On this beautiful Christmas Eve I’d like to wish everyone a truly Merry Christmas and a Happy Hogswatch, this is a little illustration of the Grim Squeaker (AKA The Death of Rats) from Terry Pratchett’s who appears throughout the Discworld series from Reaper Man onwards. I’ve drawn him as the Hogfather to celebrate 50 years of Terry.
I hope all of your dreams come true.
Mind how you go!
Terry Pratchett
In a bid to hold onto the last of this years sunshine (before winter completely sets in) I decided to see if I could find anything magical to photograph and while out in the wilderness I found a very lovely little patch of grassland fungi! These beautiful mushrooms were tiny and their colours seemed so vivid against the green of the grass. I love fungi there are so many species and colours and they grow in the most unlikely places.
So, enjoy some wild foraging photography…and a few doodles…
This is one of my favorites from the shoot. I love how simple and stock-photography-like it looks. The way the light hits the mushroom and the sunlight through the grass just feels so natural…
Now I know never to eat mushrooms I find, I don’t even like to touch them – unless I’m with someone who genuinely knows what they’re doing! Let’s be honest I just like to photograph and draw them so I thought I’d try and put together a little collection of photographs to show off the beauty of these amazing little fungi.
Hello friends, today is the 10th of December and twenty years ago Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring premiered in London, so I decided to join my love of Tolkien with my love for embroidery and recreate the map of Middle Earth. (I’m too scared to iron it incase I burn it!)
I truly believe Mute Swans to be the most magical and gentle of wild birds. These beautiful birds are one of the heaviest British birds and can grow as heavy as 14kg and have a wingspan of 2.4 metres (over 7ft), it’s the largest of our British wildfowl species. I love swans they have so many myths and stories and float about all gracefully on the water.
So, enjoy some calming nature photography…
Remember when you were told not to feed the stray cats…well I started feeding the birds by the river – not bread, because that’s bad for them, I feed them Wildthings Swan and Duck Food because it floats. now they assume I have food all the time and will follow me!
I thought I’d try and put together a little collection of things to these amazing birds.
This adult and almost fully grown cygnet very nearly made a heart shape, I got so super excited when I realised that I had taken an okay picture! The adult swans are enormous but will literally stand right next to you and while they are genuinely wild birds, they seem so domesticated.
Continue reading “Autumn Swans”
I genuinely think autumn is my favourite season the colours and textures are just so amazing. This beautiful tree is an old friend standing in the autumn sun…aren’t trees just magical, being all leafy and sucking carbon from the atmosphere. This is one of my favourites, although the colours of summer lingered a lot later than normal.
Enjoy some warm and calming autumn colours…
I thought I’d try and put together a little collection of things relating to this old tree.
The White Rabbit was illustrated by Sir John Tenniel for ‘Alice’s adventures in Wonderland’ by Lewis Carroll in 1866. I absolutely love his illustrations, so this is my attempt at Sir John’s White rabbit of Hearts. I’m quite pleased with it! Drawn with Winsor & Newton Indian ink.
“Near the King was the White Rabbit with a trumpet in one hand, and a scroll of parchment in the other.“
Continue reading “The White Rabbit”
Alice in wonderland has long been one of my favourite things in the world so continuing my experimenting with water colours to try and bring more green and nature inside in the winter and combining my love of all things green with my love of calligraphy and quotes, they don’t take long to do, but look really effective against a white wall – my funny little brain likes to pretend its alchemy!
Its happened, its autumn – although I feel like we skipped my favourite season and have gone straight to winter, its so cold!
But I’ve been out in the wild to photograph the change in nature and I took this with me.
The unexpectedly small tea party. Created using paper, unsurprisingly this took longer than expected. Its made to be about the same size as dollhouse furniture (I think its 1/12 scale) and then I covered some dollhouse dishes. I made it years ago and found it recently, can’t believe its still holding together!
I made this when I was a Uni as a part of my finals as part of an Alice in Wonderland project. It’s not using actual book pages (I could never destroy a book like that!) but is from photocopies from a book. The paper was then rolled or lined with card to help it keep its shape.
Alice in Wonderland is a big part of my life and I have an awful lot of art to go with it!
Wishing you a spooktacular Halloween wherever you may be I thought the Game Of Thrones quote seemed apt for the occasion.
Well this is it, the last post for Tolkientober 2021.
Day 30 was a rest day, thankfully as it had been everyday for about ten days!
Day 31: Home, so I’ve done a quick little watercolour style Hobbiton on photoshop. I’m really happy with how this turned out.
Day 29: Tears – So I focused on the tears of Arwen Undomiel. I then overlaid the Gandalf quote from ROTK.
“Well, here at last, dear friends, on the shores of the sea comes the end of our fellowship in Middle-earth,” Gandalf says to the gathered companions. “Go in peace! I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil.” And this, especially now, is what we need to remind ourselves: that not all tears are evil.”
Whoo! In the words of Frodo Baggins Its done! Below is a round up of all my efforts and you know what it doesn’t look to bad! Also I actually stuck with Tolkientober all month (meaning its the first inktober type challenge that I’ve actually finished!)
Continue reading “Tolkientober Days 29-31”
ArtyMissK 
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