Rain Dance

So, I got the garden all pretty, set up a water butt and bought a pink parasol…I may as well have done a rain dance.Five days of rain and fog, with sheets of drenching mist, have left me with low light level gloom only relieved by music and peanut butter cookies.

I had a little play in a spare sketch book I found, ending up with this slightly deranged looking bird!Somehow the day has flown by and now its almost time to go to work, just as I can think of a million things I want to do. Is there somewhere you can go to get your body clock re-set?!

Other than cutting up the Guardian to make crazy birds I have baked a batch of cookies, looked at Olive Bites blog, wondered about whether to get a stall at the next Designer’s Marketplace and listened to 6music while drinking too many mugs of coffee.

A friend who recently subscribed to Witchmountain jokingly asked whether he could get a membership badge… not a bad idea actually but does anyone have any ideas what kind of badge/gift would be a good unisex incentive to sign up?Did you ever join a fan club when you were younger? I had a shiny gold Police( the band not the defenders of law and order) badge and I think there was the Dennis the Menace Fan Club too, with a furry Gnasher badge!

( Reading/being read : “Number9dream” David Mitchell. Listening to: “Adventures in Success ” Will Powers, “Waking Up” Elastica)

…the way through the woods?

The other night I took myself for a walk in the rain, remembering another walk not so long ago and trying to work out where exactly my head is at this spring. The woods were beautiful in the rain, still with just emerging oak leaves and uncurling ferns; tiny mosses and soft new pine shoots.I walked until I could feel the rain through my hair, running down my scalp and slightly cursed my glasses which became like a windscreen with no wipers!

What worried me a little was the fact that even in the depths of despair last year I was still drawing and making, whereas now I’m not…( not creating and maybe not as deep in the depths, although its a pretty slippy climb at times)

Having said that, I have just taken a load of things down to Jane’s shed ready for tomorrow’s Bank Holiday exhibition; maybe I’ll sell something and get inspired again?

( These ferns remind me of the Soup Dragon from The Clangers for some reason!)

Yesterday I was in Middlesbrough and visited Mima again. Tom Hutchinson was there guarding the exhibits, it was lovely to bump in to him and the mind-bending Anish Kapoor work wasn’t bad either!

Well, for now the sun is shining so I should be outside. Please come by the shed tomorrow if you’re in Osmotherley…

x

“Meek Bears”

I’ve been feeling a bit sorry for myself, just a little bit of a cold but what with all the rain and everything…everything seems to be soggy, including me! Last night I sat on my doorstep for ages listening to the eerie music made by rain dripping into various watering cans and buckets (maybe I’ve caught a Jane Austin style chill!?).Although it was midnight and I should have gone to bed,I ended up doodling in my sketchbook and then playing with the results in Photoshop.I’m going to print the design onto some fabric in a moment.

So, as I look out of the window, I’m loving the way the big Oak tree has finally burst into leaf, bright lime green and black against a leaden sky, the hills in the distance are Payne’s Grey- what a colour scheme.

Time to get printing and do a bit more to that jacket.meanwhile, here is a link to the website of a local glass artist ,Desiree Hope,whose gallery my children visited the other week.Beautiful things.

Water Water Everywhere…

I’m feeling a bit fuzzy today after staying up till 3am reading “The Kite Runner” by Khaled Hosseini, I’m only up to Chapter 10 ( 1981) so looks like I won’t be sleeping much till I finish it. Staying up until 1am trying to do repeats with Illustrator isn’t doing much for my beauty sleep either but at least I don’t feel at all guilty about my slow mornings drinking coffee and doing this blog.

This weekend I’m thinking of taking a trip to the Moors Center at Danby where my art teacher from long ago is having the opening of his new exhibition of water colours. Richard Pottas recently quit teaching at Whitby Community College to concentrate full time on his painting, and I must say these are really different from the work I remember him doing back in my school days.Here are three images of his work, you can see more on his website, or better still, go to Danby!

Back to the drawing board for me now..Wow, the rain is insane out there! Is it the end of the world as we know it? I seem to have talked about rain far too much this year!

“If Birds Sing Through Life Then Why Can’t We?”

Good news… I finally got paid today for the work I sold at Indigo in February!

Bad news… The cheque will only half cover the cost of a new wheel and random piece of plastic for the car after I hit a rock in the road last week. Sheep had knocked a bit of the wall down and it was impossible to avoid on a blind corner, oh dear.

This week I’ve been spending quite a lot of time ( but not enough) doing these paper designs which I’m taking over to the agent tomorrow.I’m going to spend some time at the studio watching how they do things and probably being told I’ve been wasting my time with the painting I’ve done this week! I can’t help feeling that since my strong point is embroidery and loose, expressive drawing, I’m not really showing my work at its best…

I do quite like the one with the orange flowers though, I’ve added one stitched flower and it would look nice as a large design on a child’s T-shirt perhaps.The birds on the left look a bit better now they have some legs on.

Other good news this week does NOT include the inevitable rain which just won’t stop and which has made the water from the taps turn the colour of John Smith’s Best Bitter. I did get an e-mail from “Trend Bible” who have asked for images to go in their publication which forecasts fashion trends for future seasons. They liked the red and white bear dress, which is also my favorite.So I sent a good quality image via the old dial -up set up and after 29 minutes realized I had sent it to myself!

Right, Its time to play Illustrator and drink a little more coffee.The scene below is my kitchen table looking like a hive of industry.Its cold though, I need something to light the fire. Its JULY!