Quirky Birds And Este MacLeod

This is "An Intriguing Hat" and is quite quirky really. I love drawing people with various things on their heads.

I found a picture of a lady with this posture in a book and decided it would be perfect for this picture. This is "The Blue Bird".

This design is "In The Flower Garden" and is loosely inspired by another Caroline Gardner greetings card.

I call this drawing "triangular tree" because the leaves are tiny triangles - makes sense. The blue fruit is a bit unusual of course....!

The early morning sun makes a really lovely picture of these winter trees. I haven't been out and about photographing very much lately so this is last years' shot.

I couldn't resist photographing this beech tree with the sun turning its leaves to gold. I wish autumn would stay with us for longer. We are having incredibly squally gales tonight so I don't suppose there will be many leaves left on the trees tomorrow.

This is the deer wrapping paper I found yesterday. I looks much better in real life but I think you get the general idea. Very sweet and pink.

This one is a Stephanie Dyment card. I love the bright, fresh greens. On the whole I prefer contemporary designs to traditional, although some traditional cards are really lovely, like the sheep card I featured in an earlier blog.

This is a Claire Hocking design. I am a sucker for deer and I love the little bird on its back. I love drawing birds. They are so cute and you can put them almost anywhere.

This is a lovely Lisa Graa Jensen Christmas card. This is from last year but it has been re-issued this year but a shorter version with the moon and sky missing. I often notice the previous year's cards in with the new designs. This seems to happen with the most popular designs. I suppose if you have a moneyspinner of a card you milk it for all it is worth.

The following paintings and ceramics are all the work of South African artist Este MacLeod. Check out her website for more lovely images of her art and craft.

November is passing so quickly that it will be Christmas before we know where we are. I haven't even thought about present buying but that is usually a last minute rush. I envy those organised individuals who can shop for presents as soon as summer is over. I know that I couldn't do it. Even more remarkable are those people who shop throughout the year and lay gifts away even though it may be January. I think I need the spice of the adrenaline rush in leaving it to the last minute. I always do my best work when I am under pressure...ha ha.

I am still on the Christmas card hunt though and have found some more nice designs for you to browse. I also bought my first roll of wrapping paper simply because I loved the little pink deer on it. There are so many lovely designs around at Christmas time.

The leaves are nearly all golden and yellow and red now but the weather is so wet and squally that I doubt if we shall have any left on the trees by tomorrow. I popped up to one of my favourite places for autumnal leaves yesterday, but unfortunately I forgot to replace the camera batteries so I missed the chance of sunshine on beech trees. I will probably never get the opportunity again this year so I have rooted out a couple of oldish photos for you to see. Spring and autumn are my favourite seasons.

My featured artist this week is South African born painter and ceramicist called Este MacLeod (pronounced macloud). She has quite an extensive website here. Her paintings have a stylised, naive quality and she is inspired by everyday things, dreams and the natural world. Her ceramics are beautifully quirky and very stylised and, like me, she loves putting birds on peoples' heads...ha ha. I love her work and I think she is a very talented artist and craftswoman. See what you think.

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.