bet you are wondering how I will weave in the words "if you lived here". I really like this image and I will probably do it as a "proper" drawing soon. It is the last word in quirkiness.

It was a really cold and wet day when I decided to drive over to my favourite local art and craft gallery. They have a great Winter Show which I always enjoy visiting and what better way to take your miind off the inclement weather. I found masses of lovely things I would like to have bought but I contented myself with two lovely painted plaster angels. They have several different styles of dresses and postures but these two appealed to me the most.

You can see in the photo below that I have also recently treated myself to some sweet little Orla Kiely boxes in her divine large and small stem print. John Lewis have a good display of OK goods including diaries, notebooks and wrapping paper as well as different sizes of boxes. You can find some of her boxes here but they are selling out quickly. What to put in two little boxes...that is the question? Don't say presents for people either - these are mine!

I have also fallen in love with white frames recently. This one is the famous Ribba frame from Ikea here and it suits my prints down to the ground because it gives them a lovely fresh look. They don't even need matting.

and here is a closer look of the two little angels. They are so cute.

I was delighted whilst out walking a few weeks ago to come upon a field containing three horses as it was an opportunity to photograph their tails. I have always had a fascination with horses manes and tails and I love to see them swishing. It is a great challenge to try and photograph them and keep them in focus but it doesn't always work. Here are a few pictures of the horses and the back views of the swishy tails. Didn't do too badly did I?

Here is a little look at some of the 2010 Christmas cards I will be sending out this year. Anyone noticed the preponderance of birds? As is my usual habit I keep one card for myself and send the others out.

Sally Elford is a very well-known designer and she created this Dove Of Peace. A strong contender in the favourite Christmas cards stakes. Published by Woodmansterne.

Proud Partridge by Galia Bernstein. This one is beautifully designed and so very pretty. It is also published by Woodmansterne. Galia is a very talented artist who also creates wonderful ceramics. Have a look at her blog here.

This little lovely is a Robert J Reader card by TheArtFile. Not a traditional Christmas colour but definitely stunning. Deer always get my vote.

This lovely graphic design is Partridge by Jack Jones Design and is part of Portfolio's Dada range of cards.

Gorgeous traditional design called Dove by Janet Lawson produced by Ling Design. Ling do some amazing greetings cards.

Below are some photos I took on my recent travels around the district. I love the old decorative gate below. Hmmm...I think it might find its way into my sketchbook project book.

Huge quantities of berries around this year - a sign of a hard winter? We shall see.

Churchyard umbellifers - I liked the pinky out of focus gravestone in the background.

Umbellifers against a stormy sky hosting a busy little spider.

The following are a few general views of the Knitting And Stitching Show. They were taken in the late afternoon when the huge crush of people had died down. Much better time to take photographs. One thing about an otherwise exemplarily run show is the crazy stand numbering system which never fails to confuse everyone. What happened to good old A1, B1 etc.

The retrospective of the late Julia Caprara was marvellous. She was a wonderfully talented fibre artist, embroiderer and teacher. I love the use of bright and beautiful colour in her work; something she was well known for. She was very keen on hand embroidery which gave her work a lovely handmade look. The work below is all hers from the Show.

Highcliff Summer

Suffolk Meadow

Tree Of Life

Renewal - The Voice From The Fire

Detail of Peace Mandala

Detail of Textile Piece Below

Knitting And Stitching Show 2010 Part One

Finally I am back to blogging. I must first thank everyone who has left comforting words and kind messages about our family's recent loss. Many of you will have guessed that it was my father who passed away. He had become very sick over the final months and was suffering greatly. Mingled with our sense of loss is relief that that suffering is now over and he is at peace. He is hugely missed and has left an enormous hole in our family which is felt very keenly. He was 93 years old. He always wanted to see my latest artwork even though he could barely focus due to macular degeneration. When I am drawing now I often pause and wonder if he is looking over my shoulder. I hope he is and I hope he likes what he sees.

Christmas is fast approaching but I started the 2010 Christmas card design early which is just as well as I ended up doing two. The first one was the sheep drawing below which was rejected in favour of the graphic black hares. Pity as I thought the sheep were really cute. They are for my eldest brother's business Christmas cards which you may remember I do every year. The black hare design is a reworking of an original roundel which I did many years ago but the corn has been replaced by winter umbellifers and snow. Much more seasonal. Which do you prefer?

Well, the sketchbook time is passing quickly and I have a lot more pages to fill in before the sending off date. I had to completely deconstruct the book as the cahier paper was totally unsuitable even for my finest ink nib and as for paint... I rebound it with good quality, thick sketch paper and boy was the resewing fun! However, because I knew I would have difficulty filling so many of the original pages I decided to reduce them by about half. Also being better quality paper the book is probably thicker than the original anyway. I have also cheated a teeny weeny bit by using a lot of two page spreads. Below are two of the first drawings I did. My theme is "if you lived here" and I have interpreted it quite loosley in many cases. What do you think so far?

I fell in love with these wonderful coconut shell buttons at the K&SS this year. They are perfect for crafty projects and can be bought online from The Textile Garden here.

I found some delightful cows to act as models in October.

"Oh I wondered what was digging into me"

"Mmmm...yum - nice hard, dry, crispy twigs to eat"

"Mmm...it tastes even better with the leaves and berries on".

The fabulous Knitting And Stitching Show took place at Alexandra Palace in October. It was as wonderful as always and extremely well attended. I was there for 6 hours and still failed to see everything. I bought a couple of excellent books which I will tell you about in another post. A largish proportion of my time there is spent perusing the extensive book stands where you can leaf through all the latest offerings from the art and craft community. Oh if only I had the money and the space to store them...

Two lovely wall pieces which caught my eye were Jennifer Willis's Looking For The East below

and Elizabeth Brimelow's Machine Stitch Perspectives - a beautiful piece of textile work.

There were lots of well-known brand names exhibiting at the show.

Rowan's gorgeous fabric display was a big draw as always.

I really liked the explosion of colour that was Nel Whatmore's stand. Nel is a very well-known and popular artist and designer from North Yorkshire and has a finger in many creative and artistic pies. You can find more about her beautiful work on her website here and she also has a very colourful blog which you can access from her website.

I was very impressed with the standard of work by the Wessex Textile Artists at the show. Their room was delightfully arranged and very popular with the visitors. Here are three members to illustrate the standard but all the work displayed was fabulous. You can find the Wessex website here and if you click on members details you can see the individual artists.

Brenda Weeks's work was wonderfully vibrant and colourful. Her embroideries reminded me of exquisitely detailed Indian watercolours. She has a lovely website here with lots more images.

Ruby Lever's lovely embroidery hangings were mouthwatering and looked wonderful all displayed in a row. The colours were very subtle and understated and the stitching exquisite.

Aren't these just the most gorgeous embroideries? They are the very talented Maggie Hills Alotment Chickens and were very popular in the Wessex Textile Artists stand.

I have more photos from the show so I will post about it again next week.

Back 28 November

Hello Everyone, sorry to be gone so long. Lots more to sort out and come to terms with than I ever thought possible. I will be back on the 28th though and look forward to visiting everyone again. I have missed you all.

Blog Pause

Sadly I will have to pause blogging for a while as we have had a family bereavement and there are lots of things to sort out and come to terms with. I will catch up with everyone when I return.

Autumn Umbellifers And Birds In Trees

Autumn is arriving and bringing Jack Frost along too. The temperatures at night are plummeting and it is time to get the quilts back on the beds again. Someone even mentioned a few flurries of snow before the end of September...surely not.

Below is a document folder I bought from a local stationery shop. I fell in love with the graphic design and colour scheme and decided to use the colours for my own piece of digital artwork. There is no name on the folder at all so I am not sure who designed it but they have done an excellent job.

The one below was my first image

but I decided to add a bit of black for drama. I am not sure which one I prefer but I do like the design a lot.

I started sketching for the Sketchbook Project a while ago but was very disappointed by the moleskine cahier that we were sent. The paper is far too thin for anything except pencil to my mind. All other media tend to show through to the other side and I hate that. Quite a few people who are undertaking the project have rebound the book with better quality paper. This is allowed provided the dimensions are the same and you keep the barcode on the back exposed. I intend to redo mine with much nicer and thicker paper more suited to ink and watercolour. It means redoing some of my sketches unfortunately. Below is one of my first ones - my theme is "if you lived here" and I will be doing lots of images with quirky homes, houses and nests, the interiors of tree holes etc. Anywhere you could live really.

The images below are all originally photos of umbellifers in the countryside which I have altered in PS filters and coloured variously. I love umbellifers and they look so nice when they are digitalised and coloured. I have hundreds of pictures of them in my photo folders so you can expect to see some more in my blog in the future.

I found several lovely books on a recent visit to an antique centre in a local town. A little bit more pricey that my charity shop finds but still worth it to me. My favourite was the book below by printmaker John Farleigh. He was an English wood engraver, painter, author and tutor who was very well known for his wonderful engraved illustrations. One of his pupils was Monica Poole, herself a very talented printmaker. She is the author of the book below. I love his graphic and detailed style. Click on the images below to enlarge them.

Here are some nice autumnal looking brick walls for you. I have always loved the colours and textures of old bricks and last weekend we took advantage of the Heritage Open Day event to visit a local family run brickmakers yard. Sounds really boring doesn't it? Well it was actually fascinating. We were given a guided tour over the whole yard and the complete brickmaking process. Much more complex than you think. We can now recognise handmade from machine made bricks and even know what the difference in shades denotes. It takes a lot of skill and experience to make and fire bricks to a saleable standard. This particular brickworks has supplied handmade bricks to Windsor Castle, Hampton Court and Chequers among many other famous places. The bricks in the walls below are all very old indeed and quite crumbly in places but what wonderful colours and textures.

Heritage Open Days are four days in September when you can visit lots of architecturally or culturally interesting places in England which are not normally open to the public, such as churches, old barns, factories, castles etc.

I was photographing this old house below when a chap stopped and asked if I wanted to know more about it. I had a few spare minutes so I said yes. He then proceeded to give me a fascinating potted history of the house, from the origination to the present, hugely wealthy owners. I thought he must be an amateur local historian but he told me he was the Town Crier and often did tours of the town for visitors and special occasions. Town Criers in medieval times passed on the town's news to the populace who could not read and he did this in an extremely loud voice whilst ringing a bell - hence they were also called Bellmen. There are around 200 left in England now and this chap was obviously very proud to be keeping an ancient tradition alive.

He told me that the bricked up doorway that you can see in the wall below was originally the way the servants entered the building. No front doors for them!

Lilo Fromm is a wonderful illustrator and artist from Berlin who has illustrated countless childrens' books. Below is one of her titles in German. I love that vividly coloured illustration on the front cover. Her artwork of the buildings below are beautifully delicate and harmonious. You can find more of Lilo's work here and there are examples of some of the titles she has illustrated if you type her name in Amazon.

Book Illustrated by Lilo Fromm

Hermitage

Marshy Town

The wonderfully whimsical images below are the work of the very talented Mexican illustrator/printmaker Jazmin Velasco. Jazmin uses different media to creat her work including linocuts which I really admire. I love the way she uses black and white with a touch of red to give zing. I like to use those colours in my pen and ink work. I actually saw Jazmin a couple of months ago at Art In Action event. She was assisting printmaker Colin Moore but there were so many people in the marquee I didn't get a chance to speak to her.

Jazmin's work can be found on her website here and she has a bright and funny blog here. You can also catch her at the Tile Kiln Studios open studio event in London on the weekend of the 25-26 September along with four other artists. (Don't you just love Archie?)

Brahms And The Fox

Archie

Fishy

Brahms Duet