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Tuesday, 24 May 2016

Scrawlrbox - May 2016



Time for Scrawlrbox!!





I love getting my Scrawlrbox every month. This is my third box and it, as usual, doesn't disappoint. This month's topic is Hand-Lettering

I am in the processing of choosing the right Calligraphy course to sign up for so this box was perfect for me, I know that you can get fonts to use that are Calligraphy styled but there's nothing better than hand written Calligraphy.
The featured artist this month is Stephen Bradbury who is a Graphic Designer from Manchester UK. He's currently at the University of Salford in Manchester studying Graphic Design. His website address is www.stebradburydesign.co.uk where you can find some examples of his work and some hand-lettering guides to download to help with spacing and letter size, the Scrawlrbox design in the box is by Stephen .


So... what's in the box?

  • 2 A5 sheets of Hand-Lettering Guide Lines
  • Pentel Touch Pen – mine is Blue
  • Sharpie Chisel Tip Whiteboard Marker – Black
  • Kuretake Zig Brush H2O – Large Tip
  • Kuretake Cartoonist Brush Pen No.22 – Black
  • Koh-I-Noor 2 Watercolours – Gold and Silver
  • 2 x Lyra Aqua Brush Duo Tips – I have Orange and Red
  • Refreshers sweet.











Every month there is a challenge in the box and the challenge this month.....

Write Scrawlrbox


Here is Stephen Bradbury's take on the challenge





I will post my own challenge results once I have one done.  If you don't subscribe to Scrawlrbox you can find out all about them HERE



Thank you for reading, take care and have a great rest of the week.






Sunday, 15 May 2016

Polymer Clay Artists

While researching for this blog (by researching I mean trawling through Pinterest and the like) I've seen some amazing Polymer Clay Artists, who have produced some incredible pieces. I hope to feature a couple of them for a whole post in the future but what I thought I'd do today is do a post about a few of the artists and share a piece of their work because quite frankly it's difficult to choose just a couple in the first instance.


So first up is Jana Roberts Benzon, the first piece I saw of Jana's was this necklace, it sent me off to Jana's website to coo over some incredibly beautiful intricate creativeness.


 
Can you just imagine wearing that? And that's clay! The colours are my kind of colours, I love teal and turquoise. This was created with Millefiori canes that Jana makes herself. 

 Using Millefiori canes allows artists to create tiles/slices that are the same. Jana also has a range of organic pieces on her website, these are beautiful pieces that just have such a perfect flow about them. 

 You have to remind yourself that these pieces are not created and then painted, they are formed from blending different colour clays which Jana occasionally enhances with alcohol ink.




 
Both of those pieces just emulate the break of a wave, especially the second one, the colours help, I think some Jana's organic work is influenced by the sea, I love it. You can find her website HERE and a link to my Jana Pinterest Board HERE.

So Millefiori canes are made by grouping together different colour clays into a design a little like how a stick of rock that you get at the seaside is made with the writing running through the middle when you cut it, (that simiuli probably only works if you have ever seen a stick of rock being made!)

 It's a fascinating process where bits of clay in this case are moulded together and then stretched out so that when slices are cut you get the same pattern running through every little tile. I'm going to share a couple of You Tube videos of talented people creating some Millefiori (pronounced Mil-a-fi-or-e and comes from the Italian word Mille Fiori - A Thousand Flowers) The process is often used in glasswork.

t is a process I find so interesting, little pieces of clay that when they go through the process become a whole piece of art.

Here is YouTuber 'Mo Clay' producing a beautiful beach scene Millefiori...
 

Another video by Teresa Pandora Salgado which is an advanced class in Millefiori



 
 

Finally a beautiful Butterfly Wing Cane by Polymer Clay Artist – Tom




All three have numerous Polymer Clay/Millefiori videos so if it's something that you are interested in or something you'd like to try their videos would be perfect.

Next up is Kelly Arce Designs, you can find her Facebook page HERE. Kelly designs Disney and fantasy art inspired pieces with polymer clay. I love her Disney wine glasses, such incredible detail.

Here are two of her glasses currently available in here Etsy store HERE
The first is Snow White's house and the second is from Nightmare Before Christmas



 
 
They look beautiful with a tea-light inside as you can see. Perfect to sculpt around wine glasses the shape lends itself so well to the houses but also the princess and villain's dresses like this Ursula from The Little Mermaid.

 
 

I love all these Artist's work. I will feature more polymer clay artists in the future because I have seen some amazing talent. 
 
So please subscribe to my blog for more creative inspiration.
 
Thank you for reading.
 
Sharon
 
 


Sunday, 8 May 2016

Celebrating Prince and remembering David Bowie

As a music lover I have my favourite type of music as a lot of people do. For me I love R&B, Soul, Disco and Funk (my main source of pleasure musically) I also love 1950's Pop/Rock & Roll, Swing music and some modern day 'pop' along with 80's & 90's which was when I had my teenage and going out clubbing years.

At some point during their amazing careers David Bowie's and Prince's music has made it onto my playlists, at other times not so much so. Bowie's work while incredible wasn't always really my cup of tea. A lot of the people I went to school with loved him but it was around the time my love for Soul/R&B and Funk was forming so I was concentrating on my own thing.

But I think it's okay to dip in and out of careers that have spanned as long as they did. Not everyone is going to like everything that an artist puts out, but you can still appreciate and respect the huge talent that artists like Bowie and Prince had.
Similarly with Michael Jackson, I loved most of what he did but there was the remainder particularly the very commercial stuff that I wasn't so much of a fan of but you'd never question his talent.

Sadly I didn't get to see Prince live, I did see David Bowie however. It was during his Serious Moonlight Tour and he was incredible, such a showman. As was an equally talented Freddie Mercury when I saw Queen, another sorely missed massive talent.
My preferred Bowie album would be Young Americans because it has a soul vibe to it and Prince would be 1999, although my favourite song doesn't come off that album.

So what I decided to do in honour of these two sensational talents and in order to celebrate their lives is to share some artwork of them created by some amazing artists.

First is Hedley Wiggan's art. Hedley is a micro sculptor, he sculpted the Harry Styles pencil lead that was featured on The Late Late Show with James Corden and the 1D boys.

The Prince sculpture was done a couple of weeks before his sad death and the guitar done since.
As always with Hedley's work the detail is incredible.





 
and finally from Hedley here is a portrait of Prince.



I have two favourite Prince songs. One I will share later in the blog, the other is Let's Go Crazy, perfectly captured in this piece of artwork by @Fabulizz on Twitter. You can find this on her Society6 shop HERE.  Just love this...
I love how you can give any number of Artists a subject and the results are so different.

The final Prince piece is by @SlaskyArt from Italy. It is manipulated digital photography on canvas and you can find it on Slasky Arts Saatchiart.com shop HERE


There is something about that photograph and the manipulation that really screams Prince. I know it's a picture of him so it should but I think it's more the distortion, it just seems fitting somehow.

I thought it only fitting to include a piece of work on David Bowie, although this blog post is mainly about Prince...The two great Icons who influenced a lot of people passing away within months of each other is very sad.

This piece is by Jian Chen, I think it perfectly captures Bowie's uniqueness.  You can find Jian's artwork HERE in her Etsy shop



I think it's only fitting to end by sharing the artwork of both David Bowie and Prince themselves being the gifted Artists that they were...so what better than my two favourite songs of theirs. From Bowie it's 'Fame' and from Prince it would be 'Musicology' …. enjoy...

 


If you would like to see other Artist's inspirational work please do follow my blog.
Thank you for reading.  Have a great week.

Thank you to all the Artists that allowed me to share their work. Find out more about them...



 


 

 
Jian Chen Watercolour Paintings Facebook Page


 
 
 
 



 
 
 
 


 








 

 
 




Monday, 2 May 2016

Laurence Bergeot Veréb ~ a.k.a Feltoohlala


Needle felting is one of those crafts I've never done myself but love the finished result and I've heard nothing but good things from the people that have done it regarding how enjoyable it is.

I found Laurence Bergeot Veréb otherwise knows as Feltoohlala (great name!) on Etsy while browsing one day.  I love her dolls, they are so beautifully made and each one has it's own expression and to me they have a very Nordic feel to them.

Laurence lives in Hungary where Needle Felting is a very ancient traditional craft.  I just love the passion that Laurence clearly has for her craft.  If you visit her website you will find the following description where she describes the smell and the sounds that felting makes and even in just her description you can hear her passion.

Needle felting proved to be the right technic for me, which I came across applying about the year 2009 first!
I really love doing it, for the contact of the wool and even its smell,  and the special noise of the needle when I insert it in the wool. It is like  stepping in the snow to me, millions and millions of steps, in the quiet and  virgin snow ahead, but also something warm and soft...and yet full of the  possibilities of forms and shapes your mind decides.


I want to take up Felting just based on that description!


When visiting Laurence's website HERE you can have a look through the gallery at some of her early work as well as her more recent felting


Here are a few from her 2010/2011 gallery..


I adore these Gnomes and that Slug is just gorgeous (never thought Slug and gorgeous two words I'd put together)





and this one entitled Daar reminds me of a little Eskimo...




Next we come to Laurence's 2011/2012 Gallery and two dolls that just blow my mind that they start as just some loose fibres and are then created into these beautiful works of art.  

That is the most amazing thing about art/craft, when you take each element of a piece back to it's very first form, in this case fibres, then you see what someone with a creative vision can create from sometimes very basic materials ... it's so emotive.

The first piece is called Fawn and the second piece is called Snow....










Stunning, both dolls and that Snow Leopard! beautiful.. sometimes someone's work just leaves you struggling for ways to describe it.  Both dolls though appear to convey perfectly, for example the second doll, looks exactly how you would expect a snow queen to look.



Laurence's 2013/2014 Gallery has one of my absolute favourites - The Girl and the Unicorn and I presume a little pretty Fairy Princess called Shay.


 




The two last dolls of Laurence's that I am going to share are from her 2015 Gallery, the first is called Tea and the second is Petit Nuage - my French isn't great (well it's pretty non-existant)  but I am led to believe Nuage is French for Cloud.. just the perfect name.





Isn't she pretty, just a hint of rosy cheeks and those lashes!



So let's meet Laurence, as with all the people I feature she was kind enough to answer some of my questions...
 

Q&A
1.Please tell us your name and how old are you?
My name is laurence Bergeot Veréb, I am 45 years old.
2. …. and could you tell us a little about your art..
I am creating art dolls out of wool. They are needle felted and human figures.
Needle felting is a very interesting technique that brings warmth and texture to my dolls.
I love trying intricate forms and solutions from a very humble material,wool, that anyone can handle. I also love to work on a fiber that animals produce yearly, so that it is very organic in its form and particularly convey to dolls .
Dolls convey a lot of humanity, they are objects that carries all the passions in a symbolic way. Creating art doll is a very liberating art expression , and allows to touch people in very different ways.
When needle felting, you create your own material (the felt) at the same time you create your shape. So that the doll is insulated with life along the process at its most, and I think it shows  and people feel a soul behind the object.
As much it is easy a technique and not so intimidating, one might say even forgiving, I must say it is strainous work to transform a fiber that is naturally hairy, into smooth hopefully “light catching surface with a feel on it” when it is applied to human figures. And of course, the finer the details and intricate the shapes is the most difficult and time consuming.
Also running Feltoohlala as a brand is part of the doll process since I am selling my works, and it is as much effort of communication and care to do on a daily basis. A process to learn in a continuous way I am afraid, but oh so needed for sustaining my activity out of the hobby category.
 3. What is your earliest creative memory?
This is a hard one...creativity is a way of expressing in life that is a response to the way you think, the way you see and make do in life....I am not sure it starts with a special event.
However I remember early “artistic” feelings, and recently came back to my memory of the time when I first saw exhibited sculptures in a museum at young age, and had a real emotional and intellectual shock.
I think basically seeing a sculpture out of its prior purpose made me realise that there was intelligency behind it, someone had to create and choose to express that particular form in three dimentions.Those pieces talked to me as they were exposed to be seen for themselves, out of urbanistic context and thus “looked all different”.
4. Do you ever suffer from a creative block and if so how do you get yourself out of it?
Not really...sometimes I do feel less creative in doll making, and it is always because I don’t find a good solution (a technical solution for exemple) or make my mind up  on something. But then, I will go on other creative projects, often in miniature, or a child toy nowadays, just for myself, and it allows my brain to breathe and resolve the problem by itself so I can “successfully” go further back on my doll again.
5. Are you inspired by any one specific person?

I am inspired by people who carry their dream in real life, and have extra persistency in what they do. Also I particularly appreciate creativity when it is whimsical.

6. What is your favourite piece of work that you've created?

It is always the last one I am working on when I am working on it...till the next one!
The process might be the most important for me .Once the doll is completed , documentation photographs done, and a little promoting, I kind of loose interest of the piece itself. Till I have a sell, I then take time to rediscover the details and make sure i made my best at the moment and love to make the packaging.
 7. What are your creative ambitions for the future?
I am still considering somewhat animating for a film...not necessarily with stop motion though even if with the use of dolls.

8. What do you do when you're not being creative?

I think being creative is something one cannot help but be. It shows in other areas of life if not strictly the arts. It is a way of living and thinking, live or die!.
Now if I am not making dolls, or films, I would certainly make something for my children to play with, or search for inspiration in the work of others.I love watching movies, read , and totally recreate myself at the contact of nature, so I love to go in the outdoors.
9. What 3 creative items would you take with you to a desert island?

Wool, one barbed needle felt needle and my foam board for comfort. I hardly really need anything else for my activity.

10. Tell us where we can find your work and your social media sites.
My dolls can be purchased through my etsy shop
Website and blog www.feltoohlala.com
Some of my dolls took residency in the city of Prague at the 7 design store on Misenska  street 7 in the Czech Republic.



Thank you for allowing me to share your beautiful dolls Laurence, they are stunning.

If you liked this post please follow my blog.

Thank you for reading and if you enjoyed this post you might also enjoy my post about Dorothe Zaukaite






Monday, 25 April 2016

Scrawlrbox - April



 
April Scrawlrbox Unboxing

I received my April Scrawlrbox today, I love receiving subscription boxes and Scrawlrbox is my newest (and favourite) one. The first one I had was the March box. For someone that loves anything creative and all the supplies that go with it, this box is perfect!
 

In each box you receive a piece of Art from a featured Artist, some supplies and some inspiration.

This month the Artist is Mina Petrovic AKA Mistiqarts

Mina has drawn Manga for many years and now teaches on her YouTube channel after having her own Manga school. I love the artwork in the box, it's brilliant to get some art every month.

 
So, down to the supplies! I was so impressed this month. The box costs £15 and if you're in the UK it is free postage. 

Every month there is a card in the box that tells you all about the supplies on one side and on the other there is some inspiration. It could be just a word e.g March's inspiration was 'Spontaneous' and this month in Mina's honour the inspiration is 'Manga Yourself'.


 
Supplies in the April box include:

 
A Koh-i-Noor 10H Pencil

A Sakura Pigma Micron Pen Brush in Black Archival Ink

A Sakura Gelly Roll Pen – White (one of favourite pens – love white gel pens)

Graphmaster set of 3 Black Permanent Black Liners in 0.4 – 0.6 & 1 nibs

Graphmaster – Alcohol Markers dual tip (fine and chisel tip) in:

Cool Grey 1, Cool Grey 4, Cool Grey 7 & Black

Graphmaster Dual Tip Colourless Blender

2 x Sheets of Paper

And a sweet!

 
How exciting is all of that, there was so much in there! Mina's artwork is a brilliant example of how to use the supplies. If you'd like to visit Mina's shop it is HERE on Society6 and her You Tube channel - Mistiqarts

If you'd like to find out more about Scrawlrbox, visit their website Scrawlrbox.uk and find them on Twitter @Scrawlrbox on Facebook HERE

Can't wait for next months box!