Swans in black and white

Hello my friends,

I hope you had a safe and joyful new year! 

Lots has been happening here – I’ve changed my url to artymissk.com (it feels so cool to be .com) and I thought that I’d kick off my first real post of the year with some photo editing. I really love black and white images – they feel timeless so I thought I’d have a go at editing the swan photos that I took last year.

I really love black and white images – they feel timeless so I thought I’d have a go at editing the swan photos that I took last year.

These pictures are beautiful in colour of course but the elegant tones of black and white really highlight the shape of the birds.

Mute Swans really are magical birds. The local ones although being totally wild, are really rather domesticated and friendly! They get incredibly close – the adults are enormous and will actually take food form your hands.

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Wild Mushrooms

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.

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Autumn Swans

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.

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Autumn tree

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.

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Little picnic in the woods {Art/Photography Project}

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!

Beautiful tree {One frame}

Hello friends, just a quick photography post on this lovely sunny Friday. Isn’t this one of the most beautiful trees? Standing there all glorious under the sun!

The truck is massive and the bark is so rough, its as though the poor thing has been scratched. Its even lost several limbs which I imagine were beautiful but in the way of passersby – it’s so human to think ‘oh that 500 year old tree branch is in the way of our new footpath lets chop it off.’ If I could have any tree in which to build a house it would be this one!

A Garden of Summer Flowers

While its raining outside here’s some wonderfully happy pot marigolds. Aren’t they just so sunny!

Spending more time outside has being something I’ve always enjoyed, but this year I really put the effort in to learn gardening and be more at one with nature. So I thought I’d try a and put a collection of flower photography together. These beautiful pot marigolds are particularly vivid against the green of the grass – although I don’t like the smell to them very much.

Enjoy some warm and happy summer colours…

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Number seven {One frame}

Do you have a lucky number?

I don’t know why, but this always makes me smile. It’s a random paving slab (about 6×6 inches) in the middle of a field, but it’s a seven – which is of course not only lucky but also a magic number…or the field is #7…but then you have to wonder where they’ve hidden the other six!

Bumblebees in black and white

This week I thought I’d share some photo editing that I’ve been trying out. We’re approaching autumn and I wondered what such bright and vibrant summer pictures would be like if the were black and white.

They’re beautiful in colour of course, being so bright and vibrant but in black and white it really highlights the shape of the actual bee against the flower and hides any imperfections in the petals.

I particularly love the picture on the right and the way the wing details of the bee are really highlighted. It makes me want to go ‘AHH SO PRETTY.’ I totally love how a half decent camera and bright sunny daylight with a little editing can make any picture interesting and lovely.

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