Inspired by...

There are so many things that inspire me...it's finding time to create something that's the problem.  So here are a couple of recent(ish) pieces inspired by books I love.  The first is called Greenwitch, inspired by Susan Cooper's book...but also (well, mostly) by the delicious imagery the words themselves generate.  A green silk hat for a green-thumbed witch, with a nice wide brim for keeping the sun off the back of her neck when she's digging in the herb patch.  And me wearing it.  Not that I'm particularly witchy, or green-thumbed (I try) but I do like green.

And then this piece, which is unfinished simply because I didn't quite know where to go from here...always better to put it aside for a while and have a ponder, rather than press on through sheer pig-headedness, especially if it's been going well up to that point.  It was an experiment in a watercoloury (I'm not sure that's actually a word) style, but using diluted acrylics simply because watercolour scares the willies out of me because it's so easy to end up with a muddy mess if you don't know what you're doing.  It's called Blackwoodwife, which is a little odd, but it's because it's inspired by two things.  Firstly, Terri Windling's lovely novel The Wood Wife , which is a favourite of mine.  And secondly, by the stories my mum used to invent when I was small about the faeries who lived near a favourite family camping spot by the Blackwood River, which curls its way through the south west of Western Australia.  So I couldn't decide whether she should be a Black Woodwife...or a Blackwood Wife...or a Black Wood Wife.  So I settled on Blackwoodwife, and will let people make their own distinctions.  I'm still not sure what to do with her though...perhaps some more pondering is needed.