Silky sparkly snow shimmers - An Etsy Treasury

A snow themed Etsy treasury.........Brr it's cold outside! Take a closer look at this treasury here.

This treasury is full to the brim with beautiful art work! One of the reasons I love to make treasury's is that it is a great way to discover new artists that were previously unknown to me. Obviously I adore all of the artworks above but this piece in particular stands out for me today.

The land of snow bunnies by Pipodoll

I hope your all enjoying your Sunday! Stay warm everyone!

It's friday!

Good evening all! It's FRIDAY!! Not only that but it's also snowing! I'm very excited, I love the snow! Also I've also been making advent wreaths and paper tissue snowflakes at the school tonight in preparation for the advent Sunday celebration and the lead up to Christmas...So I'm feeling very festive!

When I got home tonight I had an email to let me know that my 'Donkey ride' print had been included in a treasury by Paradise Pie titled 'Donkey days', I really love this treasury and if you would like you can view it here.

Remember my Donkey ride print? It is for sale at my Etsy shop.

Paradise Pie has a shop that sells vintage items, I have my eye on this pendant made from broken china. Thank you Paradise Pie for including me!

Happy friday everyone!! :-)

Inspiration post - Outsider Art

I discovered 'Outsider Art' (also known as Art Brut, Naive Art, Intuitive Art) when I started an Art Therapy course many years ago and have been a big fan ever since. The tutor on the course lent me many copies of 'Raw Vision' an outsider art magazine that I recommend reading if you are interested in this type of art. One of my favorite artists is Bill Traylor, Traylor only started making work aged 83 and his preferred mediums were card, pencil and crayon. I wanted to share some of his images with you, I hope you like them as much as I do..

Great aren't they? I love the limited colours and basic shapes.

I hope your all having a good week? I woke up this morning convinced it was thursday and almost friday........OH DEAR...... It took me a while to realise it's only Wednesday.. :-/

It's been a hectic/tiring week so far at work, maybe it's the weather? I definitely don't cope well with these dark days, I imagine the children (at my work) don't like it much either! I'm looking forward to sunday and cracking on with some art work...I'm itching to get going with some lino prints!

Night night :-)

It's been a good weekend.

 

I hope all is well out there and everyone has had a good weekend? I started yesterday morning off feeling a bit rotten (one to many drinks and an extremely late night..oops).. However things soon picked up as I managed to do a lot of shopping for art supplies which definitely helped my mood! I purchased lots of coloured/patterned card and paper, some amazing glittery sequin style stickers (see above), patterned tape, a new cutting knife and a GLUE GUN (very exciting)! I also got the tools to start myself off Lino printing at home, I'm really excited about this! I can't wait to get down to some lino printing explorations! So all in all a good day.

Today i've done some art work that I want to share with you..check out the sequins!

This collage is called 'Above the city', I used acrylic paint, patterned paper,sequins,and pencils for this piece. Below is a glimpse of one of the Matisse inspired cut out pieces that I'm working on, I'll show you some finished collages soon. I can't get enough of the bold red horse shape!

Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

Inspiration post - Henri Matisse

I imagine every art student has done a project on Henri Matisse, It seems to be an art curriculum staple. I remember cutting out colored shapes and sticking them on to colored card way back when I was 13 or 14 years old. I must admit that back then I found this task dull, I have always loved art but this cutting and sticking of coloured shapes really didn't inspire me.
However at the moment I can't get bold colours and block shapes out of my mind. I have so many images in my head that need releasing! Horses, homes, trees, rain, people....all just shapes, colors and textures.... Here are some of my favorite works by Henri Matisse..

 'The Snail' 1953

The Clown (jazz) 1943)

'La Gerbe' 1953

All images via here.

Illustration Friday - Burning

It feels so good to have time to draw, I haven't had any art time since last Thursday and was starting to feel a bit upset about it! So I abandoned my to do list this evening and tackled Illustration Fridays word of the week 'Burning'. I had no plan I just sat and drew with coloured pencil then painted over in gouache, by the way I love gouache, I can't get enough of it, I love the chalky feel of it and how it dries so fast, I have no idea why I abandoned it for so long....It's also so easy to use with other mediums too..So I used gouache, pencil, watercolour pencil,pen and ink and felt tip with this one. Looking at this image makes me feel a bit sad actually, although I imagine that's the healthy reaction to a picture of buildings burning!

This weekend

Photographs taken this morning, I went away for a few days to visit my boyfriends family and these photographs were taken at and near their home. I took lots of photographs in the woodshed with the coloured pegs, I really like the contrast of the coloured plastic and chopped wood...I'm also really drawn to the green moss covered trees standing in the orange leaves....Beautiful right?

I hope you all had a good weekend, I'll be back with new art soon :-)

Sketchbook - The red pony on the hill

Hi all, I hope your all well, and if your in the South west of England I hope your in the warm..The weather here is crazy today! I can hear the wind whooshing outside my window knocking things over and making gates slam shut then open to slam shut again...Car alarms don't seem to be coping either, it's noisy outside tonight!

I had a good day at work today, I'm really loving my job at the moment which is so great.I was helping the children in the weaving studio today and the colours yellow and red kept really standing out to me, you know when you get colours stuck in your mind and you need to make something with them to sort of shake them out? Like a song that gets stuck in your head on repeat, I get that a lot too, the past few days its been the jungle book song 'I wanna be like you', I have no idea why!! I haven't seen that film for years! In case you don't know what I'm on about click here to see the song and video on YouTube. Of course I only had the chorus going round and round....! Anyway back to the colours... Yes so I had the colours yellow and red in my mind and I've also had this image  of a girl holding a small horse in my mind for a few days...So I combined the two tonight and here we are.

Night night people :-)

Featured on 'My girl Thursday'

Hey dudes! Just a quick note to let you know that I have just been featured on the blog 'My girl Thursday', it's run by one stylish and very crafty lady called Chantilly McKinnon, she has created a blog which is definitely worth a view. My Singer Sewing machine print was featured in a blog post containing sewing machine inspired art. You can view the post on 'My girl Thursday' here. Thank you Chantilly!

November leaves

Autumn is well and truly here and winter is approaching fast, the trees have turned to gorgeous yellows,oranges and reds. I love the colours this time of year, each day at work I've been kicking myself as I keep forgetting my camera and I really would love to record the change of season. As I have mentioned before I work in a rural location and get to be outside quite a lot of the day, so I have been noticing the change in the environment more than I ever have done before. So today after work I went about in the dark (as you do) and collected leaves to bring home to record and play with..

I actually came home with SO many leaves, I just couldn't stop collecting them....this is a warning, many leaf photographs to follow..!

Then there was the fun of photographing the different shapes and colours together...

Nice aren't they?

So after playing around a bit scanning different leaf combination's together I decided to create a pattern, it took me quite a while but I'm really happy with it! This is the first time I've created a pattern by scanning items directly (instead of scanning photos or drawings). Here it is, I hope you like it, I do, it's been a a fun Tuesday evening activity!

Have a good evening all! :-)

Pony rides at the Fete

I was thinking about pony rides at Fetes when I painted this. Lets call her Polly the palomino.. :-)

Illustration Friday 'afterwards'

I had a dream that I found two black horses in a top floor flat in the city center, I've been watching too many animal rescue TV shows I think! I had this dream going round and round my head for days so I decided to create something from it... So I dreamt about it then afterwards I painted it...ta da!

I dream of horses

I have horses on the mind at the moment, as that is the case it was fitting that I use a horse theme for a new Treasury, you can view it at Etsy by clicking here.

I have so many favorites in this treasury, I would happily have all of these things in my life! I have a feeling there may be a 'I dream of horses part 2' as well, there are just far too many beautiful equestrian themed creations out there!

I adore this painting by Pixie Campbell, you can visit her Etsy shop 'animama' here. I love so much at the Animama shop, it really is worth taking a peek. for example this white Coyote art print is just lovely!

 

Have a great friday all!