The other 'artists in residence' at Nannup!

All parents think their kids are amazing, right?!  But sometimes my daughters amaze even me! These are a couple of the drawings they did while hanging out in the gallery with me.  If they can do this at 8 and 11, I can only imagine how brilliant they'll be when they're grown up!

There was a Belly-dancing extravaganza happening in town, so Biggest Munchkin (who is 11, turning 12 in August) drew this beautiful dancer.  I just love the movement she's captured, and the expression on the dancer's face...you can just see the music moving through her!

And a forest fairy by Littlest Munchkin, who is 8 (9 in July).  Sightly influenced by a couple of Mummy's paintings, but all her own work, and just took my breath away!

I've decided not to do the exhibition in August, though I'd dearly love to.  Just not enough time to do a whole new lot of work, I've just started a new part-time job, and we have some big plans for the next few months.  So maybe next year, fingers crossed!

I think my body decided after the exhibition, "Right, all that palaver is over, time to go on strike!"  So in the last week, I've had a migraine, got a cold sore, and a lovely dose of the flu as well.  So it's Phlegm Central here at the moment.  Sigh, I need a holiday I think!

And finally...

Puck...with my Fox mask.

I'm still not 100% happy with this one, but I think it's mostly to do with the fact that Puck is such a rich and many layered character, with so many emanations from myth, folklore, pre-christian religions and so forth, that I could spend the rest of my life painting versions of him and still not get it.  He is, for me, also the Green Jack, who is the Green Man, and Herne/Cernunnos, and Robin Goodfellow, and probably Robin Hood, and Pan, and Loki, and many others too.  So not an easy chap to define.  But then, I don't really want to define him...that would diminish him.  I like his mutability, his changeability.  That's how he adapts and survives...even now.  He's still out there, I'm convinced of it.  I certainly hope so.

Oberon, King of Faery.

Well, I started working on Puck, but being the Trickster and Shapeshifter that he is, he refused to be pinned down.  So I left him alone to have a think about it (he AND I!) and went on with Oberon.  Hopefully he will be a little more contrite and co-operative now, and let me get on and finish his portrait, otherwise he won't get to hang in the gallery next to Titania.

So here is Oberon.  Looking a little alarming perhaps, but then, the King of Faery is no sweet little thing with glittery wings.  Faeries are not to be trifled with, and I've always thought Oberon had a bit of a dangerous streak (it's a pretty mean trick he plays on Titania) and he's always seemed to me to be the sort of faery you DON'T want to get on the wrong side of!  So here he is imagined as a kind of night faery, with crow feathers and skull, and eyes that can look right through you.  I THINK he's finished, but as with Titania, I'm still unsure whether or not to add some text down the side as I did for the Green Jack.  I rather like them as they are, so I might not.

Right, time to wrestle with Puck and try to get him to stand still so I can get a good look at him!

First painting for 2013...

I've been doing my usual trick, painting in my head instead of on paper or canvas.  It's fine for a while, tossing ideas around, mentally turning things around about to see how they look from different angles, or in different styles/media.  But ultimately there's no substitute for getting down to business and starting.  Because it's only then that the real magic starts, new ideas/directions appear, paths to take that you might never have discovered if you just kept going over the same ground in your head.  But still, I keep doing it and then find that actually starting gets harder and harder.  I have a little exhibition booked for late April, and though I have some work, I need to do more for it.  So I've been turning my brain in knots thinking about all manner of overly ambitious and complex possibilities, when there really isn't time for that, and what I really need to do it just get started on something, anything really, to start the year off and get back into the creative flow.  So today I stopped thinking and started doing.  This is the result.  Titania.  With gum (Eucalypt) leaves!  Acrylic, graphite and pencil on 20cm x 20cm canvas.  Though I don't think she's quite finished yet.  I might add a quote from the play down the side.

I recently saw another production of Midsummer Night's Dream that was rather lovely.  I've lost count of how many I've seen over the years, I think it's my favourite of Shakespeare's plays.  One of the most memorable was way back in 1990, Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson's Renaissance Theatre production in London.  Wonderful stuff!  So I think there will be a Puck (though of course, the Green Jack is another version of Puck), and possibly an Oberon too.

And for an excellent blog post on the need to stop thinking about painting, or writing, or whatever, and get on to doing, check out Terri Windling's latest blog post On Beginnings.

A faery you wouldn't want to meet...and a gift in the mail

I think this needs a colour wash, it's not finished yet, and I think it needs some green.  This is the kind of faery you don't want to bump into.  I've written short story, a scary faerytale for big people...well, I hope it's scary...and this is the character met by the protagonist.  As part of my plan to continue being a frustrated writer, I submitted the story to The Fairy Tale Review for their latest issue, and this was meant to go with it, but of course, it's not finished yet, and submissions have just closed.  I have a snowball's chance in hell of being accepted (I mean, Marina Warner is just one of their stellar contributors!), but it doesn't matter, it's the writing and the sending off that's important.  If I keep doing that, then one day I might write something that is good enough.

And this is what I received in the mail yesterday!  From Mo who bought my little Talesingr.  The card is beautiful enough, but the little heart is so perfect in its raggedyness, it has love in it, can you feel it?  I love, love, love it!  Thanks you so much, Mo!  Do pop over and visit her lovely blog, and check out the other beautiful hearts and wonderful crow drawings she has there.

P.S. if the Scary Faery (or Erl King as I'm thinking of him as) looks vaguely familiar, then yes, it's based on me...with some distorting and fiddling done!  But I'm not in the least bit scary!

Birthdays, goblins, and W.I.Ps...

I've committed myself to doing a new, large painting for an art award/exhibition coming up in a couple weeks.  It's at least a year since I last did something big, and it's a scary prospect, so I decided the best way to get myself to stop procrastinating was to provide a deadline.  So now I have one, Friday week!  I've decided to do something using the same technique I used for the 'Green Jack', a pencil sketch on canvas overlaid with acrylic colours.  The 'Green Jack' was the first piece I've done using that method, and it was only 20cm x 20cm...this one is going to be 91cm x 91cms.  So I'm a little apprehensive about how I'm going to go about it, but I know without a deadline I'd never give it a go at all.

So I've entered a painting that doesn't exist yet, called "Beauty Remembers".  If the title sounds familiar,  you might remember the poem I wrote last year.  I've had an image in my mind for a while now, so it's as good a time as any to get cracking on it.  I want to incorporate the text of the poem into the painting, and I've been scribbling some ideas.  So here's a peak at my sketch/ideas/general ranting/notebook.

And as my smallest munchkin had her birthday during the school holidays, we delayed her party so her school friends could come along.  Several faeries and a couple of pirates turned up, and it seemed like a good time was had by all.

A Faery feast.

No, my munchkin isn't levitating, unless those wings are genuine.  A robust game of Musical Statues got everyone up on the dance floor (er, carpet)!

It was bucketing down for most of the morning, but luckily the rain held off in the afternoon long enough for little people to head outside and go Goblin hunting, with prizes for the most goblins rounded up (because as I explained, my garden was over-run with goblins and they're a terrible pest, scaring the birds away and teasing poor Flynn by pulling her tail and biting her nose).  The goblins were simply pictures purloined from the web (late the previous night...it was a last minute brainwave!), printed in black and white, cut out (very roughly) and stuck onto pop-sticks and pegs, then stuck in the ground or clipped to trees and bushes.  Beloved hid them all in the garden and I gave him strict instructions to remember to think like a 4 foot tall and rather over excited 7 year old (sometimes he forgets everyone else isn't as tall as he is)...and they found them all within 5 minutes!

So...here's a goblin for you (this is one of mine)!  I think though, that he really isn't ugly enough.  An extreme makeUNDER required perhaps!?

Thank you all...and blessings abound...

Just a quick post to thank everyone for the beautiful comments.  If anyone has taken comfort or found understanding for a friend or loved one through my words, then I am so very happy for that is why I write.

Today I went over to a friend's house to do a simple meditation, just sitting back and relaxing and listening to a CD of words and music.  At one point, the guide on the CD asked us to think of all the things that we are blessed with in our lives.  And I thought of my beautiful girls.  Yes, I should have three little girls...but I have two here with me to fill up my heart with love...and fill up my life with chaos and laughter (and the odd tantrum), and Hannah Montana posters (aaarrgh!) and refusals to eat cooked carrots (although oddly, tinned ones are fine), and a fringe that I am absolutely NOT allowed to trim (I've threatened to sneak in and cut it when she's asleep!), and half eaten biscuits under the beds along with dirty socks (always odd ones), and soggy dolls in the bathroom (and something that left a bright pink stain on the white grout)......and hugs and cries of "you're the best mummy in the world!", and impromptu interpretive dance performances (usually at bedtime) and singing loudly while climbing trees in the front yard, and two note recorder playing, and "I have to be a monkey for today's assembly item!", and "I don't have any clean knickers (have you looked in your drawer?)", and homemade Mothers' Day Cards with enough glitter to make Tinkerbelle sneeze.........well, you get the picture!  Life is full to bursting, and my precious little ones are growing so quickly it makes my head spin sometimes.  But they are my blessings, and so you see, I am blessed indeed.  There is a Morgan sized hole in my life, but how can I be sad for long, when I have faeries such as these shining like rainbows in my garden?!

What I did in the hols...

Did you ever have to write an essay on that at school?!  Here's a 'photo essay' of the last couple of weeks while the girls were at home for the long Easter break.

Ink paintings with biggest Munchkin while littlest was at a birthday party.

Lovely things in the post.  Cards from my girls posted from their Nanny's down south.  And 5 tiny ceramic robins make by Makiko Hastings.  Makiko is endeavouring to make 1000 robins to sell to raise funds for Japan.  You can read about her HERE.

The munchkins have lately been pestering for a treasure hunt.  Hmmm, what could this be on the old dining table?

Goodness me, could it be?  An ancient map, hundreds of years old, surely?!  Hmm, looks like a pretty dangerous place to be, what with dragons and wolves, witches and goblins.  But where does the map lead?

Ahhh, a long list of clues that must be followed to the letter!  I probably got a little carried away with the clues, I wasn't intending for them to rhyme all the way through, but they just started off like that and kept going, and I was having fun.  So the munchkins packed lunch, and their invisibility spells and Goblin spying stones, and set off like two intrepid explorers.  Kept them amused for all of an hour (they did it twice and I had to go back and hide the treasure again...in the same spot!)

And while I was playing about with paper and tea...and tea bags...

I've never cut open a tea bag before...that's what they look like.  Tea and some added Sepia ink.

Makes an interesting kind of print.  I rather like this, but what am I going to do with it?

All just playing around with no thought gone into it, so I made a little book of nothing, just for fun.

I really like it, but there's something in me that says a book needs words...or pictures.  Or it's not really a book.  I don't know, do you think it's finished?!

Visiting the UK...

"Primavera" for everyone welcoming Spring in the Northern Hemisphere (now if she could just hurry her chronically late sister Autumn along, that would be wonderful!)

...well I wish I was, but no.  However, my mum and dad are jetting off on Wednesday to spend 2 months travelling around Britain, so I will be spending the next few weeks wearing a peculiar shade of green, and living vicariously through my parents (mum, this means lots of letters, postcards and emails, with photos if at all possible, ok?!)  They have some accommodation booked (particularly around Easter) but didn't want to be too tied down to an itinerary set in concrete...so I may be posting the odd request for accommodation (and eating, sightseeing etc) recommendations from my readers in the areas they are visiting.  They are basically doing a clockwise circuit starting from London, then heading west to Cornwall (with strict instructions to visit Chagford while they are in Devon), then north on up to Scotland and then back down the east side, but I'll post details if/when they need some ideas on places to stay.  So if you know of lovely, but reasonably priced Hostels/B&Bs, good places to eat and wonderful things to see, please let me know, it will be much appreciated...and I'll put them on my 'one day' wish list too!

Meanwhile, it looks like another week of temperatures in the high 30s...*sigh*...I am REALLY looking forward to wearing socks and boots, and jumpers and scarves, and gloves and hats, and going stamping in puddles....ROLL ON AUTUMN...PLEASE!!!

"Blackwoodwife" because I'm feeling nostalgic about the Autumn school holidays my family used to spend camping by the beautiful Blackwood River when I was a child, and the stories my mum told my brother and I about the Blackwood faeries (I really should finish this one!)

One little baby faery has flown the nest!

Just a quick note to let you know that the baby girl faery wrapped up in the rose petal blanket has found a new home already!  She will be winging her way to the other side of this wide brown land, just as soon as I add the final touches.  I'd better paint some more!

Plight of the Bumble-fingered artist.....baby faeries and bedroom make-overs...

Oh, I couldn't resist, I will blame it on my mum, who loves puns!

 My two baby faeries are FINALLY in my Etsy shop.  Yes, I AM the Queen of Faffing About, I admit it.  I considered adding beads or glass leaves to these, but in the end I decided I liked the ribbons the best.  Which is just as well, as I have discovered one of the liabilities of being a guitar player (well, a learner at least) is that I CANNOT PICK ANYTHING UP WITH MY LEFT HAND!  Once upon a time, I had soft, sensitive finger pads that could pick up small beads, pieces of paper, needles, thread......now, I have these rock hard and completely numb finger tips that can barely FEEL a needle lying on a table, let alone pick it up!  I can't hold anything small in them and manipulate it...I spent this afternoon dropping beads and accidently snapping the tops off crystal drops...how frustrating, and how unexpected.  I didn't realise learning a new skill could compromise my old ones!

I ummed and ahhhed about what to charge for the faeries too, and settled on $40.  According to this article on Etsy, I'm not charging enough, but I don't think it's a very realistic formula.  Speaking of Etsy, there are all sorts of changes afoot and not a lot of people are happy about it.  If you haven't checked your Etsy profile lately, I suggest you go and have a look at what they've done to it and judge for yourself.

You can find these two here and here.

Now....drum roll please.  How many of you remember the Super-Bedroom-Makeover?  Well, if you don't or have joined up to read my ramblings since the last SBM post, you can always click on the 'bedroom makeover' label at the top of this post and get the whole story.  But to cut a VERY LONG story short, it is finished.  Actually, it has been for a few weeks, but as I have already admitted to being the Q of FA (now, don't be rude, I didn't mean THAT!) I've only now gotten around to posting about it. We haven't moved all the furniture back in that needs to go in, but it won't be much more anyway, and about all it needs beyond that is a nice rug on the floor.  So what do you think?  He's a clever chap isn't he, that other half of mine!

Composite picture (I do love Photoshop) from the doorway

The bedspread I bought years ago because I fell in love with it even though it didn't go with any of the colours we had at the time.

This WAS going to be Beloved's special TV chair in the lounge room...but it looks awfully nice here.

Christmas pendants/hangers...and some slow stitching...

Christmas is coming and like many people, I love handmade decorations.  Of course, I have my fair share of plastic (ie. small people friendly) ones, but I can probably jettison a few of them now that my girls are big enough to be a little more careful when decorating the tree.  So with that in mind, I thought I'd make some that were special, OOAK, unique and customised.  A Christmas decoration that is a perfect gift all by itself.  These are the first, painted today.  An old mother winter, with her wise face and long silver tresses, and two little tiny faery babies fast asleep in their tiny cradles, rocking gently high up in the Christmas tree.  Customised with name (on front) and dates (on back) added, these two would be perfect as a gift for a new born's first Christmas.  I'm still twiddling around trying to decide on details, but thought I'd 'show and tell' to see what you thought.  I've done a very rough 'dummy' up in photoshop to show you how the lettering might go, though it would be hand-painted on the actual pieces.  As with my other hangers, these would come in a small hand-made gift bag, and I'll probably include a little certificate of authenticity or similar.  Any suggestions are welcome, including what you think would be a reasonable price...yes, I'm hand-balling that to you, my trusty followers, because it's the part I hate the most.  I am NOT the fastest artist out there, each faery baby took almost an hour to paint (and the wise winter woman took almost an hour and a half...but her face was being very troublesome!), though these are the very first and hopefully I might get faster with practice!

There is a little of this happening now...VERY slow stitching this is...I suspect it will be a long while in the making.

A birthday...

My little shining light, who brought joy back into the world for me when my heart needed mending all those years ago, turned nine yesterday.  My little Autumn faery.

I feel a little as if I have lost something precious.  Perhaps I need to tie up a loaf of bread in a spotted hanker-chief, sling it on the end of a stick over my shoulder, and set out on a quest to find it.  I would also need a warm woollen cloak with a hood, and a song to sing.  You can't go on a quest without a song to sing as you tramp the by-ways.  And the cloak of course, to curl up in at night under the stars.

This is my 100th blog post.  Thank you to all who have wandered by, and stayed to hear my stories and see the things I've made, and left behind such wise words of support and encouragement.  It has been wonderful.  There will be more to come.

Faeries (or Fairies) and the next project(s)

There were nine excited little faeries (and two little pirates, one excited and one, unusually for him, very shy) at the Pickled Fairy in Fremantle on Sunday.  A glorious sunny, warm day, despite the fact that it IS supposed to be the middle of Winter and we DO need some rain.  Much fun was had, much faery bouncing happened (possibly due in part to the amount of Faery cake consumed), and a welcome flash of green among a sea of pink.  It's not that I really hate pink, but as the mother of two girls I am SOOOO sick of it.  But that's another story.

That's big sis in the background wearing her purple cloak

No, I didn't make these wings...luckily found this pair in exactly the right colour.

Awaiting the arrival of the Faery Queen.

Faeries conferring with mummy faery...no grey hairs showing thankfully!

I have two and a half weeks before the next birthday to finish the Autumn Faery.  Unfortunately I couldn't get wings in the right colours (too much pink, again!) so I've made this pair.  Well, it's a joint effort, as Beloved hubby made the wire frames, out of coat-hangers.  A pair of red stockings that I've worn once I think (yes, I DID wash them after), and some gold acrylic and gold glitter paint.

This is the front.  I've since added gold glitter over the whole thing.

And here's the back, with some of the glitter in the top corners.  

So, I still need to sew a red leaf hood, a pixie skirt, and some pixie pockets, and make a goblin stone, a magical invisibility jewel, a faery necklace and of course, a wand!  Phew!

*   *   *

While I'm at it, I'm making a new sign for the Mulberry Lane Cafe.  My almost nine year old has lately shown an interest in 'secret' clubs and the like, wanting 'spy girl' items from school bookclub.  I went through this stage too, about the same age or a little older, and so my favourite books were of course, Enid Blyton's 'Secret Seven' and 'Famous Five'.  So I thought I'd try and get some of them for her, and was very chuffed to get hold of a new boxed set of the first ten 'Secret Seven' adventures for her upcoming birthday.

But...my beautiful girl is struggling a bit with school, and is having some trouble with spelling and maths (though not as much as SHE thinks she is).  She also told me last week that she doesn't like reading and sometimes just turns the pages and pretends during free-reading time at school.  This is something we will have to sort out, as it's far more to do with her confidence level than her actual ability...she reads perfectly well at home with me, but she gets flustered when she hits a word she doesn't immediately know.  She seems to think she SHOULD know everything, and is embarrassed and upset if she doesn't...and she thinks she's letting me down somehow.

It's hard to understand how I could not have noticed, and I feel bad, but I suppose I just presumed my children would be good at the things I was and probably not at the things I wasn't good at.  Silly really, but there you have it.  So as a life-long book lover, I buy books, beautiful children's books, whenever I see them on sale.  So she has lots of books sitting there, 'waiting for her to read them' is how she put it, and making her feel guilty because she isn't.  Oh dear, my poor little one, all this angst and pressure at only eight.  And she also got upset because she thought I had probably bought her books for her birthday and it would be MORE books waiting to be read.  And of course...I have!  I thought they would be perfect, and now...well, I realise they're not so perfect.

I know she can read, and I know that for me, and for so many other people, the love of books can be traced back to one book that as a child just grabbed our imaginations and made us want to read.  So I thought that perhaps, rather than presenting her with the whole, daunting set, I might just give her the first one to start with, to be read together with mummy so we can get through any hard words easily, and if it gets a bit too hard or too tiring, mummy can take over and she can listen.  And to help make it a little more fun, I'm making this.  Perhaps I'll make some special members' only badges like the Secret Seven have as well.  And maybe she'll let mummy be an auxiliary member...I can supply the 'lashings of ginger beer', and hugs whenever they're needed.