Bird Sculptures

When I'm at an exhibition I trip over the sculptures because I'm so busy looking at the paintings - this is an old joke of mine, but not too far from the truth!

So it's quite amazing that my latest creations are 3-D. Remember back in August I was trying to play with new materials and made some clay birds and hearts? I was partly inspired by the bird house sculptures by Sue Pelletier in Cloth Paper Scissors, and partly because I've been painting birds and making felt birds and fridge magnets, it's another way of exploring that theme.


I wanted to combine them with wooden bases, and by amazing co-incidence found some lovely bits of wood on the roadside on my walk to work over the last month! I bought a roll of wire, I painted the clay pieces and glued scraps of fabric to the hearts. Everything was there but nothing was happening...

Then I realised I needed some work for the Territory Craft Xmas Exhibition - this gave me the push I needed to get moving and bring all the elements together....after being quite tentative (and grumpy) about the early stages it was great fun, and I'm already playing with making more of these!

I'm looking forward to a relaxing weekend, hopefully with a bit of time for art making - this is the time of year when the kids get in the pool and I can have an hour's peace keeping an eye on them and doing a bit of sewing at the same time. Right now the thunder is rumbling and we might be in for a storm with any luck!

and the winner is...

My computer has decided to fix itself - maybe it just needed a weeks holiday from the hammering it gets from the kids, possibly the screen is about to die we'll soon find out!!

So I've decided that, as there were only 3 comments for my giveaway I'll send you all something!! Lisa and Clare I'll need your postal addresses so please email me. Many thanks for dropping by my blog and leaving a comment, and hello to any 'lurkers' out there don't be shy!

I've been pretty busy in the studio (verandah) and hopefully will be back in the next day or two with some photos to share.

gnashing of teeth

Just a quick note to say - my computer is down again. So the giveaway that's supposed to be drawn tomorrow will probably be delayed. Sorry everyone, and hope to be back online soon.

Ramblings on painting

Such a pleasure to get back to painting - I've started on another wave of little paintings for the next craft fair.
These 2 are the ones I did last Friday, starting to paint felt thrilling like standing on a cliff edge ready to launch off - it feels silly writing this, I know some people really do it - parachuting, hang gliding, bungee jumping. I'm not that brave!! I suppose I do it creatively, jumping in not knowing what will happen. Such a treat to have the house to myself and be completely absorbed in the process.

This painting was inspired by seeing a large bird in our garden, it perched on the fence for a few minutes then disappeared, though I heard its call in the neighborhood the next morning. I got a book from the library and discovered it's a pheasant coucal, the description of its call was the clincher 'deep hollow...like liquid glugging from a bottle...'

I did a bird painting yesterday too, hope to have photos soon when it stops raining.

It's not too late to leave a comment and have a chance in my giveaway.
Hope you're having a great weekend.

giveaway at last!

As promised I'm doing a giveaway to celebrate one year of blogging, which happened mid-September. I've been doing a bit of clearing out and here are a couple of collage postcards I made two years ago that have been unearthed! They will be part of the giveaway, and also a new card, as I'm back in cardmaking mode ready for the next craft fair.

Just leave a comment to be in the running, I'll be drawing the giveaway on Fri 22nd Oct.
Best wishes to all!!

birthdays and revisiting still life (now with photos)

First, to get back to what I was saying when I got all tongue tied in that post about the still life painting...

I have a beautiful book from the library 'The Bird King and other sketches' by Shaun Tan. Shaun Tan is an amazing artist, illustrator, writer of children's books. This book is something different, a collection of some of his unpublished work, the doodles that turn into children's books, the sketches for his own entertainment, and drawings from life/nature. Here's a little from his introduction:-
'Some are exercises to simply keep fit as an artist, where the practise of drawing is about learning to see, a study that never ends.'
I think that's kind of what I was trying to say!! He also reminds me that I don't draw enough.

It was my birthday last week, we celebrated fairly quietly! But my 8 year old son made me this lovely diorama, and took the photo (much better than the photos I took.)


Sometime in September was my first year anniversary of blogging, I was intending to do a giveaway to celebrate, hopefully I'll get my act together soon, watch this space!!!

Here are some little xmas decorations I've started making ready for the next craft fair.



*aargh!!!* for some reason blogger won't upload my photos, I'll try again tomorrow.
Monday my photos still won't load, any ideas why???

So then I tried to load the photos onto flickr and they wouldn't work there either. I've never had any problems over at flickr so that made me think there was a problem with the photo files...so eventually I reloaded the photos from my camera and voila!!!!

Busman's holiday

Through August I tried to have a month of trying different/new things, as a kind of break after working towards the craft fair in July. The things I tried were -
handmade fabric books (inspired by a project in Ecobooks),



a scroll book(from a project in Cloth Paper Scissors),


making things with air-dry clay - birds hearts heads



a series of drawings of women artists (I did 2!)



All these projects are in stages of half-finished.Not really a holiday! it was harder than usual to get down to work, I found it really hard to work in an open ended kind of way, and most Fridays I did a little painting too, so that I had the satisfaction of something finished under my belt! Hopefully I might have picked up a few new skills or ways of looking at things along the way. If nothing else I'm back refreshed and have dived into a woodcut. I've done plenty of lino-cuts over the years, but this is my first woodcut. I went to a demonstration of woodblock printing a few weeks ago - using the traditional japanese method, no press required... well I've been inspired to have a go, and should have some photos to share soon.
Hope you're feeling inspired about whatever you're doing!