A Butterfly theme

Peacock Butterfly WOW

Red Admiral, who wouldn't open those beautiful wings for me!

Small Tortoiseshell butterfly

Hi there blog friends, the post today has a theme of butterflies running through it. They seem to have been in my garden, in my thoughts and in my artwork, so here goes......Above, those in the garden recently, attracted by the Buddleia flowers. My Buddleia flowers later in the season than most, and the last of the summer sun has brought these beautiful butterflies in, what a delight!  I've been a relaxed sort of busy recently, trying to do some paid work...,going on days out walking,.... doing some spec work and on a teeny tiny screen print course for half a day.  

Screen for hand screen printing

 The screenprint course was at the 'Art House' in my home town. It involved printing using simple stencils that were cut out of newsprint. I had to quickly come up with an idea the night before the course, and Butterflies popped into my head. I have to admit I had not envisaged these colours, I would have gone for something less garish and more toned, but we were working in pairs, so colours had to suit both people. It was all a bit manic again, I think 4 colours was a little ambitious in the short time we had, as we printed 8 pieces each. The time just flew by, and we had to work like crazy. It was just a great experience discovering what can be done, with such simple equipment. My image turned out OK. But I played safe and didn't overlap colours, so registration was fairly easy. There were some excellent prints produced once again, unfortunately I didn't get any photos, as time was so tight.One girl did a Rob Ryan style design, and as you have to cut the paper stencils out, it made total sense and turned out so well, it was of some birdies in a tree. (should have got a photo).

Paper stencil for each colour, it's those butterflies again!

3 colours printed here

Final colour added.

 I would definitely like to do some more of this kind of screen printing at home. I will have to get myself a screen! The possibilities are endless for this technique. Excellent course all for £7 !!!

My indulgent project at home has been a large watercolour of Cottage Garden flowers. I try and think of subjects that might work well on Greeting Cards, but that I like too. Below is my process of working, starting with sketch ideas, using my own photos if I can, the one below was from Sark, some Hollyhocks that were beautiful. The idea was to have a white picket fence with flowers typical of a cottage garden.

First stage of artwork, the Hollyhocks.

 I decided to paint all the flowers first, then masked out the white picket fence in order to paint in some of the greenery below.

Masking fluid going on.

Greenery washed in over the masked out fence.

At this point, when I'd washed in the green, I decided that I didn't like the regimented line up of the flowers. So I (very bravely for me) started to paint in some feint loose flowers in between those already painted. I was really quite pleased with how they turned out! Just off the cuff, making it up as I went along!!

Finished piece, complete with 'Painted Lady' butterfly!

This artwork is about A3 in size. I needed to work a bit bigger than normal to get some of the loose watercolour effects in, it's not easy to do if they are so small.
I hope you've enjoyed my butterfly ramblings, we've had some colder weather today, it's feeling much more like Autumn, which I believe officially starts tomorrow? I've been planting out 100 tiny pansies, something I don't normally do at this time of year. I have bulbs ready to put in also, all with the promise of some delightful flowers in the spring and hopefully through the winter too! See you all again soon.

Art for the love of Sark book

 Hello Blog friends. As promised I am back with some of the images from this beautiful book I had bought for my birthday. All of the artwork is stunning, showing different aspects of life on the island of Sark. The wildlife ones are just gorgeous. You can see below an illustration showing the butterfly that I took a photo of whilst we were visiting. There are such a variety of styles of work, all of them are so accomplished. I shall just post some of my favourite images, they really speak for themselves!

Spot the butterflies as seen in my photo below!

Speckled wood, now I know what it is from the book!

Love these paper cuts and the wooden sculptures

Darren Woodheads works are particular favourites

Beautiful bird captured here so simply, Darren is from West Yorkshire, which is my home territory!

Love this work in progress artwork.

Long tailed tits, so strikingly portrayed, I love these little pink birds, they are more common now in the garden.

We stood in this very spot looking out to sea, over the thatched roof house.

I hope you can see all these images from the book. They are all beautiful. I have still so much to look at within the book, and some of the writing is very moving. There is also a DVD of the artists, which I have yet to see! I'm sure it will a fascinating insight into their work.
The weather here in the UK has been quite lovely of late, that's why I've been missing from the blog. In between finishing off some work at a steady pace, because my eye is still not 100% , we have managed some wonderful days out in the sunshine. I think it's all change next week at some point, it's going to have an Autumnal feel to the temperature? Eeek. I've so enjoyed these balmy late summer days.
I will be back soon with some more creative pieces, but I hope you've enjoyed seeing these!

Inspiring Illustration from Lynne Chapman.

Just wanted to post something very inspirational and arty from the lovely Lynne Chapman. In this short film she very genorously shows how she works on her new Children's picture book 'Swap' in pastels. This gives a great insight into producing artwork for picture books. Lynne is very talented and her blog shows so much of illustration techniques etc. I always love to watch an artist work, and as Lynne does this same sort of thing whilst working with children in schools etc, I am sure she must be an inspiration to them. Hope this inspires you too, check out her blog,'An Illustrators life for me'. Bye for now folks, I will be back with some snippets from my delightful new book 'Art for the love of Sark' .

Shingles and a short break.

Lovely Bruges

Exquisite chocolate shop coffee

Paschendale cemetry very moving in the evening light.

 Hi there blog friends. Just a short post today. I have been rather ill with shingles. It comes from the chicken pox virus, which lays dormant in your bod until something triggers its return? I must say it has been a scary experience, because I had this in my eye and just above, and it was painful and frightening, to see my face swell up like that! I'm going to put a photo of my ugly mug below, so those with a nervous disposition look away now!!
In the midst of this we had a trip to Bruges planned, so the pretty pictures are up here. Bruges is a very beautiful place, with oodles of chocolate shops and pretty buildings. It was a relaxing sort of break, although the train travel on the Eurostar was quite lengthy, I just slept through a lot of it. We paid a visit to Ypres and the cemetry at Paschendale, along with 2 Canadian dwellers and an Irish couple. It was a very moving trip, quite humbling really. If you intend to leave now, before looking at my face below. bye for now and see you soon :)))))

Menin Gate Ypres, the last post is played here EVERY night!

Warning, below is my ugly mug all swollen and painful.(tried to make it small) I am getting much better now. Just got some weird tugging sensations above my eye and it's all quite numb, I think the nerve ends took a battering, quite like my face. I'm hoping the feeling comes back very soon. See you all again soon, with something lovely and arty to look at! :)

Aaaaggghhhh!

Sark Adventures

Leaving St Peter Port on the ferry

 Our little holiday on Sark seemed like an adventure, from setting out on the ferry from the harbour at St Peter Port, Guernsey.

Approaching Sark.

It felt like stepping back in time, gave you this sort of child like appreciation of your surroundings, everything was quite natural, laid back and easy going.

My fab crazy friend Jill, schoolteacher on the island!

Sarks population is about 600, however we visited on what must be the busiest weekend of the year, it was 'Sheep racing' weekend and there were probably about 1,500 visitors over the weekend! This is my friend Jill to the right, not her normal attire, she was helping out at the festival, they had Sumo wrestling suits for adults and children.

Sheep racing set up and raring to go.

 This is the main field that the schoolchildren use normally, it was taken over for the weekend by the 'Sheep racing'.

Walking the dogs along the quiet lanes.

You could easily escape all the action of the field though. The many lanes were quiet, and there were cliff tops and beaches with only a few people on them.

Dixcart bay, with people heading out to their moored boats.

The islands prison, still in use!!!

The hole in the rock.sheer drop ahead.

 You were never very far from the sea, although most of the dirt roads run in the centre of the island, no cars on Sark, just a few tractors and bicycles, lots of bycycles, the cycle hire were doing a roaring trade this particular weekend. The bay on the right doesn't normally have all those boats there, but they do look pretty!
















This is the islands prison, still in use, next to the tourist information office, so just be careful not to end up in there for the night!





One of the cliff top views was the 'Hole in the rock' on the right here, there was a sheer drop and no railing or anything.

 It was quite a view from here, down below you can see a white speck, these were seagulls calling as they soared around the cliffs.











There were quite a few hotels on the island, B& B's and campsites. You could take your pick of accomodation. We were lucky to be staying with our lovely friends.

Newly refurbished Dixcart hotel, very posh.

Approach to La Coupee on the bikes.

 This hotel was so beautiful and it felt calm and relaxing inside. I should imagine it was quite expensive to stay.













We hired bikes on the Sunday, just so we could get around a bit quicker. It's years since I cycled, but I hadn't forgotten and it was fun. We cycled out to 'little Sark' and had to dismount to cross La Coupee, a thin strip of land connecting the two islands.
These few photos show some of what we saw, but one of the most amazing sites, that I didn't manage to capture, was the night sky. Sark has been awarded the first 'Dark skies' certificate. It has no street lighting and therefore it is very dark along the streets at night. We stepped out on the first night and WOW, boy oh boy, what a stunning show. It was like someone had switched on thousands of twinkling lights. So many stars, that you just don't see on the light polluted mainland. The sky was crammed full of stars, we could pick out the milky way and some other star formations that my minimal knowledge allowed. We spent ages looking up at this it was so beautiful.

Heading down to the harbour at 7.30 am

Our little trip was all too soon over and we walked down to the harbour via the cliff top early on Monday morning to catch the ferry back to St Peter Port Guernsey. It was sad to be leaving, we'd had a great time. The sea was like a mill pond, very calm. Such beautiful sights. I have to thank my friends for showing us this. I also received a belated birthday pressie from them, a most amazing book 'Art for the love of Sark' which I will have to post some pics of next, because the artwork is just stunning!

Goodbye beautiful Sark.

Hello sunny St Peter Port.

We arrived in St Peter Port at 9am, it looked so pretty coming in to the harbour.










Our little plane home to England below. Hope you've enjoyed this little tour, I will be back soon with some photies of my fabulous arty book!! :)

Little twin prop plane home.

Beautiful Sark

Waiting for us in the harbour, Jill and Danie and dogs Molly and George

Sark ferry and harbour.

Main street in Sark.Look at the signpost!

View from La Coupee was beautiful

Life has a steady plod on Sark!

We arrived back yesterday from our whirlwind trip to Guernsey and Sark. It seems to all be over so quick, but it was packed full of sight seeing. The weather was so amazing and made it feel so good, it felt like I was in Portugal or similar? What an amazing place Sark is, I shall try and summarise it all in my next post, along with more photos (because I took lots). We were so lucky to have my dear friend Jill and her husband Danie there, as we crammed in visiting all the most beautiful places in our weekend there! I shall just put one or two photos on now to show you. I will be back soon with more. :)

In Situ.....

http://trowelandpaintbrush.blogspot.co.uk/
On my bedroom wall, just beautiful.

blogdelanine.blogspot.co.uk
In the front room matching the decor!

jodyvanb.etsy.com
Such a lovely peaceful artwork in the hallway.

http://www.annejulie-art.com/blog/
In my work room, perfect inspiration.

 I have purchased some lovely work from various artists over this past few months. It's taken some time to get them framed etc, but now they are 'in Situ' in my home, for me to thoroughly enjoy. The top one is from Kathleen Maunder at 'Trowel and paintbrush' blog, then the lovely birds of Genine at her art blog, then Jody Van B at her Etsy site, and above from Anne-Julie at her blog 'Ma Petite Theiere'  Hope you enjoy looking at them as much as I do.

I'm taking a little break soon and visiting a very dear friend living on this island above, Yippeee, can't wait, sunshine on the way too!!!! See you again soon.:) with lots of photies!