If you go down to the woods today.....

Walking through the woods during our stay in Wales this summer, we came across these moss covered uprooted trees. We reckoned they resembled bears - do you see them too?

Found this pine cone - didn't know they looked so pretty inside!




A curious little fellow on the other side of the RSPB hide.
'Light of the World' - sculpted from fallen tree wood - one of dozens of wooden sculptures in the Sculpture Park at Lake Vyrnwy in Wales.



'Cuckoo in a cage'

Title unknown but they're certainly intriguing little windows.

The Victorian reservoir of Lake Vyrnwy in Powys Wales, is a stone-built dam, constructed in the 1880s for the purpose of supplying Liverpool and Merseyside with fresh water. Today the nature reserve and the area around is a popular retreat, for ornithologists, cyclists and hikers.

This is the charming cottage we rented for a week - so pretty!


The garden was a delight! Click to investigate.

More travel pics next time.

Art in Action - Part II

Sculpture by Cliff Wright

Mark Harrison

The CO/OP Art marquee at Art in Action featured a group of artists and craftsmen from the newly formed Elemental Eye arts venture. They are combining their creative skills in a multi discipline, collaborative 2-year project to create the unique Four Seasons Cabinet. Above is Mark Harrison who was just beginning the second oil painted panel for the interior. If you look carefully you can just see part of the structure of the cabinet behind him. Unfortunately, I was unable to get a good shot of the whole of it there were just too many people milling around!

One side of the cabinet made by Daan de Leeuw with interior painted panel by Mark Harrison

Working sketches

The cabinet connects each artist’s innovative interpretation of the natural landscape – a theme that permeates their everyday work.



Here is the multi-talented Cliff Wright, well known for his Harry Potter book illustrations, on this occasion creating a new piece of sculpture to sit atop the cabinet.



More working sketches and etching by another of the cabinet artists, Flora McLachlan who has an Etsy shop here.






Back in the printmakers marquee I found Louise Scott who produces beautiful etchings.

Couldn't resist these cards!

Iris Millward is a calligrapher who uses clay as a medium for carrying poetry. I just love these indigo panels!

Anna Knights' large contemporary botanical watercolours certainly have the wow factor!

And last, but not least Mirka Golden-Hann's colourful ceramic bowls.

Hope you enjoyed the tour!

Art in Action

Hello! I hope you're all having a good Summer!

I'm back from my travels in Holland and the length and breadth of England and Wales and can hardly believe it's been nearly two months since I last posted something here! I've had a wonderful summer in Europe and have many hundreds of photos to sort through and lots of stuff to share!

I thought I'd kick off with a lovely day out I had just before flying back to KL last week at the Art in Action event! This is a wonderful 4-day art extravaganza at Waterperry House near Oxford, where hundreds of artists display their work, demonstrate and talk to the public about their techniques. There are classes, lectures and displays and a market brimful of exciting handcrafted wares to buy! I spent my day there drinking in the atmosphere, revelling in all the wonderful pieces on show and meeting and chatting with some very inspiring artists.

Some of you may already know Sue Brown through her blog Sue Brown Printmaker. It was so nice to meet the lovely Sue in person and to see her splendid prints. Sue was exhibiting alongside other artists in the Nature in Art area. Read more about Nature in Art, which is the world’s first museum dedicated to art inspired by nature, where 70 artists each year work in residence, here.

Sue had an abundance of delightful bird pictures on display.

click to enlarge any of the photos

She is an expert collograph maker and whilst she chatted about her work, I was able to browse through her fascinating sketchbooks.





Sue runs workshops in printmaking - will have to take one of these! Contact her details of upcoming courses.

click to enlarge

I also spent a while in the Printmaking marquee with Susan Erskine-Jones who is another artist happy to divulge many of the tricks of her trade. Here she was describing how to use a solar plate to achieve a similar effect to etching but without the hazards involved with that traditional technique! I'd like to take one of her workshops too - more details on her site here.

Sarah Morpeth crafts unique books and works of art from paper. Just take a look at the incredibly detailed cutwork which Sarah carries out on cartridge paper with a surgical blade! Magical!

I'm fascinated by all things paper and was thrilled to see her exquisite bird and butterfly books, hanging ornaments, pictures and sculptures on display.

Do visit Sarah's website to view more of her work - she also runs a course on making books from her studio - details on her site!

The textiles marquee was another joy to behold!

So many beautiful creations there, including these pretties by Anne Selby created with Arashi Shibori pleating, handpainting and screenprinting.



These stunning accessories by designer maker Tammy Child really caught my eye! Tammy's booth in the Market was awash with sumptuous fabrics in a myriad of jewel colours! If you visit her website you'll find fabulous creations for special occasions guaranteed to make you drool. Be warned, you'll find them hard to resist!

Click to enlarge

Of course, one place I just had to visit was the Illustration marquee! Here I met Jackie Morris. I'm sure many of you will have seen her wonderful book illustrations and/or made acquaintance with her blog or perhaps kept up with the antics of her felines at http://www.wethreecats.blogspot.com/( Jackie admits their blog receives 4 times more hits than her own!!). I watched whilst Jackie applied gold leaf to a very large painting of kingfishers. Many of her artworks incorporate a gold background and are truly sumptious for it!

That's all for now - hope you enjoyed this part of the tour! I'll be back with Part II later!

New camera

I have a new camera and I'm taking it to Europe for a few weeks. Be back later in the summer with lots of pics hopefully!