nest update

Here we are 2 weeks later and things have erupted and expanded and broken boundaries. All very tiring for such wee things... they're sort of flopping around in a most alarming manner!!

do not disturb

oo oo quick! She's off the nest... grab the camera and take a peek... look, see!






















Thankfully it's not an invasive action as this blackbird build her nest in the old coal bunker. As it has no lid a quick glance as I pass by to the garden is all it takes to see all the spectacle.

window views

It's interesting to play with different ways of getting an image out of your head and into reality. In the process of enjoying my new camera I've been checking out flickr sites and finding some very good work. Not just photo's but stuff that seems more like photographic artwork. Searching for a way to work with photographs beyond their photographic form I'm hypercritical of much of the image processing people do. Hoping to avoid crass tricks I want to have a play with taking a blend of photographs and drawing.






















This sketch above is from a photie I took of myself... what else do you do when you're short of a model to pose for you?

hidden images

A few things have come to notice over this last week which come under this title. Watching Big Art on channel 4 there were some interesting uses of UV images outdoors in Burnley of all places! (I lived not so very far away for years). Tonight I also found another intriguing use of hidden images through flickr leading me to website of Christophe Dillinger and his hidden negatives project. I like the idea of hiding little bits of art away for people to find and keep - random acts of gifting. It also reminds me of a wonderfully illustrated childrens book about a hare... a puzzle that had encoded in it's pages the location of a genuine golden bejeweled hare burried somewhere in... the cotswolds?? Let me see... quick google... be right back... ah there we go... "Masquerade" hehe.

Now I wonder about a hidden images project of my own...

fibre tags and proposals

Well I've been quiet on the blogging front for a while with still working on getting back into the swing of things properly after the virus. Not that I've been lazy, just that everything was wearing me out. This week is different though... I'm determined, lol.

With a dedicated push I managed to send off a proposal for an "artist in residence" at the beginning of last week. If you've never done one of these you won't realise what it takes to change mental tack from making to thinking and writing about a subjective proposition from scratch. Brain exercises done half way up the stairs with a honey jar under one arm ;))

This weekend has been so foggy that there wasn't much point in doing any visual work outside, so I made some more tags for one of the shops instead. These are much fun to compose as each one is different, though they take a while to do. I enjoy the small scale working. It's a process of painting with scraps, wools, textures and threads that is quite enthralling.

time ticking by

Urgency in a natural way was nudging me to get on with things today. After planting a couple of bags of seed potatoes early this morning I felt justified in sipping green tea on the chopping log and photographing the many/loads/gangs of bumble bee's that were busy amongst all the equally numerous dandelions along the path (do you get the picture I'm not one for hard edges and neat tidy gardening?). They were a bit ungainly in their flight and sometimes crash landed where someone else was but generally very focused on their busyness. Nice and easy to photograph I thought as I could get only a handful of inches away from them, but no, they don't like being chased with a black box. So I sat and focused on a well visited flower... for ages... and ages. They knew see! When I did get shots the flower was in beautiful crisp focus, ahem!, but of course not the bees. Giving up I photographed the fluffy clocks instead. Evidently I'm not the most patient of image creators when it comes to bees!

hatchling

I know I put him on the doodle-day blog but I like him so I'm adding him here too. Years ago I used to make cards from encaustic wax and visit craft fairs to demonstrate and sell. It was a huge success, more because I was demonstrating than anything. To back up the stock of handmade originals my friend and I designed 6 dragon cards painted in wax with a soldering iron to get the detail. We had them printed up and at the time it was a huge gamble for us to foot the costs and worry that enough sold... but they went well. It's sad that I don't have a set of the cards but this wee fella is based on one of the designs that I did back then. He makes me think of living in the VW camper in the depths of winter and travelling to markets and fairs, fingerless gloves and a crocheted travel blanket to drive in, and then the echoing of laughing and chattering under the arches where chestnuts were being roasted and perfumes with far too much coconut scent in them were wafting about.