Over the rainbow

Over the rainbow

 Ive been busy over the past few weeks so am pleased I have eventually managed to finish this mixed media canvas. The north west coast of Scotland is dotted with beautiful pastel painted villages. This is Portree on the Isle of Skye. I love when on a still day the pastel colours are reflected on the sea creating abstract rainbow patterns.
 The canvas was built up in layers of paint and paper. I even used strips of the west Highland Free press, if you look carefully under the sea you can see fragments! Sorry the image isn't clearer, because of the length of the canvas I had trouble photographing it so I've included some detail pictures.

Detail showing torn paper strips

Reflecting rainbows

The girls hair is created by using pebeo metallic copper gel liner on top of torn paper strips

Gesso and paper layers

Portree

Constructing christmas

Only 43 days to Christmas I'm told, normally that would not fill me with a huge amount of excitement believing that Christmas should stay firmly in December... however..

whilst at the trafford centre  in Manchester yesterday I saw this!! At first glance a stylish looking minimalistic tree, but on closer inspection the whole thing was made from Lego!
Standing at nine metres tall the 2012 Lego Christmas tree is made from 350,000 bricks, featuring 108 branches and 450 special Lego baubles.
The tree was built by certified professional Lego builder Duncan Titmarsh, who started the project on October 20th. It was unveiled on November 1st.

I love It..Lego is hugely tactile  and reminds me of past childhood Christmas mornings, perhaps that's why I liked it so much.:)

Liberty style

Long long ago before I grew up I wanted to be a textile designer, I love pattern and colour and growing up in the 60's and 70's there was no shortage of wild vibrant prints. Liberty and Sanderson were for me very inspirational and aspirational, I yearned after a liberty print maxi dress! The stylised flowing forms were a direct hark back to the work of the pre-raphaelites, my favourite art movement. William Morris being the leading light in both wallpaper and fabric design.

William Morris 1834-1836

                                                 

Morris was a hugely influential designer, political theorist,environmental campaigner,writer and poet and under his direction Morris & co grew and flourished.

                                                              

tulip and Willow 1879

                                                                                                 

                                                                        

                                                                                                      

Selection of liberty prints

 Liberty was the creation of Artur Lasenby Liberty.The first Liberty store was opened in 1875, a bazaar of eastern curiosities, later Liberty concentrated on fabric design enveloping the Arts and Craft ideals becoming linked with Sanderson in the 1940's. I remember In the 1970's being surrounded by a sea of Sanderson and liberty. The designs appearing on everything from curtains and soft furnishings to clothing.                                  

Recently I was sorting through some things for my Mother and in the depths of a dusty drawer found a collection of my A level fabric designs and prints.(She never throws anything away!) They seemed to me to be very evocative of the 1970's in their colour and forms, brown, green and orange shades, yet with a strong connection with the liberty styles that I loved. Some were frankly rather bad, yet interesting. As the years go by both taste and style change in Art as well as design. There is a design I found for kitchen curtains that I find hard to believe would ever work!

Very Liberty Style!

Finished fabric and repeat design.

When I was learning to silk screen print we handcut all the individual acetate stencils and drew and handpainted the repeat design on a grid . It was a time consuming business trying to get the pattern to repeat without obvious gaps or flaws, I guess it's now all done on the computer and ink jet printers now, what would William Morris have thought!!

A kitchen curtain design???!!!!!

Bathroom curtains??!!

Once at Art college I moved away from fabric printing, preferring to use more three dimensional forms of working, particularly wool and felt, however I still am very much in love with pattern and use it in my work today.

Hibernation

Hibernation

 
 As October grows older I grow more aware of the onset of winter. As most of my close friends know I dislike the cold immensely, I think May is my favourite month as I can look forward to the summer ahead, bringing warmth and light. As October progresses and small mammals get ready for hibernation I find myself feeling rather envious of them, wishing I to could curl up in a bed of leaves, waking in spring....

Hieronymus Bosch (detail)

The figure in my painting reminds me of of the elongated forms in medieval painting such as Bosch, perhaps she has been asleep a long time.....

The layers were built up as collage, I then painted in elements and altered images to create a overall tone. As you can see I originally incorporated a tree, but I didn't like it so removed it.

Below are details of the layers of paper and paint. I added lots of gold glazes which reflect the light and make it difficult to photograph well. I'll try and improve the photographs when I have some time :)

Wake me up in spring :)

The electronic postman

Fashionista sketching.

My daughter asked if I could do a few sketches of her for her fashion blog Fashion how I came to live a penniless existence She is a second year fashion management student. Each week she is styling various outfits and writing about them. She loves a fashion blog called Fifi lapin which has little rabbits drawn dressed in high fashion....I suggested I could draw our rather dumpy pet cat in various outfits but this didn't impress her much so I decided to just do quick watercolour sketches of her in instead. I am not by any stretch of the imagination a fashion illustrator and once I received her emailed photographs to transfer into sketches began to feel a little panic stricken on how to approach the whole thing. Then yesterday I found a lovely little book in a charity shop entitled"Pictures in the post ,the illustrated letters of Sir Henry Thornhill to his grandchildren".

In 1914 Sir Henry Thornhill a soldier in the British Raj started sending pictures to his grandson Teddy. They started off quite simply drawn, but soon they became embellished with birds and all types of animals.

I love the idea of a simple sketch that means so much being sent on the back of a small postcard.... In these days of texting and email, postcards are a rare thing! So I made a postcard, photographed it and sent it along with some sketches. I think I will develop the idea some more and make the postcard the main attraction, after all everyone loves recieving a postcard!! even an electronic one.

The electronic postman

 

Wedding Fever

The arrival of October brought wedding fever to my household leaving little time for painting or drawing..Firstly a big thank you to Hannah Sycamore who I commissioned to make this beautiful card. I met Hannah a few weeks ago, she makes beautiful special occasion cards as well as framed canvas mixed media creations, anyway both I and bride and groom were delighted with it.

   I agreed to do all the flowers for the wedding and after a bit of deliberation went for an autumnal theme, orange, deep red, golds and browns. Soon my hall began to fill up and resemble covent garden flower market!!

The table decorations were made from hollowed out pumpkins and ornamental squash, which have beautiful amber gold colours. The principle flowers for the bouquet's were Carthamus or safflower, a gorgeous little tufty orange thistle, Cosmos ( chocolate flowers) these beautiful little flowers are the colour of dark chocolate and even smell chocolatey!! Tanacetum, which is a  variety of wild tansy, Hypericum, anenome and Naomi deep red roses.

I incorporated pheasant feathers and leaves and berries to finish the autumnal theme.

 

Cottage by the sea

Cottage by the sea

I have been laid up with an ankle injury for a while and this has meant enforced inactivity, not something which I relish, but it has meant that I have finally finished this canvas which was started some time ago

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It began as a textured background and I lay down paper and washes, changing the tone as I went. Initially there was a bird of prey drawn out, but I felt that detracted from the small cottage so left it out. I wanted a patchwork of colour in the foreground so used pebeo liner to outline the torn paper around the trees.

 Below is a close up of one of the finished trees showing the paper layers. I'm not sure if the circles are falling leaves or rain...I think they are a combination of both.

Being incapacitated for a few days has also meant discovering the sketchbook challenge which I have added to the side of my blog. I often find as the nights grow darker harder to find inspiration for my sketchbook and thought this an excellent idea to keep me motivated. Each month there is a new challenge to fill your sketchbook, this months being pattern, so now I have lots of ideas to fill those pages.