Oxford Churches And Books, Glorious Books

I love drawing this simple black cat shape with crazy coloured backgrounds. I have used this image quite a few times for various pieces of artwork and it still has a lot of mileage left. I love the posture of this cat and the position of the tail.

A pointillist ink portrait of a young woman with a megalithic stone structure in the foreground. This took many weeks of work.

Pen and ink sketch of Art Deco bird and flowers

A selection of clay figures from my newly purchased book. There are another 495 like this. Click on the image to enlarge.

Eye candy for the artist - my purchases from Oxford

View of the beautiful box pews in St. Mary the Virgin at Oxford

I decided to make a visit to Oxford on Thursday. It is somewhere I haven't been for a long time but I decided I needed some me time, so off I went. It turned out to be a cross between retail therapy and church visiting. I love looking round ancient churches and Oxford has some lovely ones. The first one I visited was in a spot where a church had stood for over a thousand years. I love the feeling of sanctity of space in these places which has nothing to do with formal religion. The spaces which churches now occupy were sacred long before Christianity, but I think the worshipping of hundreds of thousands of people has increased the feeling. The second church I visited had some amazing old box pews still insitu. The majority of our parish churches have lost their box pews to conventional pews or chairs. I loved the feeling of cosiness tucked into my little box with the door shut. I should image the congregations of old could snuggle down to some sleep when the sermons got too lengthy.

My retail therapy consisted mainly of bookshops. Oxford has some great bookshops due mostly to the presence of the Universities. I have included a picture of my purchases which include a wonderful book called 500 Figures In Clay and another book which features lovely ceramics and shows step-by-step photos of how they were made. My third book was a Directory of Printmakers which details over a hundred printmakers with their work in full, glorious colour. I am neither a ceramicist or a printmaker but I love to look at the work of other disciplines and gain inspiration from them. I found some lovely greetings cards from another bookshop, but this time in Thame. They had a fantastic display of more designer-type cards and not just the mass produced ones. I could have bought lots more cards, but when I added up the cost of the books I didn't dare. Oh and I forgot to mention the two new pens and the "long" A5 sketchbook for doing my landscape sketches in. I think that just about covers everything. No clothes shopping - I didn't have time!

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.

Bluebells, Blossoms and Angel Ladies

These are my sketches of the animal angels

Isn't spring the most beautiful season of all? Every year when I see the gorgeous light greens of the trees and the beautiful spring blossoms I wish that it could last just a little bit longer. There is such a profusion of lovely flowers starting with the snowdrops and crocuses, daffodils and tulips, fruit tree blossoms and bluebells, magnolia and wisteria and then suddenly, they have all disappeared until next year. They are not around long enough to appreciate them properly. Don't get me wrong, I love the flowers of summer too, but spring flowers are special, and the trees and foliage never have that fabulous fresh, bright green shade again.

Today I visited my little bluebell dell. It is a tiny piece of woodland adjoining a local cemetery but to have the profusion of bluebells that it has it must be very ancient woodland. Bluebells are a particularly English phenomenon. Eighty percent of Europe's bluebells are found in England and we love each and every one of them. At least I do. There was quite a breeze this afternoon, and when I reached the spot, the fragrance of bluebells was overwhelming in a wonderful way. I took about a thousand pictures as I always do but I was particularly pleased about how two of them turned out and I have included these above. The sun was shining and that always improves my photography. See what you think of them anway.

I have also included a shot of blossom that I took last year. I think it is cherry but don't hold me to that. I think that it is such a lovely shade of pink. The flower picture is forget-me-not. A great favourite of the Victorians.

I also had a little doodle around with some animal and fish loving angel ladies. I love sketching angels for some reason. I just like the thought of beings with wings I think. As a child I always drew angels as female but when I think of "proper" angels, I think of them as being neither male nor female. Do you believe in them? I bet you do really but just don't want anyone to know. I will probably draw them as finished artworks one of these days. I will need to borrow the family hands though, as drawing hands in proportion is one of my artistic failures. It is so easy these days just to take a digital photo, upload to the computer, resize, print and then trace the finished hands in the exact position you require. Of course, if I was a proper artist I would simply draw them in real life but that is just asking for trouble. I hope you like them anyway.

Oystercatchers

Finally my stylised pen and ink rendering of oystercatchers in the estuary.

This is my oystercatcher wool needlepoint which I am quite proud of. It took an extremely long time to complete and has lots of shades of blue and green.

This is part of my original oystercatcher drawing. It has a striped border which isn't shown here.

My sketch and my present unfinished painting. Not too sure about it now that I have seen it again.

I think I may have mentioned before that I love birds and I love drawing and painting them, probably more than anything else except trees and leaves....oh and not forgetting angels of course.

Oystercatchers are some of my favourites because they are very pretty with their black and white plumage and orange legs and beaks. I have watched them in real life, if a good distance away, poking and prodding on the beach for cockles and mussels but probably not a lot of oysters. They are all being eaten in the posh restaurants.

I have drawn and painted and crafted a number of oystercatchers over the years and I never tire of them. I am in the process of painting another oystercatcher picture at the moment. It is still in the "not quite sure what to do with it" stage but I am hoping to have a bolt of inspiration sometime soon. The picture above is my sketch and the actual original which is incomplete. The oystercatchers are easy as I just copied them from another picture that I did four years ago but the background is stumping me a little. I have got as far as a few wavy lines so far.

I also produced a pen and ink stylised drawing of oystercatchers in the estuary some years ago which I really like. I love stylised work, almost more than completely naturalistic.

The other oystercatcher artwork I have included is a three panel wool needlepoint which took me forever to finish. It shows three different pictures of oystercatchers and if you look closely you will see my present oystercatchers reversed. When I create a nice image I often use it many time with different backgrounds and in different media. It is a bit like ringing the changes with the same outfit with different accessories. If you do it cleverly enough sometimes people don't even realise it is the same outfit.....!!! Hope you enjoy the artwork anyway.