Drawing at Kew today

I was surprised to find I had made 24+ sketches today. The Palm House ones are the best - probably because I was at least warm. Kew provides good opportunities to draw school children, too, who seemed to be enthralled by the tropical plants.
Although I thought I was going to Kew to draw plants, I discovered the amazing Marine Life display in the basement of the Palm House, which is inhabited by seaweeds, corals, and fish! It was an amazing chance to draw a living plaice, and to be stared at by the animals. Seriously, they were all coming to the glass of their tanks to peer out at me - maybe they are bored?

These are my newly knitted wristwarmers aka fingerless gloves, specially completed in time for my planned trip to Kew. I made them from lovely soft Colinette jitterbug yarn, using Fishtail wristwarmers pattern designed by Alexandra Brinck. They certainly help for keeping my fingers warm and flexible enough for drawing out of doors in the bitterly cold weather this January!

Illustration Friday - "Clumsy"

A bit of Illustration Friday fun! I began sketching out ideas for adults being clumsy, but almost inevitably, a child crept onto the pages of my Moleskine, along with this snippet of story:

"Little Peter is upset because Wolfgang has clumsily knocked over the paint water - all over the picture Peter was painting!"

Cards "Seconds"

The snow has gone now. Very pretty indeed while it lasted, and also very slippery, so I am relieved to be able to walk around once again without fear of injury!

It's very much back to focussing on work, both the creating of new images, and learning how to make and sell things I have designed. Interesting, enjoyable and challenging in surprising ways all at the same time. An unforseen consequence of the learning curve with my greetings cards is that I now have some "seconds" of my "dragonflyclef" and "in theory" designs: these are cards which have not folded as neatly and cleanly as I would like, so I am offering them for sale at half price. If you are interested, please email me for more info.

Snow Legs

This was the pretty sight which greeted me on Wednesday morning! We do get snow every winter in the part of London where I reside, but it is usually a fleeting visitor, staying no more than a day or two. This winter is taking a different tack: thick snow in the week before Christmas, and now again a gorgeous and treacherous blanket of snow and ice seems set to be here for at least a week or so. So, adapting to life with snow has led to changes in wardrobe: regular foot ware outdoors is now my glamourous site boots + some neon pink leg warmers hastily purchased in local shop. Truly, the 80s have returned: that was apparently the last time we had so much snow in London, and also the last time I wore leg warmers!
I figured that not only humans in this part of the world are unaccustomed to such extended cold weather, so have put out some seed and fat balls for the birds, having first been very careful to remove the nylon netting these are sold in because the birds can injure their feet in the netting .

In my sketchbook, I am playing around with stick figures in the snow!

Happy New Year

Happy New Year everyone! This is the time of year when for remembering successes and high points of 2009, and dreaming up goals for 2010. As well as things I think would be wonderful at the start of the year, amazing new opportunities occur in my experience. 2009 was no exception: particular highlights being:

• that thanks to encouragement to pursue finding some knitting companions from http://www.emmamccann.blogspot.com/, I became a proud member of Stitch and Bitch London !
• For planned goals, with help from Treacle Toffee and Paintgranny I set up my etsy shop : )

Essential work, making gifts and dealing with life amidst the rare heavy snow in London very much took over my life just before the Christmas holiday, hence the lack of completion of my blog advent parcels : ( Equally, my severe shortage of time prodded me to experiment with making my Christmas card by using a drawing from one of an existing series I have been working on - the twelve days of christmas - and adding a layer in Painter to incorporate a touch of colour. Then mis-reading the printer's upload instructions led to my shrinking the card, with the happy result of increasing the Victorian feel! All of this is encouraging me to complete the series by September this year, so that I can offer them for sale.