So this is Christmas...

As always, December arrives and as usual I am unprepared for the Christmas festivities. I tell myself there is plenty of time and then find myself running around like a headless turkey! Decorating the house was something of a challenge this year due to our new four legged friend and a squeaky toy has been bought, wrapped and hidden.

Most of this years artworks have been executed in watercolour but I have enjoyed returning to print making. The “Stellar Hare” relief print above has been proofed and this one is having some festive gold paint applied by hand. I printed a small edition and have sold several through my Etsy shop Acornmoon which is now closed until the New Year in order to give me time to enjoy friends and family gatherings.

At the end of November and into December I took part in the annual exhibition of The Royal Miniature Society at the Mall galleries in London. As a full member I was allowed to exhibit not only miniature but also some larger works. It was a very enjoyable event and a good time to meet up with friends and family visiting London.

I decided to use some of the images from my miniature paintings to produce a small collection of ceramic brooches and pendants, also available via my Etsy shop.

      

Welsh Border Life Magasine very kindly featured my artwork in their December edition.

Our granddaughter delighted us all by producing this very charming and detailed drawing of the nativity. She worked entirely unaided and I think it remarkable for a five year old to show such a great sense of design, not that I am in any way biased ;-)

I would like to thank all the people who have followed and supported my work throughout the year and I wish you all a Happy and Joyous Christmas.

Life Long Learning and a Giveaway!

My old dad left school at the tender age of fourteen to begin life as an apprentice engineer. He used to say "you are never done with learning" and he was right. The very last thing I did for him was to return his library books, he was ninety seven when he took out books on European history. I guess I inherited his sense of wonder and a desire to learn. Much of my recent activities have been wrapped up in education.

I attended a one day workshop run by The Prince's School of Traditional Arts, the venue was in a very beautiful building-The Art Workers Guild and the teacher was Farkhondeh Ahmadzadeh.
We learned so much in one day; how prepare the paper and how to paint in the style of traditional miniature painters. Here is my humble effort, a flower painted on paper stained with walnut ink, burnished, sized and burnished again until the paper looked and felt like vellum. We used tiny paint brushes to draw the image and then we used water colours made from traditional minerals and stored in shells. To complete the image we used gold paint applied with a ruling pen. Of course this was only a taster which served as an introduction to the art of Persian Miniatures, a truly inspirational day in the company of wonderful people., I wish I could do more.

I enrolled on a slightly longer course with my local calligraphy group, starting with Uncials. As many of you will know, the art of calligraphy is as old as civilisation and as broad. I have only dipped my toes, or should I say dipped my pen into this vast subject. You know how it goes, the more you know the more you realise how much you don't know. I found that using some of the materials from the miniature class worked very well, the walnut ink and a lovely gold gouache have been pressed into service.

My husband has been doing some work connected to The University of Cambridge and was required to attend a meeting there. Of course I jumped at the chance of keeping him company, especially as we were offered accommodation in a beautiful Arts and Crafts Building called Westminster College. I sat at a desk overlooking the garden and practiced my Uncials- still a long way to go but the peaceful ambience of the building was very conducive to study, neither of us wished to leave.

The little gallery in my home town has started to run workshops and I was asked to teach a lino printing class. I have run two classes and have had full bookings so far, meeting some old friends and making new ones. We used Japanese green vinyl rather than lino and printed and burnished by hand using wooden spoons and a marble rolling pin. The results were impressive, many people had never done anything arty since leaving school and a good time was had by all. I did find it a little strange to be the instructor after having taken part is a multitude of workshops in the past.

Whilst on the subject of lino, I was thrilled to have one of my lino prints included in this gorgeous book on owls called The Elegant Fowl, available from Mascot Media. They publish a series of printmaker books alongside other art titles. I have a small selection of prints available in my Etsy shop if anyone would like to take a look. You will find a link in the sidebar.

And last but not least, the giveaway! Well two actually. The July edition of British Patchwork and Quilting features my book and fabric "The Dream Quilt" The magazine is giving away a book and a fabric length, one yard is enough to make a mini quilt.

I am also giving away a copy of the book, all you have to do to enter is leave a comment below and tell me what you have been learning or what you would wish to learn. If you would rather not enter the contest please leave a comment anyway, it's always nice to hear your thoughts. I shall announce the winner on the 22nd July. 

You can find The Dream Quilt book in my Etsy shop and you can buy the fabric in my Spoonflower shop. I would recommend Kona Cotton if you are considering making a purchase. One yard will make a mini quilt and the fabric is printed in such a way it needs no piecing so you can quilt straight away. The fabric is printed to order so allow a couple of weeks, if you live in the UK the fabric will be printed in Germany, otherwise it will be printed in the USA.

'tis the season for bookbinding...

We are now experiencing cool autumnal weather after an amazingly hot spell, which took everyone by surprise and made it hard to be indoors. I had to spend time working on Christmas artwork, painting snowmen and Christmas trees when the sun shone and the garden beckoned.

Our grandson George celebrated his second birthday and I had my … errr hmmm birthday too. The nicest part about birthdays is of course the presents and I am thrilled with my new press, which my husband bought for me. A bookbinding friend called Robert Hamer built it, he numbers all his presses and I am honoured to own number 8. He laminates the plywood to make an extremely strong structure, which is much lighter than metal so even a wimp like me can lift it.



Having the new press has inspired me to do more bookbinding. I rescued a lovely but very tatty edition of “Highland Pack” illustrated in black and white by Keith Henderson. I choose a grey/green cloth and a piece of paste paper, which I had previously decorated in a workshop, believing that it would come in handy one day! This was my first attempt at a half cloth binding. If you would like to try yourself I can recommend a very thorough but easy to follow book by Kathy Abbott “Bookbinding A step-by-step guide”. I also made some more little notebooks for personal use and experimented with printing an image taken in Venice with a “photocopy” effect filter. I printed it out onto thin grey card on my ink jet printer and used it as a cover for a simple single section notebook.



Of course I am eager to devote some more time to printmaking, my lino and wood engraving tools are looking forlorn and neglected, oh for a thirty-six hour day.
Before I go I just wanted to point you in the direction of Mangle Prints who has been printing some delightful Christmas cards, each one hand pulled and nice enough to frame.

Messing and Pressing

Whilst I was in the printmaking mood over the half term holiday I felt inspired to do more lino printing. Nothing is ever as straightforward as it seems and I spent lots of time experimenting with different papers and methods of printing. Eventually I settled on a lovely grey paper that I had squirreled away in my plan chest, the smooth surface took the linseed oil based ink very well, sadly I did not make a note of the name of the paper. I used my old office press to print the piece and wondered why my arm ached so much afterwards. I now know why they say, “Hand pulled” when describing the printing process!



I happily filled the kitchen table and every other surface in the house with prints whilst my family fended for themselves. I found a low odour white spirit, which made the job more acceptable but did not realize how long each piece would take to dry; still, we live and learn.

I had a go at printing my wood engraving but decided to do a bit more tinkering with the block. You can see how it is looking so far in the photograph. As you can see the wood had irregularities, which I tried to disguise in the design. I was thrilled to bits with my new burnisher, which worked a treat on the block. If you have ever fancied having a try at wood engraving I would encourage you to do so. I was pleasantly surprised at how little pressure is needed to make a cut and so few materials and space are needed.



I have listed a lino print in my Etsy shop; I do love playing shop don’t you? Now sadly, playtime is over and it’s nose to the grindstone for the next few months.

A "cuppa" interview with illustrator Celia Hart.

My blog will be one year old this week and I have been reflecting on how it felt to post my first entry, it was a bit like talking to the ether! I cannot tell you how exciting it was to get my first comment but then again you will no doubt have had the same feeling yourself. I wanted to create a place where I could share inspiration, a meeting place of like minds and also I wanted an inexpensive and easy way to link to my website information about work and products etc.

Working from my studio, a.k.a. my dining room can be lonely at times and apart from dog walkers and neighbours, opportunities to meet new people are few and far between. Since I have started my blog however, I have found a whole new world of artists, gardeners, writers, dog walkers, designers, quilters, bookbinders and all round lovely people who have enriched my life and brought great joy and that all important ingredient to the life of any creative individual, that is inspiration; so for that ladies and gentlemen I thank you and invite you all to share a “cuppa” with my special guest artist Celia Hart, otherwise known as Magic Cochin from her blog Purple Podded Peas. When I first saw Celia’s blog I felt so inspired that I went out and bought myself some lino! This will be my third such interview to date so whatever your nationality, wherever in the world you have traveled from, pull up a chair and pour yourself a nice cup of tea on this Saint George’s Day.

Q1) How do you take your tea and in what kind of cup do you like it served?

Today I’m drinking Clipper Organic Everyday Tea with semi-skimmed milk, no sugar; in an Emma Bridgewater Birds mug – this one has Fieldfares on it.

Q2) If you could choose anyone, past, present or future, who would be joining us for tea.

I’d like to invite William Morris and David Hockney to join us to tea. Morris was one of the first designers I really got enthusiastic about, I think we could chat to him about gardens and wildflowers; textiles and furniture; poetry and illustration; typefaces and book binding. Hockney could tell us about how he uses a computer to help him work on his paintings and about the optical instruments used by artists in the past. I think they’d both be partial to a cup of tea and a toasted tea cake – don’t you?


Q3) Tell me a little about your background in art and design.

I went to Brighton College of Art & Design, my degree course was called ‘Visual Communication’ – which covered typography, graphic design, illustration, photography, advertising, etc. It was just before the advent of Desk Top Publishing so everything I’ve learnt about digital illustration and DTP has been hands on, for ‘real’ publishing projects. Today I use my computer as just another tool to achieve an end result – for instance my prints start as a sketch, the designs are worked up digitally, then they become hand-carved blocks before I print each colour by hand.


Q4) Where are you based and does it influence your work?

I work in an office and studio which is attached to our house. The building was once a Victorian billiard hall and it is within a walled garden. My latest set of prints are inspired by working in the garden this spring and include our six hens. I tend to think about a possible print for a long time before actually starting work – this is an indulgence, as by contrast commissioned work is usually done to a very tight deadline with no ‘thinking time’ allowed. I love going for long walks and the things I see as I walk inspire ideas for new prints: hares and deer running over the fields; the textures of trees and field furrows; a flock of birds landing in a hedge.

Q5) What have you been doing/working on today?

Today I have been completing some digital illustrations for a GCSE Spanish student’s book for a major UK publisher (sounds boring – but I enjoyed working on these ‘vector’ illustrations). Later I will finalise the pages of the May edition of the village magazine – I’ll also need to take a photo for the cover, which will mean going for a walk to search out a good ‘May’ scene. Sadly, there’s no time for printmaking today, but there are prints hanging up in the studio ready to be numbered and signed. And I need to get the framed prints ready for an exhibition in Norwich. I should think I’ll fit in some gardening too, I usually do.


Q6) I hope that you have brought along something wonderful to show us, what is it?

(Let’s pretend it’s July) I’ve brought some Purple Podded Peas from my vegetable garden – one of the ten varieties of pea I’m growing this year. I’ve also brought along a cast iron fish which sits on my drawing board, I bought it in Japan. It’s both a brush rest and paper weight. I think the pea-pods and the fish are both beautiful and useful so Mr Morris would approve! And both sometimes appear in my prints too.




Well thanks so much for being my guest Celia, I know we have lots in common, we share a love of William Morris and David Hockney, of Japanese prints and country gardens. I am very envious of your walled garden, that is my idea of the perfect garden and something I have tried to create here. I am sure your work will continue to inspire and delight fans old and new.

Playtime.

First of all, before I forget, I would like to thank Olivia at 4roomsandthemoon for nominating me for a blog award and also Julie from beadholder.etsy.com for listing one of my books in a treasury.

I would also like to thank everyone who visited my blog over Christmas and left kind messages. We had a very enjoyable and busy Christmas with family and friends but now the last guest has departed, I have been enjoying a bit of time to myself, time to play!

In September, my husband gave me a set of wood/lino cutting tools. Now, some women like perfume, others bags and shoes, but for me, I just love receiving craft tools! Last Christmas I got a Japanese hole punch which works like a dream, this year I treated myself to needle nosed pliers and a crimping tool, aren’t I the lucky one? However, I digress, I have been playing with my lino cutting tools and have managed to make several prints of a barn owl feather for a little book project I have been working on called “Silent Flight”.

Cutting lino is fraught with difficulties and I have many failed attempts which I consigned to the bin. The wood cutting tools gave a much better result than my old "school" set but as a print maker I feel I have a long way to go, however I have enjoyed myself immensely and have made a great deal of mess in the process.