A very special Easter scarf for The Boroughs

I had a great deal of fun working on this folk art inspired Easter scarf design for Alasdair at Five Boroughs in Brunswick East.  The scarf will form a limited edition wrapper for a small number of especially made Easter eggs. Talk about luxurious! I am very much looking forward to getting my own, for more reasons than one.

Three ladies and one gentleman

FINALLY -- new cards.  They are in my shop.  Have a fine weekend.

GET LOVE

This was designed as an i-pad cover but it's a wee bit small.  It measures 23.5 x 21cm (9.2 x 8.2 inches) and the plastic toothed zipper opens to 22 cm wide (8.6 inches).  Sooooo, it would comfortably fit an i-pad mini + a few more of your precious items.  I also think it would make a pretty clutch.
Why knit a great big "GET LOVE," you ask?  I reckon it's what we're all trying to do whenever we turn on our computers, i-pads or smart phones.  Any messages?  Emails?  Any 'likes' on Facebook, Flickr, Instagram?  We are constantly hungry.

If you really like it, it's in my Etsy shop.  It's at a good price too for a hand made item, just because it's a bit small to be used in the way that I intended.

This is the back: it's made of a colourful vintage woven wool.

Ada the Acrobat and her trusty horse, Harriet

This arm belonged to a man who lived the early 20th century. He was in love with Ada the Acrobat, whom he had seen performing in the circus when it came to the little town where he lived. Time did not dim his love, or his memory of Ada jumping through a ring of fire on her trusty horse, Harriet.

....Actually it's a wooden clock, and it's in my Etsy shop.  But you probably realised that.  

Or maybe not.

An illustration for Gardening Australia magazine

I am an avid though average gardener, and find Gardening Australia a treat to watch.  So I was extremely chuffed to be asked to contribute an illustration to the "Big Picture" article which appears on the inside back page of its magazine each month.  This little man was painted using acrylic on wood, then scanned and cut out with the pen tool in Photoshop.  I like to make things hard for myself, as regular readers of this blog will know.  Wait until you see the illustration for next month's issue: I think that cutting it out in Photoshop took longer than the painting. Thankfully, the sketching part for the second month was not as fraught with nerves as it was for the above illustration, and went relatively quickly and smoothly.

Sketching is the hardest part, I reckon.

Around the place this week

Above and below: I like to paint the 'cold' (i.e. boring) parts of a volcano first.

 Then I get to do the fun part above : the heat, the explosion, the BOOF!

Above: one of my favourite book covers EVER: Anton Chekhov's Kashtanka, illustrated by William Stobbs.

 Above: Good night messy studio!

My new (old) cardigan above makes me wish that the weather was as autumnal as these rather large mushrooms in my neglected front yard would have us believe, below:

They are about 12-15 cm in diameter and I swear that they sprung up overnight.

David Hockney as an embroidered doll

Here above is my entry for the Reginald CAE Portrait Prize for Softies.  Yes indeed it IS meant to be Mr David Hockney, below, though I am not sure that I have succeeded in evoking the great man.  I am quite happy with certain details: the embroidered stripes on the shirt, the knitted and stitched tie, the real pockets and the embroidered paint stains on the pants. But I am not a doll maker, and am definitely not used to thinking of a figure as a series of what are essentially three dimensional tubes.
It was quite a lesson*.

Above: I decided to make the back a bit more interesting for myself, so I based it on an abstracted figure from Mr Hockney's own vast oeuvre, below.

The painting is from David Hockney, My Early Years, 1988.  I will credit it properly when I have access to the book again.

* One of the reasons why David Hockney IS so great, in my opinion, is that he still enjoys experimenting with different media (his i-pad paintings, for example, are brilliant). I should try and channel a bit more of his spirit.  Maybe we all could?

Around the place this week....

 Above: Yesterday morning I used my fountain pen to draw a page of different plant shapes, in preparation for a nice freelance project.

 Above: my acrylic on wood girl hanger + a fantastic illustration from the 70s by E. Schongut.

Above: Sometimes the back of one's work can look more interesting than the front.

 Above: a nice anthropomorphic symbol found in the nut shop on Lygon Street North.

Above: my acrylic on wood "banks" biding their time before the heater is switched back on in a month or so....

Above: a fantastic vintage fabric which I purchased from Etsy and received this week.  More here.