Halloween Art Sale

First of all, let me mention (because I know you like sales!) that I have 10% off my Halloween art and prints in my shop. If you like a more subtle effect in your Halloween decorations, with cute rather than scary, you’ll like it. It’s especially for my blog readers, but I’m going to make you read about Halloween before I tell you how to get the discount. You could always skip to the end, though. I hope you won’t. You’ll see my art and prints as you read…

Halloween decorations are kind of a new thing, aren’t they? Back when I was a child, people only went to town on the spider’s webs, pumpkins and skeletons if they were having a party, as far as I remember, although lanterns have always been used. Pumpkins weren’t the original vegetable to be carved. That came from the USA. I and my mother had swede lanterns when we were children. My grandfather carved one for me. I still remember the scent of it: warm, sweet and …vegetably. Turnips were the traditional lanterns and were lit to keep away evil entities at Halloween. 

I read an article once in which a journalist said we should do away with Halloween because it’s an imported American thing and just celebrate Guy Fawkes as that’s the older tradition. He obviously didn’t do his research! The Gunpowder Plot happened in 1605. Halloween, also known as Samhain in Irish, goes back at least two thousand years here in the UK.

The native British, who we call the Celts (and a people I’m very interested in, along with their art), celebrated Samhain as the end of the year, the end of harvest, the beginning of the dark half of the year when the sun’s power weakened and as a time to honour the ancestors. It was also a time when the veil between our world and the Otherworld became very thin. Beings of both realms could step through with ease.

It was celebrated right up to modern times, as I mentioned with the lanterns and British migrants who went to live in the USA took the traditions with them. Those traditions evolved there and were imported back to us as we have it today. I prefer the older version, all about the seasons, connecting with the earth…

Black cats were seen as lucky here, by the way, particularly in Wales. It was good luck for a black cat to cross your path. 

So, my Halloween/Samhain artwork includes a black cat, pumpkins and a tabby cat in her witch’s hat (because witches’ cats are not all necessarily black). The Bat and the Hat is an original watercolour. The Cat and the Hat, The Cat and the Pumpkin and The Pumpkin are all prints.   

You can get 10% off these by typing HALLOWEEN2 into the box at checkout in my shop: RustyandBoots

Or you can use this link: https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/RustyandBoots?coupon=HALLOWEEN2

The offer runs until 31^st October, but please bear in mind that if you order late, it may not arrive until after Halloween. If you like cats and witchy things, though, they might suit your walls all year round. There’s also free shipping to the UK! 

I really hope you like my painting and prints as much as I do. They’ve been getting a lot of love on social media, which you can find me on here:

Instagram: @rusty_and_boots

Twitter: @RustyandBoots

Facebook: @RustyandBoots

Experiment with Eco dyeing 2 continued

If you saw my post last week, you'll know that I have tried eco dyeing again with leaves. I left the bundles rolled up for four days and these are the results.

I didn't get a full print of the leaves on my fabric, but there was some success with faint outlines.

This is the general colour of the fabric now:

Here is one of the faint leaf prints :

It's a stem of bramble with three leaves and you can just make out the shape, even the leaf veins, which I'm quite happy about.
Here's another :

One more :

And here's a faint ivy leaf print:

There was also some resist where I tied this piece of fabric with the string :

 I'm quite pleased that this second experiment turned out a bit better, but I might try again to see if I can get even stronger prints. I'm thinking of ideas of what to do with these pieces now they're done. I'm sure they can be made into something!

I also had a hair pin lace loom that can be used to crochet with free with a magazine last week and I think I may be becoming slightly obsessed with it. I've already done this:

I'll now be thinking of things to do with lacey crochet too!

For the next month, through June, I'll be doing 30 Days Wild with the Wildlife Trust so I'll be blogging about what I find, things I do and the nature all around. I'm looking forward to it and I hope you'll enjoy it as well.

Experiment with Ecodyeing

I found out recently that you can get colour and even leaf prints on fabric by putting actual leaves in layers of fabric and immersing them in water, so I thought I'd try it.

I also put petals in with the leaves to see what would happen and a few rusty nails.

Sandwiching them between cotton fabrics, I rolled them up and tied them with string.

I put the bundles in my pot with loose leaves floating about in the water and simmered them for about an hour, then fished them out and left them still rolled up for two days. (I went to find something else to do while waiting. There's lots to keep me occupied! 😉 )

When I untied them, I left them to dry. This is what I ended up with:

There is colour on the fabric but no actual leaf prints, not even vague ones. I was a little bit disappointed 😞 but it was only an experiment. In the past I would have seen this as a failure and got really annoyed about it, possibly abandoning the whole thing, but now I see it just as a try out to see what effects I could get, a chance to learn and adapt my process. This may be due to the fact that I discovered Mindfulness a few years ago and I've been trying to practise it. It does seem to help to alter your outlook and has helped me when I've had setbacks in my work. 😌

I quite like the effects on the fabric but I'm not sure what I'll do with it yet. I may re-use the fabric to try dyeing it again with more leaves. When I did this, some of the leaves were quite dry. Maybe I should have used really fresh ones and maybe I should also use a different method of keeping the fabric in a bundle, to make sure the leaves are really tight against the fabric.

I'll see what happens with further experiments and update you on the results. 😊

Howard Hodgkin

I was going to write about something else today but when I heard about the death of Howard Hodgkin, I thought I'd just show a few of his paintings.

Howard Hodgkin

I quite like Hodgkin's work, the colour is beautiful and the shapes interesting. I had photocopies of a few of his paintings in my sketchbook for inspiration while doing one project during my textile course.

Howard Hodgkin

Hodgkin was a painter and printmaker who began his work in the 1960s and became well known in the 1970s. He was inspired by the colours of India and created works that were semi-abstract using blocks of colour.

I love the blue in this one:

Howard Hodgkin

He painted memories, feelings and sensations focusing on an exploration of life and all its emotions. However, he could take years to finish a painting, saying he hated the actual process.

Howard Hodgkin

Howard Hodgkin was one of the great painters of the 20th century and was at the heart of the British art scene.

I love the colours here and the shapes at the centre:

Howard Hodgkin

Howard Hodgkin

Howard Hodgkin

Howard Hodgkin

I'd love to try to paint in a more abstract form using colours like this in an expressive way. I might give it a go soon.

Influences on my work no.2 ~ Animals

This is the second installment of the things that influence my creativity. If you haven't seen the first, you can find it by clicking HERE 

I've loved animals all my life. I realised a long time ago that they bring light and love into life and now they bring light and colour to my work. 

The animals that grace our world are so beautiful. They have patterns and colours in amazing designs and combinations and offer an endless source of inspiration. The tropical birds, for example, are brightly coloured and are an artist's dream to draw or paint. But even what we think of as dull coloured birds have colour. Starlings and magpies are not just black or brown or black and white. They both have a sheen to their feathers which glimmers an emerald green. I haven't yet painted these birds, but I plan to. In fact, I've embarked on a personal mission to draw as many animals as I can! :o)

I have quite a collection of feathers which I've picked up over the years, most of which have come from the birds that frequent my garden. I have countless woodpigeon feathers, blackbird feathers, a jackdaw feather and even a flamingo feather. No, I haven't had a flamingo in the garden. I got it from the Wildfowl and Wetlands Centre in Llanelli where they have a flock. Years ago, I needed feathers for a project I was working on during my degree so I went there to find some. I had a paper bag full. I couldn't quite reach the flamingo feather, so my mother, who was with me, reached right over to pluck it from the ground (not the bird! They were all feathers that had fallen off). I thought she was going to fall into the flamingo area with her legs in the air and I'd have to pull her out. Luckily, she didn't. Also luckily, she was wearing trousers! ;o)

 This is some of my work from that time. A print of feathers from a lino cut I did.

It's not only tropical birds that are colourful, of course. Puffins are gorgeous with their brightly coloured bill. They're also cute in the way they walk! Here's my drawing of a puffin.

And here's my painting of it.

 

As I'm talking about birds, here's my drawing of a barn owl. I think these are amazing birds. They can fly silently but the downside of that is their feathers aren't waterproof, so they can't fly in the rain.

And this is my rough sketch watercolour of a king fisher ~ another beautiful British bird. See? Our country is not dull ~ colour is there if you look for it.

As I said at the beginning, I love animals ~ all animals. To me they are beautiful souls who we should be grateful to share the earth with. I have had the privilege of sharing my life with three cats and a dog. If you've seen my blog before, you'll know I lost my beloved Rusty recently. I still miss him and wish he was still here. I've shown you this drawing before, but here he is again.

This is my other cat, Boots.

I sometimes wish that I could take all the animals which are in danger or are being treated badly in the world and look after them, keep them safe. We have taken over so many of their habitats and destroyed them, but we should be taking care of them. Animals don't destroy their own environment. They live in harmony with it, something we very often fail to do and they only kill to eat, to survive. 

I feel a deep connection with animals. The natural world is wonderful. Watching wildlife reminds you that there are other souls in the world trying to survive and get on with their lives, reminds you that you are part of a bigger picture.

I heard recently on TV that the hunter~gatherer humans who lived thousands of years ago would have considered the animals around them to be almost like brothers and sisters. They were much closer to the natural world and knew they were part of it. They gave thanks to the animals they hunted for giving their lives so the humans could survive. It's such a shame that we have lost the feeling of being among the animals ~ that so many people feel disconnected from nature and see animals as "things" rather than sentient beings which can feel pain and fear. 

We were wild once. We lived within nature, in caves and forests. Now we're cooped up in buildings and unless you're someone who actively goes to spend time in nature, we feel separated from everything else.
 

Yet in a way, those hunter~gatherers were correct: we are connected to animals. To quote Professor Brian Cox from his book Wonders of Life written with Andrew Cohen,

"All life on Earth is related - connected through our genetic code".

We share DNA with all animals ~ 99% with chimpanzees, 98.4% with gorillas, 97.4% with orangutans and with monkeys like macaques we share 94.9% of the same DNA. We're even related to plants. Prof Brian Cox explains further:

"... this journey can continue all the way back in time through our common ancestors with birds, reptiles, insects and bacteria, and no matter how seemingly unrelated to us these creatures become, we will still find sequences in the genetic code that are identical to the sequences in our human cells."

We're all in a big family tree! :o)

So, I hope you see why I love animals so much and why they inspire my art. They are beautiful and as precious as humans. I try to capture some of that beauty in my work.

From my drawings, I intend to paint these animals, as I have with the puffin, and also intend to translate those paintings into fabric to create pieces of textile art celebrating animals in all their diversity. I hope that whoever sees my work will enjoy it and it will inspire love for animals in others. If it makes people consider animals and their importance to us, along with how we treat them and look after them, even better ~ I'd be really happy.




 


Information from 'Wonders of Life' by Professor Brian Cox and Andrew Cohen. Published by HarperCollins.