Xmas flowers

I'm a bit late with this story, but here goes!
I never really buy cut flowers, we're on a tight budget and if I splurge I buy a magazine, or art supplies or cake!! On christmas eve I was dashing around my local supermarket like everyone else, buying all that food for christmas day. As I came through the checkout one of the staff I see every week stopped me. "Hang on a second", he disappeared then came back with two flower arrangements...I was thrilled. A few of the flowers were starting to brown, I guess that by boxing day they'd be too far gone to sell, so better to give them away.

They looked lovely on my christmas dinner table, and I did a couple of tiny sketchbook drawings of them which turned into this linocut. It's much finer and more detailed than my usual, and I'm really pleased with how it turned out.

At the same time as I printed the xmas flowers lino, I printed one that I'd chiseled in December, of an elegant lady walking her dog down by the beach. Most people I see walking there are in serious sports gear, or casual shorts and runners, she wore a floaty dress and bare feet, tall and elegant, her dog was elegant too, maybe a greyhound? It's funny the things that stick in your head and appear later in an artwork.

I hope you've had a good weekend :)

Terrible watercolours!!

For the past few years, every Christmas holidays I plan to go painting 'plein air'. Sometimes I have managed a couple of watercolours, one year I bought myself a beautiful moleskine book with heavy paper...which is still in the wrapping, far too daunting to use.

I have the idea of painting sunsets, storm clouds can be glorious at this time of year. But evening is the time of day when I'm low energy and have chores to do. I found that the holidays were zooming past and I hadn't done one painting. So instead of worrying about sunsets I took my paints along on my morning walks. I did these 2 quick sketcches on a windy morning at the beach.

And this one down at the park on new years day.

These are just in a normal little sketchpad, I'm using good quality paints but they seem to soak into the paper and disappear. So I bought a little watercolour pad to see what difference it would make. I did this sketch of evening clouds above my house yesterday, and the colour seems much better.

Hopefully I'll get a few more done before the kids go back to school and normal routines kick in. When I think about going painting I imagine doing something like the watercolours of Emil Nolde!!! with free brushwork and intense colour. The reality is very different, wrestling with a medium I'm not comfortable with - I like to work with line not light...

One of the blogs I follow has some gorgeous watercolours, I wish I could do some like that!! Go visit Jumie's blog and take a look :)

I hope your new year has started well. Best wishes to all.

Happy Christmas everyone!

I hope you're having a lovely relaxing day. This is our most laid back christmas day since kids! most of my teenagers didn't get out of bed til 10, so I did some quiet sewing to start the day and listened to classic fm! Just a quick post before I get stuck into the afternoon's cooking.

This is the xmas card I sent out to family and friends, a new lino-cut based on an old sketchbook drawing I came across at the right moment! I realised it's the first lino cut I've done since January, so that will be a plan for next year to do a new lino each month. Not really a resolution but something for me to think about. Bye for now and have a wonderful time over xmas and new year :)

Have you read Big Magic?

Have you read Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert? I bought it for myself back in September as soon as it came out. I'm a sucker for anything on creativity!!! I heard her interviewed about it on the radio a few months ago and was hanging out for it to come out.

I really enjoyed the book, I galloped through it really fast, and since then I've been re-reading it slowly with a pencil in hand, to underline the bits that resonate for me. It's interesting because it's very much her experience of the creative process along with anecdotes about people she knows. Some chapters have a big scribbled YES next to them, others got me thinking - oh that's interesting, my experience was a bit more like this... It's set me off thinking about people in my art class at school and college, people I haven't thought about in years. It's even got me doing a bit of writing after a couple of years drought! Here are a couple of the things I've written. The first is in response to how Liz Gilbert writes about loving our work even the failures, the second is in response to her writing about the lottery of success.

Myth #1

Nicky
not Nicola
17
long black hair
but boyish.
She purged her record collection
to make way for Slade.
( I got Kate Bush
and the Boomtown Rats.)

She painted in oils
a lifesize Noddy Holder,
rendered the reflections
of his lacquered guitar,
the textures of his craggy face
and rocker hair.
Centre stage in the art room
everyone admired it.

Until the morning it was discovered
smashed in half.
Nicky wasn't satisfied.

                         --------------------------------------------------------------------


The one to watch

Not up in the light filled studio,
he and a friend were in the basement
across the road, under the dark room.

A spotty teenager, with paint
on his clothes, on his face,
rumor he ate it too.

I remember seeing a sketchbook
with drab colour mixes, greys and browns
and notes scribbled beside.

He was not the one the girls chased
he hung out with the lads
a bit intense a bit wild.

Was I missing something?
Did anyone realise
he was the one to watch?

                        --------------------------------------------------------------------

I'd love to hear if you've read Big Magic and whether you liked it or not :)

Christmas craft fair

Better late than never, a quick hello to let you know I'll be at the craft fair at the waterfront tomorrow morning, sharing a stall with my good friend Ingrid. I think there'll be over 80 stalls all local arts and crafts, I can't wait to see what everybody has been making. It's going to be hot so it'll be an earlier start and finish than usual 9 til 1 (instead of 10 til 2).

Here are some of the happiness flags I've been working on.

A friend of a friend has a gorgeous blog of daily photos of the sky! She recently did her 2000th post and had a celebration on facebook where she invited everyone to post a photo of the sky where they were, here's my shot.

Enjoy your weekend :)

Build up blossoms

It's the build up, the hot and humid time of year when people go troppo waiting for rain. We did have some early showers in September but nothing in October and the heat is building... the plants don't care though, heaps of trees burst into blossom at this time of year.

Here are some photos of a flower spike on my galangal (Thai ginger) plant, I've been growing them for a few years but haven't noticed them in flower before.

And some photos of the blossom trees I saw on my walk this morning.

And a drawing from my big sketchbook.

foam print cards

It's interesting working in different mediums how an idea will jump across from one to another, and I don't mind if the best version is a 'substantial' painting, a journal page that no-one sees, a lino print or a card.

One morning last month I made some foam prints based on my latest little paintings and sketchbook pages. Foam prints are so simple, no need for sharp tools or special equipment, you just draw into the foam sheet with a pencil and then they are ready to print. I print them with acrylic paint with retarder medium mixed in to slow down the drying time, and use a foam roller. I printed a big batch of prints.

Since then I've been colouring some in with coloured pencils and collaging them onto cards. Hand colouring is time consuming but very calming and I enjoy it, it's an activity I can fit into little 5 or 10 minute windows of time, eg before work, or in the evenings when I don't have the energy for anything serious!