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!

A bit like Christmas?

 Last week also I had a HUGE parcel of cheeryupiness! It felt a bit like Christmas, I didn't know what exactly was inside, so it was exciting. It is so lovely to be sent samples of your work like this, these are some new Christmas designs that I worked on a while back. 12 packs of cards each with 6 samples in, Wow, delightful. Once again they have done a very good job with my Illustrations. I like the pattern work they've put on the edges etc and inside.

I am totally delighted with my samples, such a professional job. I can't use them all to send at Christmas, due to the captions, but I can use the Special friend captions, so they may make their way out to special friends of mine! I hope you can see them OK, and if so, do you have a favourite? I can't quite decide just yet? See you all again soon. :)

Last week I shed a tear....

Actually I sobbed some of the time, as Last Thursday, the 5th July. would have been my beautiful friend Micheles birthday. She sadly passed away 3 years ago now. We were the same age, although she was adamant that I was older (by 3 months). I still so miss her, she was such a loVely person, with so much to live for, her beautiful family. I really don't know how her husband has coped, but he does have a good family around him. They were a creative couple as you will see here.
I can remember her phoning to tell me she had lung cancer, and then telling me not to get upset !!!!
It was terminal, even though I spouted on about the wonders they can perform nowadays, it was too bad and she knew this. She was so brave through it all, although she only lived for 6 months after knowing. I wanted to post this, because her husband created such a wonderful booklet for her funeral, I keep it with me and can see her smiling face every day. It makes me smile. It shows her lovely children, 3 girls, one older and then the twins. The two of them created a range of cards around the twins. She was so creative, thinking up scenarios and making props etc. I will show you her smiling face now, I've wanted to show this for a while and now the time seems right.  As it says on  the page of their wedding photo, 'There are things we don't want to happen but have to accept, things we don't want to know but have to learn, and people we can't live without but have to let go.'

We painted white tulips on her coffin as she requested, and had to say goodbye. I still question why and struggle with it. But I know there are many others who go through similar things. Just needed to share this with people, she was too good a person to be forgotten. I think you can see some of the card designs on the 'Double trouble publishing' website.