Beetle Wing Dress

This dress, made for Ellen Terry, using 1000 beetle wings has just been restored, at quite a sum, and put on display at The Ellen Terry Museum in Smallhythe, just near me. I plan a works outing to see it ....

More creatures

Artist Polly Verity's wire and paper animals ...

Angels

mythical beasts

etruscan face

Sketchbooks

Spending much of today in the sunshine, drawing. Recently it has become a completely absorbing and comforting activity, a time to loose myself. Worries almost disappear.
These pages are buildings and big ladies, pattern, birds. Inspiration ... Constance Howard and some revisiting of old ideas working from the present.

Still working on 'City' but not finished yet ... many distractions.

Porridge

I usually check my blog in the mornings, with a bowl of porridge (not eating bread at the moment), and a cup of tea. This morning it was so wonderful to find some more new friends and thank you for your kind encouraging comments. I will write to you all. . .
Here also I have flung my windows open to see SPRING! The new spring light is highlighting all the new green shoots and early blossom in the garden, the birds are like over excited school children, and the odd bumble bee knocks into the window. . . there is a great sense of being re-born.

I do wish one of my lovely followers could give me some hints as to how to create a more exciting looking blog page. I just can't see how to get beyond the minimal tools blogger give you. You all have such wonderful pages! Any offers?

Here are some plant forms I made a while back, but which I am tinkering with again in readiness for an exhibition I have in July. (more later. . .)

influences ...

I am getting the hang of this blogging wonder now, and a warm thank you to all who come and visit, but do leave comments too. It is just magical to reach out to like minds and make these gentle connections.

I am at the computer a lot at the moment, toiling away designing my next product ... the 'City'.  Since a small child I have drawn buildings and cottages, created dens under blankets behind the sofa, perfect peace and isolation from the real world, all aglow with a flickery torch and a cheese sandwich. Then progressing to a camp in the twisted boughs of the old rhododendron in our garden, then when old enough to wield a hammer, tree houses in every suitable tree. My father would marvel at my tenacity and burglary skills in stealing his best tools, planks of wood and best rope from his workshop. Happy Days. But to make a little set of fantasy buildings seems quite apt really after all these years of dream nesting.

I still have a much loved book from childhood 'A Little House of your Own' by Beatrice Schenk de Regniers with drawings by Irene Haas, and like many books from my childhood they have played an important part in the stored visual library of inspiration in my memory. We all have these stores. Brian Wildsmith was also a huge influence on my work from a very early age and I have a collection of his books old and new.

Wendy@ mine Shrove Tuesday

Here is the link to Wendy's blog. We spent yesterday working on cards, eating pancakes (evidence) and generally progressing ...

more fractals

This extraordinary crochet design is based on, wait for it ... the canonical 'chaotic' system, follow the link to read more. It is a strangely comforting process to use fractals in design, whether in drawing or in other medium. Drawing fractal inspired forms lead you into another world of gentle certainty ...

blue

I have been lazy ... but there have been many new things to do and little time. Orders have begun to come in for the cards and I am busy designing the 'City', to produce soon. Spring is here even though the cold wild cuts any exposed bare skin like a knife ... but snowdrops are everywhere bravely nodding wisely, and colour begins to emerge from the soil.
 I shall begin to bring colour in here too now. But it is too early in the morning and I have had no tea yet! I photographed these dead hyacinths and almost prefere their dying hues to the vibrant colour of the fresh ones ...

 And this is a gift I made for a friends daughter's marriage in the autumn, which now seems a long time ago. It harks back to work I did when I was about 16, using images cut from magazines, to create little poetic scenes ... I have some somewhere, I will post ... now cuppa!