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 Aren't Amazon amazing for finding out of date book bargains?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

Blog Giveaway Winner - Me (thanks Sandy) and The Knitting and Stitching Show

This image relates to the poem called The Wandering Aenghus by William Butler Yeats. I have always liked this poem and the last few lines are very famous.

I like the graphic quality of this painting. I love stripes in any colours. Perhaps it is a bit too much but it is quite eye catching and I don't think you can ever go wrong with flowers.

I watched a DVD called An American Haunting the other night and the main character was a young lady in 1800's Minnesota called Betsy Bell. She had quite a sad tale to tell, and a scary one. I was particularly interested in her lovely blue coat and dress ensemble. This is a near approximation of it although it would look a lot better coloured.

I thought this one would make quite a nice Christmas card design. The leaf is supposed to be a holly leaf. I like the minimal colour of this one - quite unusual for me.

The following are all photos from the Knitting and Stitching Show at Alexandra Palace in London. Sorry about the lighting in some of the shots but there is very little natural light in the place and flash never looks as good as natural daylight. The pictures can be enlarged to see more detail if you click on them. If you go here you can read all about the exhibitors in the Show.

I love this subtly coloured quilt and could quite happily have taken it home with me.

This wool stand is always very popular. I think some people buy enough wool to last them until the next show.

I loved this gorgeous patchwork quilt

Brightly coloured embroidery

Detail of bird embroidery

Display of children's clothing

John Allen designs carpets for the wall and also produces etchings and other artwork. The designs he displayed at the show were all connected to Nepal and Nepalese culture and landscape. The colours are brilliant and the shapes beautifully graphic. He has a wonderful sense of colour. He actually works in collaboration with Tibetan weavers who interpret his designs. Go here for a look at his lovely website.

John Allen colourful carpet design

John Allen carpet

John Allen produces carpets for the wall and they are amazing designs like this one.

A wall display of some of Raymond Honeyman's work. His attention to detail is amazing.

Raymond Honeyman design of flowery fan for Ehrman tapestries. This is actually a painting made up of tiny dots of colour in the exact same places where you would do the stitch of the wool tapestry. He adores pattern and must take hundreds of hours to create these works of art.

This is a view of a wool stand selling cardi's and jumpers. There were lots of stands selling hand knitted woolies and they were all to die for.

Another view of the spectacular patchwork. Click on the photo to get a better look.

The Embroidery Guild stand had a wonderful patchwork quilt, only part of which is shown here. Apparently the various groups over the country were given their colours to work and when they were all completed the patchwork was assembled.

This is Sarah Boccaccini Meadows who is a young textiles graduate with a lovely smile. She had some beautiful and complex garments on her stand and was really thrilled to be at the Exhibition.

Last week I paid my yearly visit to the Knitting and Stitching Show at Alexandra Palace in London. It is a fabulous day out at a wonderful venue. Ally Pally as it is fondly known stands very high above London and a marvellous view of the capital can be had on a clear day. Inside great wonders were beheld. It is an extravaganza of all things textile, stitchy, and art and crafty and appeals to a huge audience, mostly women, as can be expected.

I travelled up to London by coach which is a service dedicated to the serious stitch enthusiast. It is so much easier and more comfortable than going by train. We had about 6 hours at the exhibition and in the time available I did not get to see all of it!

I have included quite a few shots of various stands in the exhibition and I explain each photo as I go along. There were a number of great book stands including the Embroidery Guild stand which is always worth an hour or two's perusal. All the books were art and craft and textile orientated and it is always a good place to get the newest books on the market. I must confess to buying a "couple" of books but I will tell you about those in another post. By the time I returned home I was exhausted but happy and very inspired by what I had seen. There is so much incredible talent in the world of textiles. I now have to go for a year before I can do the whole thing again.

Another lovely thing which has happened since my last post, is winning the giveaway on Sandy Mastroni's Blog. Sandy is a great artist who produces really intriguing and enchanting images of ladies and animals, particularly cats. Her giveaway was for a lovely kitty painting and if you have a look at blog post October 9th you will see my name being drawn by Jerry. I am really looking forward to receiving my kitty picture and would like to thank Sandy very much for giving me the opportunity. She also has a great Etsy shop at http://www.sandymastroni.etsy.com/ so I recommend you go and take a look.

This is the second giveaway I have won. The first was for a lovely woolly scarf from Phyllis which I have already put to good use as we have had some very chilly days this autumn.

Enough said for this post. I will let the photos speak for themselves.

SWLA And The V & A

This image is inspired by a fashion illustration book I have been reading. It is entitled "The Cool Breeze". She certainly needs her pashmina.

This is a "work in progress" pen and ink drawing. It will have a lot more elements when it is completed and I will post the finished version. I am enjoying drawing it but I am not sure where it is going. That is part of the fun though.

I got the idea for this one from one of prints at the SWLA exhibition. I like the naive quality.

You will probably have to click on this one to enlarge it as it has come out quite small. I think blogger likes square pictures best and most of mine are portrait. I enjoyed doing the buildings at the top of picture. I may try a few more of those.

These are two of my latest Christmas card purchases. I like the contemporary one on brown recycled card. A really nice design. The santa one is by Clare Madicott. I love her cards. They are so bright and eye catching. She has a nice website but it is off line at the moment

The following images are the artwork of master wood engraver Colin See-Paynton. What an incredible talent he has. I would love to own one of his engravings.

Goodness, how time flies. It doesn't seem a minute since I last did my blog and now here I am doing another one. Does anyone else think time has speeded up somehow...? Impossible, I know, but it does feel like it.

I treated myself to a day out last Tuesday. I enjoy going up to London every few months just for a bit of window shopping. I made my once yearly visit to the Society of Wildlife Painters Exhibition at The Mall Galleries. It is a wonderful treat for anyone who loves animal, bird and nature art. All media are encompassed but my favourite section is definitely the printmaking part. None of it was to be rushed over and I spent over an hour in there but part of that was spent drinking coffee of course. One of my favourite artists was exhibiting - Carry Akroyd. The past years I have visited have been slightly disturbed by very noisy and enthusiastic childrens' school parties but they were absent this year.

In the afternoon I made my way to another favourite spot. The Victoria and Albert Museum, better known simply as the V & A. It is a huge museum devoted to decorative arts and crafts and is totally wonderful. There are rooms crammed full of old sculptures, wooden statues dating back to medieval times, 20th century English and American artifacts, fashion, ceramics, textiles....you name it, it is in there. There are a lot of exhibits from churches all over Europe - not sure how they got there. They also have a wonderful cafe and a mouthwatering shop which I tried to keep out of but didn't quite succeed. I bought a small book on contemporary bird art which will provide lots of inspiration for my artwork in the future.

The only downside is the poor light in some of the exhibition rooms makes photography difficult. If you use flash it whitens out the subject. There were so many things I wanted to photograph too. Some people have managed it because I looked the museum up on the Flickr site and there are some great shots. The textile and tapestry rooms have very subdued lighting to prevent the textiles losing their colours. There is so much to see that you can only ever see a tiny proportion at each visit.

All in all I had a lovely day in London and my return travel arrangements even fitted in nicely, not something that usually happens I can assure you.

On Saturday I popped into John Lewis to check out their range of Christmas cards. I love buying cards because I love to see other peoples' designs as well as my own. I usually buy a pack and save one of each design for myself. I often buy greetings cards specifically to keep because I like the image so much. I have posted a couple of new ones that appealed to me.

My featured artist this week is Colin See-Paynton. He is a very well known and respected English wood engraver. He is totally self taught so we have that in common if nothing else. He always works in black and white and the detail he achieves is unbelievable. The work must be very painstaking and imagine how mad he must be if he is almost at the end of a very complex piece and suddenly realises he has made an error. He doesn't strike me as the type who would make mistakes like that though. Have a look at his work on his website here. He has published several books and one I borrowed from the library a while back costs well over a hundred pounds on Amazon.

My artwork this week is more illustrative and is mostly pen and ink work with a touch of colour here and there. I am going to London for the fabulous Knitting and Stitching Show at Alexandra Palace on Thursday so I should have some interesting pictures next week.