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 Aren't Amazon amazing for finding out of date book bargains?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.

Summer Flowers and Chickens

I popped this one back into PS this morning and changed the pinky coral tree to a white one. I think it balances the image more and the chicken's comb doesn't get mixed up with the tree anymore but stands out. A definite improvement I think. The sharp eyed amongst one may remember these chickens with a different background and different colours. I felt I could improve on it and I think this does. I am pleased with it anyway.

I enjoyed drawing this pen and ink kitty. His face reminds me of Felix in the Purina cat food adverts.

Found this beautiful angel etching on Eleanor Healy-Wills website here. She has some lovely etchings displayed.

I was tagged the other day by blogging friend Lesley of Sea-Blue-Sky & Abstracts to give a list of 6 silly things I like.

1) Walking through quiet woods and touching the trees as I go past.

2) Picking up beautifully shaped leaves from our local town where they have some wonderful trees in the high street. I press them and use them for drawing.

3) Sitting out in the back garden at midnight just to take in the peace and quiet.

4)Watching the night sky for meteors or satellites.

5) Scaring myself silly watching ghost films on TV late at night.

6) Re-reading my old copies of Fungus The Bogeyman and When The Wind Blows by Raymond Briggs.

I am really into retro colours and designs. I love this retro ceramic found on Etsy user PardonMyVintage's site here.

Lots of lovely flowers around this summer but the weather has been down in the dumps. It is quite funny really because in spring we were told with great glee by the media that the long range weather report was forecasting a "barbecue summer" with very high temps. We did have about a week of very hot weather and since then it has rained and been quite cool. A typical summer really. The weather office are now back tracking and stating that they said there was a 65% chance of a hot summer. Don't you wish sometimes they would not try to predict the weather weeks ahead? They admit that they can only accurately predict it a week ahead anyway. A number of people decided not to go abroad for their holidays this year because they thought the English summer would be exceptional. Having said that we have now been told that the next week will be getting warmer again. We shall see.

These are some hedgerow dogroses from a while ago. Common flowers but they are so pretty.

I photographed these in a garden centre a couple of years ago. Gorgeous blues.

It is only early August but a lot of the crops have been harvested and I think there is a tiny hint of approaching autum. I suppose it makes sense really considering that all the seasons seem to be a month ahead. I spotted some fully ripe blackberries in a hedge recently. Surely they are far too early.

I happened to find myself in a local town the other day with one of the Oxfam shops entirely dedicated to secondhand books. What a little paradise. I was in there far too long but I found this little gem. I have mentioned before how much I love the Lark Series books. I have quite a few now but this is one I didn't think would appeal. Once I looked inside though I was amazed and fascinated by the types and styles of work by contemporary basket makers. Some of them are so incredibly imaginative that you wouldn't even think to call them baskets. The most amazing thing of all was that the book was only £3. Such a bargain couldn't be ignored. Here are three fascinating and beautiful examples of contemporary basket art I found inside.

Amy Lipshie-Amphora. This beautiful artwork is created from cereal boxes.

Barbara Walker-Les Petales. This is woven from bleached and unbleached linen cords made by the artist. This is a beautifully designed piece.

Jo Stealey-Fruits of My Labour-Fertility. This lovely artwork is created from waxed linen, reed, handmade paper and silkworm cocoon. Jo's website is here.

A few years ago I came across printmaker Roger Harris (at Art In Action but I will say it quietly as everyone is probably tired of it now...ha ha) I was very impressed by his beautiful mezzotints. Mezzotints are etchings where the metal plate is prepared beforehand by use of a tool called a rocker. The rocker has tiny teeth and is rocked back and forward over the whole plate. Basically it is a very time consuming method of producing a print of exquisite quality and depth of colour. I was entranced by his detailed work which is absolutely gorgeous in real life. He very patiently explained the whole process to me although he had probably already explained it to at least a million people beforehand. It must take a true love of printmaking to go to such trouble but so very worth it. You can see more of Roger's work here at Iona Gallery.

Lady Godiva

Spirit of the Wood

I have a long-standing love affair with etchings and trees and when the two come together so beautifully as in the etching/aquatint by Jo Barry, I am in heaven. More of Jo Barry's work can be seen here at Iona Gallery also.

These are my flower photos from some little while ago. I thought I would do a little nature colour coordinating. Apparently purples and lilacs and violets are very popular colours at the moment. I was mentioning to someone the other day that I have difficulty in assigning names to the colours in the purple/violet range of the spectrum. I am quite good with reds and oranges and greens and turquoises but those purple, mauve, lavender, lilac and violet colours fool me.

These beautiful bracelets are the work of Shropshire based craftswoman Lana who admits to being obsessed with colour (I know how she feels). She certainly has a wonderful sense of which colours to combine. The bracelets are made from cotton, silk and merino yarn. Lana also creates other textile lovelies and can be found here on Etsy as "easternsky".

The paintings below belong to the highly talented English artist Anna Pugh. Anna lives a modest life in the countryside where she paints extremely lovely images of animals, nature, the countryside and things around her. She has a particular affinity with dogs and plants, but I love her hens and cockerels best. Her style is bright and detailed folk art and she has a huge following. You can look at her paintings for ages because each one has so many different elements and scenes within scenes, but the whole picture gels together as a complete entity. You can find a large collection of her work at Lucy B Campbell gallery here. I was also lucky enough to come across her book of paintings a few weeks ago. The book is dedicated to showing off her artwork rather than text, but the paintings speak for themselves.

Last Set

Mountain Pool

A Change Of Heart

The Challenger

Two Partridge

More To come