Thursday 25 November 2010

Mapping

This is a map I drew one rainy afternoon to entertain my darling Gelibean girl, it's our kitchen, sort of...
If our kitchen were Middle Earth and we were very tiny and were going adventuring in it!

I was super excited to seee it featured on The Hand Drawn Map Association website.  I love this intriguing website and maps and diagrams in general, I really enjoy trawling through their archives, if you're a fan of cartography then check it out.

Monday 22 November 2010

Best Books Ever






This is what I'm reading this week - 'Flights of Fancy' by Peter Tate, and honestly I think that it might be up there with my favourite books of all time.  It contains lots of traditional stories about birds and all the different beliefs surrounding them.  I find books like this so inspiring, it's made me want to do a series of bird pictures, just as soon as I have some time...... it's the eternal cry isn't it? If only I had 6 hands and 48 hours in a day!!!!

Thursday 11 November 2010

Illustration Friday - Afterwards


Originally this was started as an idea for a contest on Red Bubble that asked for an illustration of a poem, conveniently the theme of Illustration Friday this week - Afterwards - also fits in perfectly with my idea.
The poem is this one -

Time Does Not Bring Relief: You All Have Lied

by Edna St. Vincent Millay 

Time does not bring relief; you all have lied   
Who told me time would ease me of my pain!   
I miss him in the weeping of the rain;   
I want him at the shrinking of the tide;
The old snows melt from every mountain-side,   
And last year’s leaves are smoke in every lane;   
But last year’s bitter loving must remain
Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide.   
There are a hundred places where I fear   
To go,—so with his memory they brim.   
And entering with relief some quiet place   
Where never fell his foot or shone his face   
I say, “There is no memory of him here!”   
And so stand stricken, so remembering him.
It's such a sad, heart achingly unhappy story and I hope that I managed to capture the mood of it here.  The background was black ink thrown in a slapdash manner at some cold press water colour paper, 11x16, with lots of water and much splattering which I enjoy greatly (although afterwards I had to clean quite a lot of it off of the kitchen which I don't enjoy so much) The ever so sad lady was drawn on to tracing paper in ink and then painted on the reverse before getting down to the nitty gritty and adding all the detail on the front.  The background details were added lastly with black and white ink.
I've really fallen for the tracing paper technique, I suspect I'm going to be using it quite a bit in the future, especially seeing as I had to buy a pad of 50 sheets from the super expensive town centre art shop this week.  I'm so disorganised!  Hopefully next time i'll be using it for some slightly more cheerful subject matter though!  Happy Thursday! XXX

Thursday 4 November 2010

Illustration Friday - Spent



Something a bit different for me, and I finally managed to finish an Illustration Friday topic before Friday!
Topic was 'Spent'....nuff said probably! :)

Monday 1 November 2010

All Souls Day

Happy All Souls Day to everyone, I hope Halloween went spookily and wonderfully for everyone, here's our favourite pumpkin-headed friend - 





His name is Wobbly-tooth Pirate apparently, and thats my spooky little Gelibean he's snuggling up to :)

And now for a beautiful autumnal interlude - 








Mostly views of south Cheshire over the last couple of weeks, we seem to have spent a huge amount of time under that tree throwing leaves at each other, and that last picture is my new favourite vegetable, it's a romesco cauliflower, it's so alien like, and when it's broken up it makes the most perfect little Christmas tree spikes, so beautiful that even the children love it.  Must get on now dears, many drawings on the go, must finish some so that i can share them soon, hugs xxx

Wednesday 27 October 2010

Lower Largo Part 2

So it was last year and it was approaching my Mum's birthday and as usual I was completely and utterly brassic, obviously my solution to the lack of funds to buy a showy gift was to make one, and here is what I came up with...

This was supposed to be a picture of our ex-house.  My parents had just sold it and moved to France, and I had moved down south and I thought it would make a nice present and remind them of home a bit.  It wasn't really on a rock in the middle of the sea, but the cats were ours and thats Robinson Crusoe in the corner, he came from our village..sort of..full story here.

Me being me though I was never very happy with this picture, I always saw it as bigger and better than it was, and with some colour in there, but I got distracted by other things and I never got around to making another version of it until this summer when my stepfathers birthday was coming around and I was still skint and so I began on this one.....


Of course I didn't finish it in time, and then I didn't finish it in time for my Mum's birthday this year either, very fortunately the air traffic controllers of France got together and decided to help me out, or perhaps they wanted more money or something, and Mum's birthday visit was delayed for a week, phew!
So last week I presented them with this one and the original, a birthday present that was more than a year in the making!  I think they liked them though.

I'm very much more pleased with this version than I was with the first, and seeing them beside each other it really amazed me how much my drawing style has changed in the space of a year, this feels much more refined, definitely more like what I was aiming for in the first place.

Does anyone else make rather than buying for family birthdays? I'm sure everyone else is better at getting their gifts there on time then I am though :)

Happy, happy Wednesday loves xxx


Tuesday 24 August 2010

Giraffes

In typical last minute minnie fashion, today my daughter and I finally got around to making and submitting our giraffes to the One Million Giraffes Project
Obviously hers is far superior to mine, she's terribly excited about seeing it online :) Bless!
And so here it is again :)

And here is mine, 

If you want to be a part of this lovely idea, get your skates on and submit your giraffe today as it looks like the target of a million is going to be reached very, very soon :)

Hope everyone's having a lovely giraffey sort of a week, hugs xxx

Sunday 15 August 2010

Happy Birthday

Well this week I have been mainly working on birthday presents, my partner's mothers and my stepfathers, and here is the first of my efforts completed :)


So Happy Birthday Janet!

On another note, this week I heard about something called the Cut-Click Mailart Exhibition


You can read all about this exciting project here
Me being me, I decided at absolutely the last second that I wanted to send something and I really wasn't convinced that it would make it there on time!


So imagine how excited I was to see it being hung :) See if you can spot it here !

I hope everyone is having as exciting a weekend as I am xxxx




Wednesday 11 August 2010

Long Time No See

What a terrible blogger I am! Shame, shame, shame on me!  I have been neglecting things for far too long.  I do have a reason ... or perhaps it's just an excuse :)  

My children and I have spent a delightful several weeks in the South of France at my parents house, it was incredibly hot, at one point ot was 37 degrees! (I'm Scottish for goodness sake, we're not built to withstand such intense heat!) and beautifully verdant and lush and full of life.  We experienced some amazingly theatrical thunder and lightning, many fantastic evenings full of operatic frogs and crickets, woodpeckers and owls, long lazy days during which my most strenuous activity was swinging the hammock back and forth and of course many, many wonderful French markets, including some night ones.


So maybe it was extreme laziness on my part, but I like to think that when your surrounded by such gorgeousness it's probably a good thing not to spend too much time sitting indoors in front of a computer.  Well that's my excuse, and I'm sticking to it :)


I did do quite a bit of drawing while we were away though, so I wasn't totally lazy.  I came across this wonderful idea by the super talented ambird and started working my way diligently through the list, amazingly I got to number 6 before my good intentions fizzled out as they always do with these things, I'm not sure I'm satisfied enough with anything I produced to want to share it though!

I also found this contest which I decided I'd like to enter at the last possible second so here is my very rushed and not at all completed to my satisfaction entry :)


As always I wish that I had had considerably more time to work on it but c'est la vie!

Also as always I have many, many ideas in the pipeline and I'm trying to work on them but August seems to be the month that family choose to descend on us so I'm not sure I'll have much time to devote to art over the next few weeks.

I hope you're all having a super lovely summer so far, been anywhere nice? xxx

Saturday 26 June 2010

Happy, Happy, Happy Mad Tea Party Day

Welcome, welcome, welcome dear friends, old and new.
Isn't it exciting?
We've been having the most joyous time tea-partying madly today, the March Hare, the Maddest Hatter, and I.
I'm so glad that you stopped by, would you like a fairy cake?

Baked (and decorated!) by my little angel's own sweet hands, do help yourself to one, we have plenty:)


But you might want to be quick!
How about some tea? We don't really do tea here, I'm an enormous coffee addict, but I found the most lovely treat just for you - Rose Petal Tea - how divinely decadent!


Shall I pour you some?
Milk? Sugar?

(And yes he is a boy, he just has a thing about hats, anyones hats!)


And here are Bean and the Indigo Boy, we couldn't leave them out of all the fun after all.  It looks to me as if they're having a good time too!


Thank you all so much for stopping by, we'd love to hear what you all have to say, if you'd care to tell us, and if you have the time, we love to meet new friends.
You're all welcome to come back any time, there will always be more cake, and now that we know about Rose petal tea we might even convert to being tea drinkers after all, you're welcome to come and share a cup with us.  Hugs and joyous celebratory dances to you all, big, big hugs xxxx

Oh and don't forget to stop by A Fanciful Twist  to find some more teaparty's to drop by!

Thursday 24 June 2010

Busy, Busy Bees

I have been very inattentive to the virtual world over the last week or so but I do have a good excuse, oh honest I do!  I have been very hard at work drawing and drawing and drawing.  
I've spent some time on the Delamere forest picture i showed you before getting it cleaned up and scanning it and generally readying it for an assault of colour, I am slightly nervous about attacking it with a paint brush, I'm always so worried that I will spoil what I've worked so hard on that I stay my hand and hang back and it gets harder and harder to take that first step.
I have it in my head that maybe colouring it digitally would be less frightening and so I may have a go at that too.
In the meantime I have been distracting myself drawing a whole new adventure for those little children, inspired by the lovely teaparty preparations over at A Fanciful Twist  I decided that the little darlings shouldn't miss out on all the fun and so they are set to have a Mad Tea Party all of their own. What fun, fun, fun :)

Do come by and have a sticky bun with us all on Saturday, we do love a good gossip over a cup of tea :)
Bye, bye for now dear friends, see you ever so soon xxx

Sunday 13 June 2010

In Lux's Garden

These are just  few of the shots I took one evening in France last month.  The light as the sun was setting down the valley below the garden was absolutely beautiful and the searing heat had subsided to a gentle balmy warmth.  It was one of the loveliest evenings I have spent in a long time.  

That's my eldest angel in the background, yes she is fishing and no there's no water there!  She was catching mackerel and sharks off of the edge of the cliff!  My children are the best source of inspiration ever :)  The next evening they spent ages trying to catch rain in sieves.  I wish I had photos of that!

It's such a beautiful spot it makes me want to draw so many different scenes.  I particularly love the quality of the light in these pictures while the sun was going down, I would love to be able to capture that on paper.  I also love the way the various plants are framing the scene, especially the irises, a drawing lilke this is definitely on my exceedingly long to-do list :)

Thursday 10 June 2010

WIP

Here they are, as promised, a few little shots of my current project.

Last weekend we took a stroll around the stunningly beautiful Delamere Forest , I highly recommend it if you are ever in the area.

It was full of the most beautiful brackens, or were they ferns? just starting to unfurl and spring open, and they were surrounded by layer upon layer of forget-me-nots and buttercups.  I saw my very first woodpecker and Mr Indigo saw a treecreeper which impressed me much more once I realised that it was a bird and not in fact a plant :)  We walked down by the lake and out onto a natural stone jetty where we were engulfed by the most amazing cloud of Damselflies, it was like being in a fairytale, I've never seen anything in nature that is quite such an incredibly vivid blue before.  They just carried on with their day around us, seemingly completely unconcerned by us.  Magical!

So that afternoon in a wood inspired this picture, I only hope that I can do such a glorious place full of breathtaking scenery the justice it deserves when I start to colour it.  I could never begin to capture all of it but I shall try my very best to encapsulate a sense of it :)

Goodbye for now friends, hopefully the next time I stop by I might be posting some slightly more advanced shots for you, maybe evenn with some......gasp......colour in them!

Stay tuned, hugs xxx

Wednesday 9 June 2010

New Home, Whole New Me

Hello friends, old ones and new ones and those yet to be found, I'm so pleased that you've stopped by for a visit.  If we've met before you'll have noticed that there's been a name change and there are lots of new locations to explore, if we haven't then don't worry, you really haven't missed much!  I decided, after a great deal of humming and hawing, that it was time to start being a bit more professional and to have one professional name that I would stick to and work under, instead of having some accounts in my own name and some in random names I'd thought up - now it's all going to be a bit more streamlined and it's going to be much easier for me to keep my poor little head straight with all the who's and what's and where's and why's.

So....there is much to come, that I can promise, if you would like to take a look at the things that are inspiring me at the moment then take a wander through my beloved gallery of gorgeousness over at  Tumblr  .  You'll see some of the loveliness that wanders around in my head trying to find it's way out and on to a piece of paper, I hope that you will enjoy it, and that it will whet your appetite for what is to come here.  I am also trying my absolute hardest to get an actual website and an actual shop actually up and actually running - so if you were to stay tuned and bear with me I would be ever so greatful...there may even be rewards :)

There are some work in progress photos living inside my camera at the moment and I will do my absolute best to get them up as soon as possible but in the meantime here is something from earlier this year.  I hope you enjoy and I really, really hope that your visit has been a pleasant one.  If there's anything at all that I can do for you please don't hesitate to let me know.

This is , 'And With The Dawn Came The Inky Black Ducks' , if you've seen it before, then don't panic, I'm sure it's probably not any nasty jiggery pokery, it was most likely me with my other name, unless of course it is nasty jiggery pokery web steallery going on, in which case - shame on them!

But as I said, welcome, come back and see me anytime, and if you'd like to say hello, i'd love it if you'd introduce yourself.  Great big hugs and love to you all xxx