black and white

I have been sifting through old boxes and art folders and have come across some of my drawings that I did some years ago, thought I would share them with you…..

 

These two studies of flowers were done around the time I was staying with a friend at her Suffolk cottage.  A beautiful place tucked away in the depths of the countryside.

 

The flowers and herbs were picked in her garden and the jug was one that she made herself.

 

This view of pretty cottages was taken from a photograph that I took.    unfortunately I can’t remember where it was taken.

 

This is an imaginary landscape, that was eventually chosen by a friend to use on their business stationery.

 

This one was inspired by the town houses that I used to see while I was at college.

 

I seem to remember that I based this cottage window on a photograph I once saw in an old copy of Country Living.

 

This illustration came about after waking up to a wintery scene after it had snowed overnight.  Black and white illustration is something that I have always enjoyed doing and it was lovely to rediscover these pictures after so long, it makes me wonder what I am going to turn up next!

sometimes….

when youngest son has a bright idea – his ears lights up!

glueing and sticking

Sometimes, days just don’t go right,  sometimes it all gets a little tough out there.  Some open a bar of chocolate, some open a bottle of wine, and yes, some open both, I have been known to do this, but another thing I do is a little glueing and sticking of the papier mache variety.  I find ripping up pieces of newspaper into tiny, tiny strips and pasting them onto a form made of card, wire or screwed up paper is soooo satisfying, I just can not tell you how much. So it was the other day became one of ‘those’ days and I took my self up to my little room and got the glue and paper out and off I went.  Ages ago I made some little creatures…

The two smaller ones eventually sprouted wings and became quite colourful, it must have been their summer plumage!  I have been wanting to make more of these, so I set to.

I decided to make one with wings and spent ages covering her with bits of newspaper, this is so relaxing and even better if there is a good play on the radio to listen to.

I drew  a peaceful face as I was feeling so much more peaceful now.  Then I reached for my pen and paints, and the decorative part began.

While I was on holiday recently I was lucky enough to meet up with Jackie Morris at her cottage.  Jackie’s beautiful paintings involve a good deal of gold leaf.  I told her how my late father used gold leaf in his work occasionally and that I have his burnishing tools still, which are beautiful things in their own right.  Jackie suggested that I have a go at gold leaf myself sometime.  So when  I returned  home I ordered a small book of  gold leaf, but then I was stumped as to what to do with it. It looked so gorgeous and so precious, I didn’t want to waste it, but then I looked at my little creature with wings and knew exactly what to do.

After I rubbed the gold leaf through the back of the transfer paper,  I gently lifted off the paper and was amazed by the dazzle of the gold that I saw,  it looks so beautiful, I really gasped when I saw it.

Here it is along with Dad’s burnishing tools, which were so lovely to use.

I enjoyed myself so much, What ever it was that had been bothering me, had faded into the background for the time being, which very felt good indeed.

the life of brian – the dog

A couple of days ago I visited a friend and met a new acquaintance in the shape of a beautiful greyhound, namely Brian.  I had heard about this new dog from my friend who had recently lost their old dog Lucy, also a greyhound but with lurcher in her.  Lucy was a sweet dog with such lovely eyes and such intelligence you thought she could read your mind.   My friends went for some weeks saying “no more dogs” and then “well, maybe a whippet would be nice” until I received the “we’ve got a dog” phonecall!  So on Friday I was summoned to meet ‘the dog’ who had been described as being very large, white and pink with no brains plus a Gaelic name no one could pronounce let alone remember.  Barely had I arrived than I was greeted by the most handsome greyhound I have ever seen,  white and pink he was not, but black and white with a lovely dappling between the patches of black and his face was just gorgeous, I think it was love at first sight! 

He is so gentle and elegant and looks as though he should be in a medieval tapestry or stretched out infront of a huge yawning fireplace in a baronial hall.  Brian is a rescued greyhound and at only three years old and having failed to win races for his former owner, he found himself at a greyhound rescue centre, but now his life has turned around and he has got his second chance and I think he has definitely won this time, as he settles into family life with my friend.

If you want to know more about greyhound rescue click on this link.

Just need to add a picci of Mabel or she will be so jealous!

workspace

I am loving my new little workspace, it is tiny and getting a  bit cluttered.

I have cobbled together some shelves in the corner,  which also seem to be getting a little cluttered – oh well.

I love sitting there drawing, painting or just dreaming.   Angels have started appearing, one of my favourite subjects.

and Mitten is never far away doing what cats do best.

September

Ever since we returned from our holiday, it seems that the weather has taken a distinct turn towards autumn, the evenings have become a little chilly and we have had the fire on now and again, so lovely to feel that warmth.

When we were in Pembrokeshire we found a wonderful little antique shop which was crammed with so many fascinating and lovely things, I could have spent ages there and I couldn’t resist taking this photo of a part of the shop.

As I look at the photograph, I see things that I didn’t notice at the time, there was so many things in the shop!

When ever I go on holiday, I always take my sketchbook, some paints and a canvas or two, I think I would be lost without them.  Here is a little painting that I completed on holiday.

Obviously a bit of a sea theme going on!

To day being the first day of September is also my youngest sons birthday, and today he turned 16!  Oh my, that has gone so fast!   Blink and you can miss it.  So he goes back to school tomorrow as the oldest kid in the school!   He is also now the proud owner of his very own laptop, there have been some very heavy hints from him over the past few weeks and months and it seems it has paid off.    So he is a very happy chappy!

Happy birthday Lawrie!!

a summer holiday

We have been away on our summer holiday to beautiful Pembrokeshire.  Myself and my eldest son had a lovely time, I relaxed and switched to holiday mode and Thomas took in all the local history, however my 15 year old son thought it was rubbish!  bless him.  I think he has finally grown out of holidays with mum in a caravan in a remote field, we had to do a trip to Haverfordwest for him to have some retail therapy. once he had a new computor game and a new dvd in his hand, status quo was restored and I carried on with my holiday!

We visited the very beautiful St Davids cathedral, apparently two  pilgrimages to St. Davids equaling one to Rome.   The cathedral is so special, nowhere in Britain is there a more ancient cathedral settlement and the architecture and decoration is just breathtaking.

There are wonderful medieval mericord carvings in the choir stall.

These are flip down seats that the monks could perch their bottoms on whilst still looking as if they are standing up!

 

 

 

This chap was at the end of an arm rest.

Whilst wandering around the cathedral, Thomas discovered that graffiti is not a new thing, but also possibly he has been there before….

This was on the tomb of Bishop Henry Gower above which there were the most lovely faces.

I will leave you with a couple more views  before I move on.

We went for drives exploring the unspoilt countryside, unfortunately I didn’t do as much walking as I would have liked due to aching knees!                 I loved this cottage that we came across, a pink roof, how about that!

We visited Aberiddy, where there is the ‘blue lagoon’ , an old quarry pit filled by the sea.   It seems that the favourite sport there is leaping off the ruins of the old quarry buildings into the water, not for the faint hearted!

Played with stones Andy Goldsworthy style.

On the last day though, I had my own little highlight.  I visited the cottage and studio of Jackie Morris, whose journal I have been following for a few years now.  Jackie is the hugely talented illustrator and author of truly beautiful children’s books and the owner of some quite famous ginger cats!  (who will soon be on the telly with a certain lady)  I was made so welcome and after being shown around the building site that is her cottage (regular readers of her journal will know what I mean)  we headed up to her studio with mugs of tea in hand.  Well, I think I was in seventh heaven,  There I was sat in the room that I had seen so often on  my computer screen, surrounded by wonderful artwork work in progress and paintings framed up.    Hares and polar bears ravens and owls were in every corner of the room.  Jackie was as lovely as her paintings and I came away with her new book and a cat calendar tucked under my arm, and my head spinning from all the visual delights that I had seen.  

If you don’t know Jackie’s work yet, I thoroughly recommend a visit over to her website and also to the ginger cats blog  where there is the most beautiful writing to be read, I had underestimated just how clever cats can be!

On our way home up north, we discovered some real little dragons.

Isn’t it lovely!   We saw 22 of these common lizards at the Cors Dyfi Nature Reserve along with clouds of dragonflies – marvellous!

a bit of a change round

Heavens to murgatroyd!   More than a month has passed since I tapped away on my keyboard to you.  I have been a wee bit busy though, myself and my two sons have all swopped bedrooms and it has been like one of those little plastic games where you keep moving squares round to make up a picture, I feel like we have moved house!  My eldest has gone up into the attic when I used to reside and my youngest has left his tiny bedroom and gone into the eldest sons bedroom and I have gone into the tiny room – and Ilove it, it is a challenge fitting things in, but it is so cosy and seems to fit me better, plus I get the view over the garden, yeh!

This is the first time in ten years that I have had a window I could look out of, up in the attic I had to stand on tippy toes to see out.  So I wasted no time in dressing it up with a bit of lacy curtain from Ikea and a posy of flowers from the garden.

My bits and bobs have come down with me along with my favourite chest of drawers.  As you can see there is a little decoration to be done, but some of it will be very hard to cover up…..

In fact, I am not sure I will be able to paint over this bit.  Lawrie has been in this bedroom for ten years and this was done a long, long time ago, isn’t it sweet.  We have so enjoyed moving round, it has been exhausting, there has been so much stuff to sort through.  but it is great now we are finally in the rooms we wanted to be in, we can now take our time straightening out the details.  Dare I show you a photo of my dismantelled studio bedroom?

 

 

 

 

OhmyGod it looks awful,  we ended up with a huge number of bin bags filled to bursting to take to the dump and recycled loads of things to our local Emmaus shop, it all felt very cleansing and each night I fell into bed with a good positive tiredness and aching limbs, all well worth it.

Now then the moment you have been waiting for, my last post was my 100th and I promised a giveaway and asked where you like to go on holiday.  Lots of lovely people left lovely messages, it seems the south west, Cornwall and Devon is big favourite with most people, no surprise there, but other places were mentioned too, some that I knew and some that I didn’t.  Anyway, the main thing was to give someone one of my small paintings, so I asked Lawrie to pick a number between 1 and 26 and he said 17 which is …..

is Valerie at Acornmoon

tra laaaaaaaaaaa!!!!

Many many thanks to everyone who left a message, I think I will do this again soon as it is so much fun.

I will now go and wrap up the little picture, and as soon as I have your contact details Valerie, it will be on its way to you. 

Hope everyone is having a lovely summer wherever you are, thank you for visiting.  Joy

100th post …. plus a give away!

Goodness, here we are at my hundreth post on my blog.  It has taken me some time to get here, (infact I starting writing this post days ago!!) not being an every day blogger, more a now and again blogger.  I began way back in October 2006, not knowing where it would take me, and I have ‘met’ so many lovely, facsinating, creative in so many ways people, it has been, and still is a wonderful journey through an amazing community of people.  emails have flitted through cyber space, parcels have flown around the world, such is the special bond that is created by like minds meeting through sharing stories and art and gardening , I could go on and on, but I guess you get the jist of what I am saying.  This is a special place where I can talk, when I can think of something to say, where I can share my garden, my animals, my art with others who do exactly the same.  Magic! 

The last few weeks have seen me busy busy busy,

finishing off and framing three paintings for this years Holmfirth artWEEK. 

I finally delivered  the paintings queueing up with all the other artists who were taking part.

It is a wonderful exhibtion to be a part of, and to visit, there is so much to see every year, sometimes I will visit several times just so I can take it all in.  The Exhibition is only on for one week starting Sunday July 5th.  On the Monday to Friday it is open from 10 am until 10 pm and becomes quite a social occasion with lovely cakes on offer in the tearoom.  So if you are in the area – West Yorkshire (Last of the Summer Wine country) it is well worth paying a visit.

Now then, I have been tagged!! by One Pink Goose.

What is your current obsession?  keeping cool, salads, soduko.

What are you listening to right now?  The Archers on radio four.

What do you think of the person who tagged you?  Cathy has a lovely blog that I thoroughly enjoy visiting, beautiful artwork by herself and other artists that she showcases.  I have been ‘introduced’ to some wonderful artists through Cathy’s blog.

What is your favourite quote?  This one is on a fridge magnet that I have, I don’t know who it is by.  “When it rains, look for rainbows, when it is dark, look for stars”.

Do you admire anyone’s style?  I am not really a follower of fashion or style, It tends to be jeans and favourite t shirt for me.

Favourite movies?  So many to choose from, “Into the West”,  “Edward Scissorhands”,  “Loch Ness”,  “The Shipping News”,  “K Pax” to name just a few.

Favourite Books?  All time favourite is “Precious Bane” by Mary Webb.

Favourite Fruit?  Dried apricots for nibbling, mango juice for drinking.

Favourite Smell?  Scented flowers on a warm summer evening – honeysuckle, new dawn rose, sweet rocket.  Oh and hot buttered toast!

What do you look forward to when coming home after being away?  A mug of tea in my favourite mug and a walk down the garden with my dog and the two cats to see what has been happening.

What word do you overuse?  I have not the foggiest idea, you would have to ask those around me!

That’s it, If you want to join in the tagging game then feel free.

Okey dokey, let us get to what this post is all about, and that is a big thank you to all of you who have wandered here and paused awhile.  I would like to offer you a little  gift, a summery painting, it is painted in acrylics, my usual medium on a 5″ x 7″ canvas, initialled on the front and signed on the back by me.  It is of nowhere in particular but inspired by holidays by the sea.  I love harbours, all that bustling going on, jolly little boats coming and going and the cry of the gulls, mmm love it!  So this little painting is up for grabs, all you have to do is leave and comment, say hello, tell me where you like to go on holiday if you like and then all your names will go into a hat and I will get one of my boys to pick a name out. easy peasy!

 Happy blogging!!  Joy x

Number ninty nine….

This is my 99th post

which means

the next post will be a giveaway post!!    Yeh!!

See you then….