…the flickr world of artist and illustrator Virgin Honey! She’s a little bit Elsita, a little bit Nathalie Lete, a little bit J Otto Seibold… sort of… and entirely unique. I could hardly chose a photo, there are so many goodies.
I am taking part in Koo’s My Creative Space meme again this week and, as per the game plan, I have hidden a heart somewhere on my desk. For easier heart-hunting you can click on the photo for a bigger image.
My creative space is getting tidier this week. I have to clear the decks for a onslaught of gocco printing and bunny sewing.
Here’s my Paper Moon illustration, slightly changed to satisfy my inner (and outer!) critics. I am working on rescanning and making colour seperations this week, ready for printing up next week. Fun!
More creative spaces (with hidden hearts) at kootoyoo.
Our heating is broken, and it’s warmer sitting outside in the overcast gloom than it is at the kitchen table. I feel like we live in the olden days – at least – that’s what I tell the kids as they peer at me under their beanies and try to move their arms to eat their breakfasts, hindered by all the thick clothing layers they’ve been made to pile on over their pjs and under their dressing gowns.
Only a week until someone comes to replace the logic board in the heating unit.
Three things that happened to me today (that didn’t involve complaining about the cold):
1) I made a new friend. Amelia’s new friend from school has a very nice mother who… SEWS. Ahh, kindred spirit.
2) I told my mum the plot of my novel over lunch and her eyes started moving in spirals like she was a hypnotised cartoon character. She told me it sounded very complex.
3) I made the head for the doll to send to Nicaragua. I am making one of my punkdorf dolls and the swearing that goes on as I wrangle large wads of fleece has not got any less despite the practice.
I haven’t written my 500 words for Every Day in May today, yet, so I’d better go do that now. At least my laptop is keeping me warm.
Dream House #1, 8″ x 11″
I think I have found a new obsession. And while you might not believe this, it *isn’t* low-light photography. (Curse these gloomy afternoons!)
Working a papercut is a delightful combination of two of my favourite things; illustration and craft. For me, the excuse to get away from the computer, on which I do most of my illustration work, and slowly carve out an image with my hands is amazingly exciting.
Luckily the girls played happily together yesterday (mostly) so I got a good chunk of time to slice away at this with my new knife (beautiful sharp blades! I only used one for this but I probably should have switched it out for another as it was starting to drag towards the end), my little snippity-snip scissors and my new fine paper.
I loved working out the design. I drew it completely in my sketchbook first rather than leaving anything to chance as I just don’t have the skills or confidence (or talent!) to go it freestyle as Elsita does. I decided I wanted some parts to be completely symmetrical like the traditional German papercuts (thanks to Amy for putting me on to that) which I cut first and some parts I wanted to be asymmetrical which I went back and cut after I had flattened out the paper again.
Wanna do some? I found these helpful: Martha Stewart cutting a symmetrical paper valentine. The Skinny laMinx tutorial is good too. Of course, there are bazillions of links in Elsita’s sidebars so do check those out too. I love the shadow work of Andrea Dezsö.
Speaking of folded paper and symmetry – Wow!
So – My creative space yesterday was the kitchen table. I had Amelia home sick from school and when she wasn’t drawing or driving me crazy, she commandeered my computer to play mathletics so I was left twiddling my thumbs. This ended up being a very good thing because it forced me away from twitter and google reader et al and into the studio where I found the pair of tiny little scissors I bought a while back for the purpose of creating some papercuts. I have been wanting to have a go at this for a long time, inspired by the great papercut goddesses Amy Karol and Elsita Mora, and the papercut guru Rob Ryan. Watching the Miso + Ghost Patrol doco on the ABC just nailed it for me.
I have always had a huge passion for silhouette art works – probably because of some of Jan Pienkowski books full of fantastical scenes or those Dover books full of quaint vignettes.
Papercuts seem like the perfect way to get that contrast and the drama of shape and line. Obviously Pienkowski (above) could get a huge amount of detail using pen and ink but have you seen Elsita’s papercuts? (of course you have!) … I look at them and GASP at the detail.
I am definitely not so impressed with my first effort but I thought I would publish it anyway to show a “starting point”. I rushed my design and then added bits spontaneously. I had a ratty toddler jiggling constantly at my elbow and a mathlete across the table stressing as she competed online against a boy-genius from Qatar. I had a blunt knife, a wrecked cutting mat, a crappy pair of scissors and my two layers of paper seemed to be unforgiving so my first effort is pretty awful (a good craftswoman *always* blames her tools) but I have dashed out this morning, and bought a tonne of new blades and a better cutting mat and some fine black paper so we’re all systems go. While I found the process frustrating yesterday (I think it might have been easier to fold some of those complex origami planes!), I can completely understand how it could be quite addictive and even quite meditative.
(How come Rob Ryan’s fingers aren’t covered in bandaids?)
I worked on Little Letters almost four years ago now. WOW! Where did that time go? I feel massively prolific realising that fact (not). Oh well.
It’s always nice to hear from people who have stumbled across the book and realised it was illustrated by me. Yesterday one of my old, old web mates MCB sent me a photo of a book sighting in her new home town of Frankfurt. Kleine Briefe! Even I can read that with my year 10 German skillz. The top photo was sent to me some years ago now by Lizette who found it in Buenos Aires.
You can still get the book on Amazon
It’s time to get another book out there I think!
(Motivational post for my sake mostly, thank you for indulging me)
Fleet Foxes – Tiger Mountain Peasant Song – covered by First Aid Kit. Via kitten fluff.
Speaking of finding lovely things on the internet, please have a look at the beautiful website and shop of Taeeun Yoo. These pieces were creature using lino cuts and pencil. So perfect!
via Sarah Jane.
Now it’s late and I have a vampire book to read.
I started working on some small canvases in oils yesterday. This is the first coat. Really, it’s just blocking in colour and form and covering up the white of the canvas. I haven’t done any oil painting in about… hmm.. 15 years! I’m old! Oils are nice. I like the way they smudge and slide.
Ink! And brushes!
I am not sure what I am going to turn this in to — gocco print? Embroidery? I am still playing with it. It’s meant to be Lily in our garden, hence the pumpkin leaves, cucumbers, beans and tomatoes. I haven’t drawn the possum-massacred capsicum bushes nor the forgot-to-be-watered herb pots… nor the weeds! That will be an entirely different embroidery or gocco print.
Kirsty started this little meme and just as I was wondering what I should post today, this came along. It’s nice that it’s happening on a Wednesday as I have some time to do some work on Wednesdays so can do a kind of WIP thing.
Truth be told, This isn’t actually my desk. This is the kitchen table but it was my desk for today so it kind of counts. My desk is below — and as you can see it’s got too dark to take any more photographs so that will have to do for this week.
When we need a little comfort-reading we always turn to Milly Molly Mandy
So of course we decided we should plant a pumpkin to fill the new garden bed which we had put in when the deck was taken away (hooray!). True to the story the crawling creeper has grown and grown and is slowly but surely spreading it’s long tentacle, triffid-like arms around the garden. Amelia keeps talking about growing a prize winning pumpkin. “Ooh, this sunshine will be good for our Prize Winning Pumpkin!” etc. Despite the enthusiasm we have only just seen a few male flowers popping up their heads in the last couple of weeks and nothing in the way of female flowers let alone any signs of a pumpkin. Perhaps it’s been the lack of rain or maybe our new topsoil is lacking in goodies, but I may have to wait until next year and another attempt to try my hand and pumpkin and ginger jam. Perhaps Jane will have a recipe in her book!
