Charity Shops And Cockerels

Ths is called "Cockerels Amongst The Seedhead" and is a digitally coloured drawing. You may notice that these seed heads are the same ones as the central panel of the garden at midnight picture below. I liked them so much I thought I would give them another outing.

This is a pen and ink drawing which I dug out of my sketchbook and redid properly. I cut out a cardboard leaf to draw around to create the shapes. I would never have been able to get them so perfect otherwise.

This started out life as a brightly coloured digital drawing which I wasn't happy with. I had a fiddle with it in gradients in PS which I haven't got a clue how to use. After a few colour changes I got this one which I thought was quite quirky. It is called "In The Garden At Midnight".

This is a quick pen and ink drawing called The Scarlett Sash.

If you enjoy textile sculptures you will probably enjoy this one. Pod by Bird Ross is made from vintage silk kimono and thread.

I think this wonderfully coloured image by Julie Barnes is very springlike not least due to the little lamb!

I want this quirky casserole dish by Kevin Warren. Love his geese.

I have long been an admirer of Vanessa Pooley's beautiful sculptures. I particularly like this "Tiny Mother and Child" artwork for the material she has cast it in. She creates lots of differents sculptures but I think her mother and child ones are really lovely. It would be wonderful to own one. I think they are very tactile. She has a very informative and extensive website here.

Spring is literally a week away now - the 21st of March is the first day of spring. I really enjoy the profusion of beautiful flowers that come into bloom in spring. These ceanothus belong to the people whose garden backs onto ours, but there bush is so huge that it spills over the fence and we can enjoy it too.

Can't wait for one of my favourite flowers - the allium - to come into bloom. We have lots in the garden but these beauties were in the grounds of a nearby church.

This narcissus is in the grounds of a local cemetery which has wonderful fruit blossom trees and masses of bluebells. More of that at a later date.

Love these delicious images by Pauline Hughes. Pauline is a sculptural artist who also creates wall art. Her website is here.

I really enjoy Sir Terry Frost's colourful images. I haven't seen this egg one before though.

James Campbell is a ceramic artist and painter. He was born in Scotland and was brought up there and in Wales where he now lives. His work is a combination of drawing/painting and creating ceramics to which he applies his very distinctive artwork. I love his painted images of simple, moody landscapes and his wonderfully stylised crows. His work is more powerful I think because it is fairly minimalist. He attributes his work to the beauty of those two places where he grew up. The Stour Gallery has a large display of his work.

Night Journey-Standing Stone

Wintersun Ceramic

Encircling Hill 2

Landfall

Misty Morning

Night Journeys-The Lake

Night Landscape Ceramic

Night Journeys-The Tower

The Encircling Hill Ceramic

The Old Straight Track

Wintersun ceramic bowl

Wiltshire Wane

Aren't charity shops amazing? I am sure I am not the only one to think so. What ever did we do before the first charity shops really made an impact in the high street. A lot of people complain that our streets are full of charity shops these days and they are taking the business away from the "proper" shops. I suppose in some ways they do just that. There are so many good quality M & S items available in charity shops that M&S must notice the drop in their sales to some extent. Those who try to live greener lives appreciate the chance to buy "recycled" items which cannot be a bad thing. I suppose like everything else there are pros and cons.

I know for a fact that I have had access to far more interesting and originally expensive books than I would have been able to purchase new. I am constantly amazed by the quality of items people give away. I have come across books originally costing £30 to £35 and even more and sometimes they have only been published that year. It is almost true to say that if you really want something and don't mind waiting, eventually it will turn up in a charity shop. That is very true of some of my books. I have purchased all my Kaffe Fassett books second hand. You can often buy books that are now out of print too. Thank goodness for people having the urge to declutter their lives. There are even some charity shops that cater just for books...ah bliss.

Hannah Cole and The Industrious Art of Blogging

This is simply called "Arches" for obvious reasons. I fiddled with this design for ages adding circles to represent fruit etc but in the end I decided to keep it simple.

This is a pen and ink drawing with a background of digital colour to make it appear more "apple" like. If you haven't already guessed - it is Eve and the Apple.

This is my black tree digital image. I originally made the tree and the bird white but they got lost in among all these colours so I changed them to black to make them more prominent.

I liked the above design so much I took the bird and branch out and redid them for a greetings card image. This is my "Neopolitan Bird". I think I prefer this colourway.

And this is the box where I got my colour palette idea.

This is the second design I did for greetings cards

This is a beautiful mermaid relief print by unknown artist. It is a greetings card with an original etching or linocut - not sure which. It is initialled but I am unable to read it. I love mermaid images and have produced quite a few of my own over the years.

Another delicate mermaid etching which is also a greetings card. Unusual to find an original etching card. Needless to say, this one will be staying with me also. It is by Mark Crowther. I love the way the colours bleed into one another.

Pretty jewels from my bead box. I love running my hands through these tiny glass beads of every conceivable colour. I have used them for a couple of projects in the past but I don't think I could ever use all these up if I beaded from now till domesday. Lovely to look at though.

If you are an owl, or a bird, or a rabbit fan, (or any other animal come to that) check out UK artist Helen Musselwhite's website here. Or her Etsy shop here. She has lots of delightful cut paper sculptures and collages which she mounts in display boxes. Her work is very colourful, graphic and folky. The papers she uses are lovely and it must take hours of patient work to cut and assemble the artwork. Hats off to Helen.

A quirky white rabbit

A delicious blackbird with flowers

I found this beautiful textured leaf a while back. Usually I press leaves inside heavy books to flatten them but I am glad this one got forgotten because it has dried into a lovely shape all by itself.

My featured artist is Hannah Cole who hails from North Devon in the UK but now lives in Brighton. Her images of the British seascapes are very well known but she also paints landscapes and other work. Her painting style is extremely popular with the buying public and I have bought quite a few of her greetings cards in the past as I really enjoy her work. She has a great love of the English countryside and seaside and this is reflected in her lovely paintings.

Her paintings are built up in layers of colour in which she makes marks. Her views are often her response to a scene rather than an actual representation of that scene. I love her soft, gentle, almost pastel palette and the almost naive quality she imparts to her work. She has the ability to produce a beautiful scene without lots of decoration (not like me..ha ha) oh, and I love the quirky dogs which often appear in her work. Hannah has her own interesting website here where you can browse her work, or you can find more images at the Seascape Gallery or her greetings cards at The Whistlefish Gallery. I was in John Lewis yesterday and saw some beautiful seascape pictures and thought they looked very much like Hannah's work....and they were!

Moroccan Pink

Watching And Waiting

Red Boat, St. Ives

Moroccan Memory

Ditchling Beacon

By The Windbreak

Winter On The Downs

Waiting To Play Ball

Low Tide, Polperro

Devon Fields

I wonder how many trillions of blogs there are out there. I was checking out the next blog feature on blogger the other day and was amazed at the number and variety of blogs in every language under the sun. Whatever your interest in life you can publish a blog about it. I am drawn to art and craft blogs myself and there is plenty of choice to immerse myself in. Blogger has nearly 60 different blog categories and some of those have sub-cats. There are even blogs about....well, blogging. Where did all this spare time come from to keep our blogs up to date? There is no doubt that blogging is very time consuming. Some of the bloggers I have come across recently have several blogs on the go...one person has ten. Amazing. One thing I have noticed is that I am inclined to pass over very wordy blogs for those with interesting pictures. With everyone rushing through their blog visits at speed, it is vital to have great images to catch the attention and slow people down. Just off to take some new photos....!

Eye Candy

This is a digital drawing titled "Peaceful Birds". I think perhaps it could be improved with smaller leaves and bigger birds....ha ha.

and this is the sketch of the original idea. I liked the design even as a really rough drawing.

These are pen and ink drawings which were originally designed for handmade greetings cards but I never got around to putting them on the cards. I think they look nicer as a montage of coloured trees in a very surreal landscape.

This is a pen and ink drawing with a bit of digital red. It took ages to do all those feathers.

Stripey Hats - a very quirky digital drawing

I love this gorgeous pastel. It is called Butterfly Boy and is by Sharon Yamamoto. I met Sharon some years ago at a craft fair. She is a Japanese American artist whose work is delightfully mystical and magical. She produces some of her images on ceramic art tiles and the colours are vivid and vibrant and much more intense than paintings. I recommend a visit to her lovely website here.

Sunrise Voyage - Sharon Yamamoto

Some tulips and apple blossom to get us in the mood for spring. I am hoping the apple blossom will be out soon as I want to take some new photos. The forecast predicts a very cold week though, so perhaps we shall have to wait a little longer for spring to arrive.

It is March the first today so it must be St. David's Day. So to all the Welsh people all over the world - Cyfarchion - which I hope, translated, says greetings.

I found these delightful geese on the internet the other day. They are the work of mixed media artist Kathleen Mattox who has a blog here.

I had a lovely gift in the post from Catriona Millar. You may remember that she was my featured artist on December 13th 2008. She emailed me about the blog post and said she would send me a copy of the recipe book which features her artwork. I received it the other day and it is a wonderful book called Fun with Spinach by Mike Robson. It has lots of beautiful paintings by Catriona. So thank you very much Catriona and the best of luck with your delightful art. Catriona's website is here if you want to pop over and have a browse.

I have decided that this is my absolute favourite of Catriona's paintings. I just love the theme and the pastel colours she has used.

The embroideries and artwork below are all the work of English textile artist Audrey Walker. She is the daughter of a Cumbrian embroideress and produces textile work which is almost painted on the cloth by her stitches. She originally trained as a painter in Edinburgh and has always been particularly interested in figurative work. Her work is layered with fabric and millions of machine or hand stitches. Her sense of colour, shade and tone is incredibly subtle and beautiful.

I have met Audrey at the Knitting and Stitching Show in London in the past and have also visited exhibitions of her work and it is truly lovely. Some of her pieces are huge and you have to stand back quite a distance to appreciate them fully. It must take hours and hours of painstaking work to put in so many tiny stitches but what she produces is well worth the effort.

I love the way her subjects gaze at each other and into the distance; speaking without words. There is a quality of mystery and stillness about them. Most of the pictures are from a Ruthin Craft Centre book that I bought some time ago and also the superb Diana Springall book called Inspired to Stitch which has to be one of my favourite books - but that is another story.

Temptation

Study for Woman at Window

Adam and Eve

Hear No Evil

Who's There

Beach Woman

Study For Temptation

Gaze 1v

This image shows the detailed stitching in Audrey Walker's work. Close up the stitching is very visible but she has such an comprehensive knowledge of shades and tones, that if you stand away from the art, it all gells together to make sense of the form. You will probably need to enlarge the image to see the stitching properly.

I have had a good week drawing on the computer. Birds have made their appearance again...don't they always. If it wasn't for birds my repertoire would be very much smaller.

After posting a picture of an Anita Jeram kitty last week I am now thinking about drawing cats. Cats are easy to draw in pointillism but that style takes months to do so I will have to think of a different technique of making a cat look like a cat, or I may just draw a stylised cat. The wonderful thing about stylising images is that no one can look at them and say they are wrong. They can be whatever you want them to be as long as they vaguely resemble felis catus. Having two cats in our house and family and neighbours with cats, there is no shortage of inspirational material.