A bit of a mish mash

There's always a bit of a feeling of deflation after the craft fair (even worse after an exhibition). After being really focused and working madly for the last month or so, I feel like I should beable to relax and play around a bit. Which I have been doing - rediscovering crochet!! - but also feeling a bit guilty for not powering onward...

At the moment I'm reading a book (borrowed from a friend) about the Canadian artist Emily Carr (1871-1945). I'd never heard of her but I think she's well known in Canada for her landscapes and particularly images of the northwest coast Indians, their totem poles and townships. As a person she comes across as a prickly difficult character, and the writing of the book is quite dry, but I will slog on to the end! I'm at the point where she's 56 and is just getting some recognition from the art establishment for her work.

I did this drawing from one of the photos in the biography, of Emily,aged 16, with her pet crow. I've been painting women with birds for a couple of years now, and I don't seem to get tired of the subject. It's wonderful to stumble across a photo like this!!

Still also slogging on with the poem a day for April.

I have at last sent out one poem and will try to get a couple more organised before April runs out!


Hope you had a great weekend, the dry season is around the corner here - hooray.

Craft fair and more

I'm a bit late posting, it was a hectic weekend with the craft fair on Sunday. It was well worth doing, I had plenty of sales and it's great to get feedback, amazing the number of people who say 'oh I never knew your did art'!!

Here are a couple of the last minute paintings I did.

My 12 year old has decided he wants to learn to crochet. We've seen a lovely book of amiguri animals, so I'll be splashing out some of my earnings on crochet hooks, wool and the book. It's a very long time since I did any crochet...I think when I was about 11 to 14, so I'm hoping it'll come back to me. I was a crafty kid but then was won over by 'art' (and less interested in sewing at school when it became serious dress-making), my sewing like the sock-monsters seems to come from that child-like place.

I'm still mostly managing the poem a day, some of my poems this month have been about art and art school, here's one (below) that still needs a lot of work. (I'm taking a leaf from Jessie's book, I'll leave it online for a few weeks, and then take it off to re-work and hopefully send out.)

I've had my first rejection of the year and still haven't submitted anything for March or April - must get my act together now the craft fair is over!

Back from the abyss

It's so good to be back online!! Feels like I've been away for months, but it's only a couple of weeks.

The craft fair is only a week away now. I have a couple more paintings ready to take along.

This week it's been school holidays - for some (annoying) reason I just can't paint when the kids are in the house, so that all ground to a halt. Instead I've been doing some sewing projects, things I can pick up and put down when the kids yell. I've made a batch of felt brooches - I don't have photos of these yet. And this is my first attempt at a sock monster.

I've been admiring these on the net - there's a whole group devoted to them on flickr! We've been saving odd and too small socks for a while...

April is poetry month (officially in the U.S. but there are no boundaries in blogworld). I've been flying solo doing a poem a day while my computer was down. It's nice not to have the pressure to upload to the net every evening - which takes up valuable writing time. So hopefully I'll keep on to the end of the month. I didn't submit anything in March (blame the computer) and wll have to do double this month to make up for it!

silence

Sorry for the silence. My computer has problems and has been at the fixer for a week...it could take longer. The timing is not too bad, less distractions when I'm getting ready for the craft fair, but I do miss you all and your blogs!
Happy Easter, back soon (hopefully) with lots of new work to share.