Summer Too Hot - Roll On Autumn

We are in the middle of a very hot and humid period in the UK at the moment. People who live in VERY hot countries will wonder why the English complain about the mercury rising to the high eighties (31C), but we are not really used to it. My comfort zone is very small - 10C to 20C. The other point is the humidity. Our cloudy skies seem to attract it and it makes it very difficult to sleep...complaint over, now back to the art.

Below are my two latest watercolours. Very into colour at the moment - must be due to the summer.

In A Bright And Shining Land

Seen Once In A Dream

It was my nephew and his lovely wife's tenth anniversary the other day so I thought I would send them a watercolour illustration to mark the important occasion. The black lines don't appear on the card though. I enjoyed drawing this and I hope they received it safely. You may notice it is the same horse as above which is a copyright free one from one of my books.

When I was having a trawl through my old artwork the other day I found my very first piece of coloured pencil work which I must have done around 1990. I was trying to achieve a blended look and I think I partially succeeded. Not necessarily representative of wisteria but I quite like it.

I found a wonderful artist on Etsy the other day called Mariann Johansen-Ellis. She is a Danish artist and printmaker and her Etsy shop is called oneline and can be found here. I love her bright, illustrative style. Below are a linocut and two watercolours of hers. She has masses more to look at on Etsy and also her website here. If you click on "Printmaking Movies" on her website she gives interesting tutorials about about printmaking and etching. She must be a great tutor because her tutorials are very clear and succinct. I have tucked them away to watch with a cup of coffee (even though I don't etch). To top it all off she even has a blog here.

My Indian Doggy Bag

Mermaid's Song

Jester's Hall 11

I came across a painting by Dorset artist Sue Hardy the other day. I was very impressed with her beautiful soft colours and attention to detail and use of light. She uses a variety of media such as pastel, acrylic, watercolour and charcoal. Her subject matter is mainly of the animals and nature of the English countryside. She has some wonderful art on her website here. Don't forget to check out the archives too.

I have been tagged by Flora of Through The Round Window so here goes. Those of you who don't like tags skip the next bit.

What is your current obsession? At the moment I am watching the Youtube reruns of Hyacinth Bucket in the comedy Keeping Up Appearances. They are really silly and quite dated now but I find them so funny. Youtube's Norwegicus the Third has uploaded the whole series.

What are you listening to right now? Enya's Paint The Sky With Stars. I love all her music but this is my very favouritist one. Listen to it on Youtube here. By the way, have you ever tried opening two Youtube windows at the same time with the same song. You need to get one started a bit before the second and you can get a lovely effect.

What do you think of the person who tagged you? She is funny, cheerful, chatty, witty, loves her family and makes beautiful glass.

What is your favourite quote? Again so many, but one of my favourites is:

"The doors we open and close each day decide the lives we live" - Florence Whittemore

Do you admire anyone's style? I am not sure about style in a dressy kind of sense but overall I admire Queen Elizabeth 2 immensely. She has character, wisdom, sense of humour and a great sense of duty to the country. For the job she is doing, she is perfect.

Favourite movies? Well definitely the LOTR trilogy and especially the Return of the King which is my all time favourite. I also like Legend, Pan's Labyrinth, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest and the Spiderman films.

Favourite book? This is almost impossible considering I have about 10,000 favourites, but if I really had to chose one it would be Keiko Minami's Bonheur. It is the most gorgeous book of beautiful etchings and I never get tired of looking at it. And no, mine didn't cost anywhere near the prices of these on Amazon. They must be printed in gold.

Favourite fruit? I think I will go for apples with this one, although I like lots of different fruits. I like the Garden of Eden symbology.

Favourite smell? I have a very powerful sense of smell (not always a good thing) and it has to be Lily of the Valley, both the flower and the fragrance.

What do you look forward to when you come home after being away? Cuddle the cats, a cup of tea and check my emails etc in no particular order.

Which word do you overuse? Actually it is "actually" and of course "basically" gets a look in there too.

I tag the following blogs but don't worry if you don't like tagging - no pressure...lol.

Joy at Jamjar

Shirley of Beadbag

Gillian of IHeartCrafts - Check out Gillians Giveaway on her blog

Dolores of True Blue Canadian

If you like these beautiful contemporary folk images of Olesja Serjantova you can find many more at her ArtNow.ru page here. ArtNow.ru is a huge Russian site of over 6,000 artists and over 189,000 artworks. Can you imagine that? I have posted some images from their site previously. I really admire the work of many Eastern European and Russian artists.

These delightful felt applique pictures are the work of Julia K Walton who has an Etsy shop called Fire Horse Textiles here and also has some beautiful examples of her felt work on Flickr here. I never can resist chickens.

I was tempted into purchasing a couple of lovely items on Etsy this past week. The gocco print of the Nordic Blue Hares is by printmaker Dee Beale. She has a wonderful style and produces some lovely artwork. You can see more of her here at her blog and also at her Etsy shop here. The greetings card is by Freya who is an artist I have posted about previously. I love her style but didn't realise that she also produced greetings cards. Her Etsy shop is here and her website here.

Over the past years I have visited lots of artists studios who are in the Open Studios event. I think other countries have something very similar. Basically you check in your locality for which artists appear interesting and whose style you like and you can pay them a visit during a couple of weeks in the summer. The studios are dotted all over the country and maps are supplied with all the necessary details. I have a collection of over 120 of these and they are lovely to browse through in their own right. Most of the studio events are also online. I have brochures from all over the country here and all craft and art disciplines are represented.

This shows how the brochures are illustrated with lots of lovely open studios to visit. If you cannot visit, then often, if an artist catches your eye, you will find that they have either a website of their own or are represented by a gallery if you Google their name. You will need to click on this picture to see it clearly.

This is our local brochure.

One of the places I visited was the beautiful and ancient St. Dunstan's Parish Church at Monks Risborough. Parts of the building date back to 1150 although most of it is dated to 1470, which makes it the oldest recorded parish church in England. The lovely sandstone head sculpture that I posted about a little while ago is situated around the rear of the church on the wall. Every year the church is taken over for two weeks as a base for several artists during the Bucks Open Studios event. Just behind the door as I walked in was a very talented artist and illustrator called Christine Bass. I chatted to Christine for over an hour and during that time examined her lovely acrylic paintings, pored over her fascinating sketchbooks and bought a fair number of her greetings cards. Christine kindly gave me permission to illustrate her work and you can see her images below.

Her work caught my eye immediately due to its vividly coloured and graphic art style. I love the way she paints her trees for instance. She explained that one of her techniques is to collage tissue over the canvas which are then painted. This gives her work a extra dimensional quality. I think her art is beautifully contemporary and I wish her the best of luck with it in the future. She also gave me some very useful tips on acrylic painting which I have yet to try in earnest.

Christine has a blog here and if you go to the "older post" link at the bottom of each short page you will be able to see much more of her work and also her illustrations. It is well worth a visit. The other artists in the church were also very interesting and had some lovely work on display including linocut printmaking, handmade books (gorgeous), botanical art, stained glass, texiles and jewellery. A veritable feast of art in beautiful surroundings. In fact two of my favourite things together - churches and art. What more could I ask for?

From Sonning Common, Near Reading

Beacon Hill From Coombe Hill

Passion Flowers And Cardoon

Chilterns Winter Night

Pink Snow

Flowers At Queen's Park

Near Bledlow

First Year Blog Anniversary Giveaway

I have now been blogging for a WHOLE YEAR....taa daa. Time for another giveaway to mark the occasion. If you want to enter a comment on this post I will draw three people out of the hat (or other receptacle) on Sunday and send each a copy of my print below.

These are the three prints that I will be giving away. Although this is a photograph of them, the colour on the computer is always brighter than in real life.

This is the actual digital image of my folk angel. This drawing has been waiting unfinished on my worktable for several months because I didn't know what else to do with it, but it does look well in colour.

Pen and ink oystercatchers with a hint of digital colour. I love oystercatchers. They are such pretty birds and lend themselves very well to artwork

A fishy tale in watercolour and ink

The images below are the artwork of illustrator and artist Stuart Kolakovic. I love his folk art style and his wonderful palettes. I was inspired to create my folk angel with a similar palette to his but mine is quite a bit brighter. These are very contemporary but also traditional. I love his work and you can find more on his website here. He also has an Etsy shop here.

These lovely papier mache creations are by Julianna Bollini who has pages full of them and other delightful creature on her Flickr site which you can see here. She also has a website called Barco de Papel which the Internet translates from Spanish as "ship of role". No idea what that means but it must be good. She has a lovely blog here if you speak Spanish, or you can just look at the great photos.

Nancy Nicholson is a English collage and embroidery artist and she produces some lovely work. These contemporary embroidered birds are stunning. Unfortunately there is very little about her on the Internet.

Cannot have spring without some sheep and lambs. I love the little black faced fellow in the second picture. He looks as if he should be the black faced mum's lamb but she already has two pristine white ones. I am sure he was reunited with his real mum though.

Aren't the spring flowers wonderful at the moment. Forget-me-nots don't look very much from a distance but if you get the camera lens really close, they are very special.

If anyone wants a real treat, listen to Andrea Bocelli and Hayley Westenra singing Viva Per Lei whilst two amazing skaters are performing on youtube. I love listening to youtube music when I am writing my blog.

These delightful ceramics are by Kazakhstan artist Natalya Sots. Natalya lives in Chicago now and has a shop on Etsy where I first saw her work. Her modelling, colours and sense of humour are such a treat. Her Etsy shop is here. She also has a website here and a Flickr site here with lots of pictures of her work. I love the cat with a bird on its head.

The images below are the artwork of Geoge Birrell. George is a Scot who trained in Glasgow and started painting full time in 1989. Much of his subject matter relates to the buildings and fishing villages of Scotland. His beautiful paintings are bold, graphic, well designed and very colourful. His work also seems to have a stylised and slightly naive quality about it which, in my opinion, is much nicer than a exact rendering of the subject. It is amazing how many exceptional artists come from Scotland. There are masses of sites on the Internet showing George's work but the following sites here and here and here give a good display.

Autumn Garden - this is definitely my favourite of his work. I love the explosion of gorgeous colours.

Chateau Ecossais 2

Blue Mill

Boats and Tarry Wall

Castle Saltire

Harbour Blues 2

Mill and Moon, Orkney
Net Profit

Five Boats

Crowsteps

I cannot believe I have been blogging for a whole year this week. That time has simply disappeared I know not where. I must say I do enjoy it, although it takes up a lot of time and quite a bit of effort. I am always amazed when I read blogs which were started in 2005 or 2006. Those people must have great dedication to have carried on so long. Regarding mine, the pictures come easily, it is the words I have to search for.

I expect everyone in the whole world knows of Scot Susan Boyle by now. How to go from being unknown to becoming so famous in just one evening. What a mad, mad, world we live in. I think she deserves it though. She seems a really nice, down-to-earth person.