I'm back ... with naive Christmas cards

I didn't realise how long it has been since I had posted anything.

Daughter has been visiting and I have had lots of bureaucratic stuff to do. 

Then running around to the printer.

Anyway, that's my excuse.

My creativity was zapped - or do I mean sapped - by it all.

But as you see, I haven't been entirely idle. 

More presents have arrived on the steps of Wentworth Place and some new shoots of grass are showing!

This is one of my beautiful (if I do say so myself!) Christmas cards - hooray - which will be in my shop this week.

Watch this space.

Or even THAT space.

Monoprints, yay!

Two Sisters

Well, it's something I'd been promising myself to do for a while now but just hadn't got round to hunting out the ink and glass and finding a space for the ensuing mess on my cuttings strewn worktop. So along came two reminders in one week: images on tv of Tracy Emin producing a monoprint and a post on Anna Wilson-Patterson's splendid blog about it. 

The fates had conspired ...

So now I'm on a roll.

I used some of the antique doll images in my sketchbook which have served as the basis for my paper cut portraits as a point of departure.

This was the first I pulled that I was vaguely satisfied with:

Portrait

 I love the way two opposite poles come together in one image: the precision of line and the randomness of the fuzz and blotching and brush strokes (I have an aversion to rollers). Then there is the childish excitement (albeit often followed by disappointment) of pulling the paper away and discovering - success or failure.

Black Cat

The Two Sisters is the last thing I have done and voila, brings together monoprinting and my love of paper and scissors. I think it's an avenue I will explore at length and enjoy dawdling in!

Even more cats ...

How many cats qualify you for title of Mad Cat Woman? My six sound paltry by comparison with Mrs Griggs's but when they're all clamouring for food at the same time I swear it FEELS like 6 times 13. 

Anyway my interest extends to other people's cats too - my first question is always What's his/her name - didn't TS Eliot write a poem about that?. Obviously a man after my own heart. Names really are important.

Here are two of my latest miniatures, two black cats. My very first cat, Polly, was a black one. They make such very elegant shapes. Very collag-able (is that a word?): 

James

James is a cat who seems to have adopted my youngest daughter in London. He lives next door, five floors up. A very urban cat.

And this is William who kind of appeared out of my imagination and a heap of scrap paper that was on my drawing board. I think the name popped up out of my subconscious because I have been toying with and doodling away at Dove Cottage, Wordsworth's  house, lately.

William

Right, off to the car boot sale at the church now, in the hopes of coming across a stash of old magazines. I really need some new stuff to refresh my hoard.

Ex Libris - finis

Finished tweaking:

And I had some surplus ink on my roller so I reprinted an old carving from a few years back to have a nice fresh print instead of the unloved dog-eared item in my drawer:

Done and dusted!

Linocut rage

I have a lot on my mind just lately. And a lot on my desk, as you can see.

Which is just a bad excuse for my complete and utter idiocy in cutting a bookplate and forgetting to REVERSE THE TEXT.

That'll teach me to carry on beyond midnight when the spirit is willing but the brain is in freefall. At least mine must be.

My only consolation was that it was a small piece.

And this evidence in a book on my shelves that even the great Carrington was capable of the same mistake. At least twice. And once on a bookplate as it happens.

So ... time to clear the decks and get back to the drawing board tomorrow, stop mixing metaphors and letting cats invade my workspace.

Deep, deep sigh.

Keats House in Spring

Well, it was certainly the most fiddly of the four but I stuck down the very last leaves this morning:

For some technical reason I have not yet (if I ever will) fathomed there is a distinct distortion on vertical images. To be rectified when I finally persuade my daughter to get out her Canon this week and take a swatch of proper photographs.

Keats House in Winter

So ... that wasn't my last word on Keats House at all apparently.

Well, I decided as I had already done summer and autumn I may as well go for the complete set and snip away at winter and spring and do a four seasons thing.

I also thought as cats hadn't featured in either of my two efforts so far and as they seemed to be cherished residents of Wentworth Place, with the Dilkes and Brawnes being cat lovers all (George Keats, in a rather wistful letter home from the comfortless wilds of the New World, recalled the Brawne residence thus: "I remember the curtains, the chairs and the cats ..."), I had to include some somewhere. 

Cats are, after all, Very Important Animals.

So here they are, running harum scarum through the winter snow, the very last vestiges of which were melting away when I visited in December, so I have had to imagine the carpet effect of a thick fall.

If nothing else I now have the satisfaction of knowing I won't have to cope with the traditional, God-awful last minute panic of having to dream up and print out my cards for Christmas this year! 

Hey, Amanda is ahead of the game, for once.

(Yeah, but they will still arrive late as usual, I hear my friends say).

Bloomin' bougainvillea and some black cats

Lovely isn't it?

There seems to be quite a blossom bonanza going on with this plant round these parts right now, masses of flowers, masses of colour.
Anyway, I took this photo of the overgrown one outside my studio door about ten minutes ago.
A cheery sight in November.
And talking of bougainvillea (however you spell it), here's a picture (getting back to things arty) I did a few years back which features the stuff. And a family of black cats ....