Problems With Blogger

Unfortunately I am not able to blog at present due to problems with Blogger itself. It is misbehaving badly and running all the text into the images and ruining everything. Hopefully it will sort itself out or I may have to find a different blogging system. I know a lot of other people have had trouble with Blogger but up until now I have been lucky. Now the gremlins have struck! Bye for now.

Spring In The Rookeries

How lovely that spring is approaching. So many little buds bursting into leaf. I love the starkness of winter trees but I am always glad when the leaves appear to gentle the scenery. The only downside is that it is difficult to spot birds' nests and I have a bit of a thing about them at the moment. There don't seem to be enough nests around for all those birds..hmm!

Mythic Cat With Fish Friend - another pen and ink drawing. I bet you didn't know that cats could be friends with fish did you? It happens all the time apparently.

This is a pen and ink cockerel with a digital background. If you ever see a bird like this let me know. Definitely one of a kind.

The spring days are gaining warmth and bursting into life now. I found some beautiful pink blossom on the trees in a local churchyard...

and a host of golden daffodils on a private drive - sneaked in to get this one.

During a geocache in the local park we were of great interest to a lone swan approaching for food...

and swimming away when she realised we hadn't any titbits for her.

Ducks on the sunlit lake.

I love the intriguing narrative that Linda Gourley employs in creating her whimsical and quirky artworks. She is adept at etching, collograph and mixed media and uses a variety of techniques including chine colle. You can follow the link here to see more of Linda's work on her website.

Foot Loose And Fancy Free I

Garden Angel

It wouldn't be March without a few rookery photos. These shots are from one of my favourite local spots. I just wish I had a better zoom on my camera so that I could see them more clearly. I am fascinated by these amazingly gregarious black birds and the fights and squabbles they have when it is time to nest and produce the next generation. Apparently they make a habit of stealing bits of each others nests. It is a wonder they ever get built. I watched a group of rooks nesting in some local trees a few years ago and the nests were beautifully completed. There were about six altogether. A week or so later I happened to be there but the nests had completely and totally vanished. It must have been the wrong spot and they had upcycled the nesting material and built elsewhere.

I found this delightful little textile book in a charity shop the other day. It is by Linda Miller who is a very talented textile artist and is well-known in crafting circles. I have met Linda quite a few times at various art and craft locations and she is always more than happy to discuss her embroidery techniques. This book comprehensively details exactly how she goes about creating her machine emboidered pieces and is very easy to understand and follow. Even I could do it, but it would take me a very long time. The textures and colours of the embroideries are wonderful and the designs beautifully whimsical.

Spring Stroll

Gardener

Autumn Leaves

I am still enjoying the fruits of my enormous clear out for re-carpeting a couple of weeks ago. I now have a largish pile of books and other things that I rediscovered. It is almost like getting new books. It is lovely reacquainting myself with them. Two old favourites are the books by pen and ink artist Anthony Mackay. The drawings below are from Journeys Into Bedfordshire but I also have a copy of its companion Journeys Into Hertfordshire. I bought them in the 1980's when I first discovered what a wonderful medium pen and ink was. I think he has also produced another two counties since then.

I can find next to nothing about him on the Internet but he obviously has a great sense of perspective to have accurately drawn so many beautiful buildings without making them look like renderings from an architect's handbook. I love the textures and tones he has produced. I learned a lot about pen and ink from his work in those early days. These drawings are also a valuable documentation of our heritage when buildings and trees disappear rapidly and our villages and towns are changed beyond recognition.

Shelton Church

Crawley Park Cottages

Marston Moretaine Moated Manor

Trees Near Old Warden

Abbey Farmhouse, Salph End, Renhold

Bookplates And Quirky Birds

Like everyone else I have been glued to the terrible events in Japan and have viewed with horror the unfolding disaster. I am sure everyones' hearts go out to those people who are left to try and get their lives back into some semblance of normality. What is happening to our world? Disaster after disaster.

I have sorted out lots of the items I had to move to get new carpets laid and hopefully everything is back in its place or perhaps an even better place. The dust bunnies have been laid to rest but no doubt they will be back with a vengeance. I never realised quite what a huge family of house spiders we have given accommodation to. I didn't have the heart to move them outside as they may not be able to tolerate our cold nights and to be quite honest I don't mind them too much. As long as they don't have teeth and they keep out of my bed that is. Live and let live is my motto these days.

I haven't done one of my "Woman Who Planted Trees" series for ages but here is number VII. I still have more in the pipeline. I love this combination of colours. I am not sure how many there will be eventually but I really like the concept so much that there are bound to be more to come.

This is a detail of my latest pen and ink artwork. The bird and flowers are coloured digitally. I did paint the original flowers green but they didn't look quite right.

Journey With A Golden Bird Here is the full version

I have been busy making some more of my greetings cards. I use the spray mount cans now instead of the messy pritt stick. So much cleaner and lovely to be able to reposition the image before it dries. You have to be careful not to inhale the fumes though. There is always a drawback isn't there?

The beautifully detailed etchings below are the work of Bulgarian printmaker Plamena Doycheva. You can find more of her work here at artelista.com

Still Life With Pears

Spring

Below are some of the photos I managed to get a couple of weeks ago when we visited friends in Oxford. I dodged the showers to get these Abingdon shots. The town dates back to the 600's although there is evidence for iron age people in the area. Below is the ancient gatehouse attached to the church. I photographed some fascinating gargoyles here but the little devils decided not to allow me to focus properly on them...typical.

I loved this little side room on the tower of St. Nicholas's church. I wonder what its use was? This lovely building dates from 1170. I wish we had been able to go inside but there was some sort of music practice going on.

This is a view of an intriguing stairway into this old building.

I took a number of photos of these interesting ruins which I supposed to be the remains of the original abbey dating from Saxon times. Imagine my disappointment when I read on the Internet that they were created in 1920 and are considered to be Abingdon's Folly. Still, they are extremely well done and are believed to contain some of the original stones.

Some of you may remember quite a while back I featured an amazing embroidery artist called Nancy Nicholson. I discovered an article about her and her work on a now defunct Craft magazine. Nancy got in touch and said that she was going to create a website for her work and would let me know when it was up and running. She got back in touch recently and gave me the address of the website and also her new blog which is very interesting. Nancy's website is here and is absolutely gorgeous. Don't forget to go to the Gallery to see her lovely collaged birds and her textiles and screenprints. Make yourselves a coffee and go and have a browse. You will be delighted. Below are some of her interactive stationery artworks. Her sense of design and colour is gorgeous and contemporary. Her embroideries are stunning too. Anyway see for yourself. She is also the daughter of well-known embroideress Joan Nicholson who some of you may remember.

I have had this lovely book in my possession for some time but it reappeared when I was clearing out for new carpets. Amazing what you can find when you are not expecting it. It is A Treasury Of Bookplates selected by Fridolf Johnson. It covers the Renaissance to the present. I didn't realise that bookplates were around as early as that. I assumed they were a relatively recent introduction i.e. early 19th century. I suppose that people have wanted to lay claim to their books for as long as books have been around. I expect the old problem of borrowing a book from someone and forgetting who it belonged to is as old as the hills. Lots of famous artists and printmakers produced bookplates for their clients. The collecting of them is alive and thriving. In fact they are often commissioned from an artist and never actually used in books but swapped with other collectors. Below are seven of my favourites from the book (which is a Dover publication by the way). I particularly like the graphic woodcut or engraved design.

Reynolds Stone

Gerard Gaudaen

Pam G Rueter

Mark Severiin

Henry Ospovat

Rockwell Kent

Nico Bulder

Next Blog Post 13 March

We had a wonderful day out on Sunday with good friends H, K and A in Oxfordshire. They entertained us beautifully but didn't arrange the weather very well and we all got an unbelievable drenching. On our way home from a geocache walk we had our backs to the wind and the rain and it felt as if someone had sneaked up behind us and thrown buckets of water at us. Where were my waterproof trousers? In the car of course. I remained quite chilled until I had a piping hot bath hours later. Where is all this rain coming from? Don't answer that.

This is the detail of my latest drypoint etching - Friendship And Understanding. I enjoy depicting my idea of the relationship and interaction of people and birds. I am wondering about painting the leaves with watercolour but leaving the rest unpainted.

Complete etching

I have only got as far as a pen and ink drawing at the moment but this is destined to be a painting eventually.

The usual quandary here - is it a hare or a rabbit? A soapstone lagomorph anyway. That will cover them both. I found it in a charity shop and it took a shine to me and asked if it could come home with me. Of course I agreed.

Meet Smudge - she is the softest, silkiest and nicest natured cat you could ever meet, and I have met a lot of cats. Sadly she doesn't belong to us but to some (very nice) neighbours who adore her. I also love her for her potential as a photographic model and her extremely low fees. The only problem with photographing her is that as soon as you squat down to take a shot she walks up to you for a cuddle. Still, you cannot have everything.

On a recent walk we discovered this interesting beast. It is a poor photo due to the deer being perched up high and the sky very bright in comparison but you can see that it only has half its antler rack. The corresponding half is on the deer on the other side of the gateway. I think it is a uni-antlered deer. I quite like it - quirky.

No one could call contemporary Scottish artist Margaretanne Bennett's work "pretty". Her paintings are a combination of realism and abstract with a definite hint of darkness to them. She uses a subtle palette with lots of texture. On her "about" page on her website she talks about being inspired after a visit to France and seeing old cemeteries. She is obviously fascinated by decay and rust and the sense of sadness and abandonment connected to such places - very similar to someone else I know. Anyway, pop over to her website here and have a look. I absolutely love everything about the painting beneath including the scrappy, almost grafitti-like, bits of text.

Harbinger

Wraiths

Well, we are into March now and we have had the full gamut of weather as usual.

Some frosts...

some sunshine...

some mists...

and a whole shed full of rain.

In the fields we have seen beasts gathered in brotherhood...

some familiar ones staring with beady eyes

and some not so familiar but with beady eyes and beady beaks. (I didn't venture too close) PS I know this is in twice but I like it)

Who could resist tea time in the country with these gorgeous jugs by Stacey Manser-Knight. Lots of lovely colour and detail. Stacey was born in America but has lived most of her adult life in Brighton and has participated in the Brighton Festival Artist Open Studios event in May. She mentions being at the Dragonfly House which hosts participating artists' work and is somewhere I visited myself. They are famous for the wonderful displays of art they exhibit and the intriguing dragonfly on the outside wall of the building. I exhibited my work during the festival for two years running quite a long time ago now in the home of my nephew and his wife. It was great fun but even more than that I enjoyed visiting all the other artists studios and having a good nose around. I would definitely recommend it to anyone visiting Brighton during the spring. You can see more of Stacey's work here on her website and here at The Castle Gallery.

I first came across Rita Kearton's lovely work when I saw her exhibiting at the Art In Action event at Waterperry several years ago. She was in the printmakers' marquee. I was very drawn to her use of figurative folkloric and naive style imagery. She creates collagraphs and drypoint etchings and they draw you into her imaginary world very easily. You can find Rita's website here for more delicious artwork.

Songbird

The King

Sleeping Dog

The Man And The Woman