Stonemaiden

Rapunzel

2010-05-07T15:35:00.000-07:00

Good evening my dears,

Well, tonight, I thought I'd show you something else from a few years ago. This is a bit of a follow up to the previous post on Ashputtel, as this piece also came out of my lifelong fascination with fairy tales.... and also with hair!! I love hair, it's textures and colours.... and I really love long, rather wild hair.... so, when I've made models like this, the hair has always been really important. Mostly I've used synthetic stuff, ( Rapunzel's is a weird mixture of clay, and synthetic hair) but occasionally, kind friends have donated their own hair for artwork! ~ which is amazing, and really adds an extra dimension to a piece ~ although some people find it a bit creepy, I love it! The books in these photos, belonged to my dad, and I took the photos, not very long after he died, in 2005. My dad was a librarian, and a great collector of books, and his love of books was something he passed on to me, and my brothers. The copy of Peter Pan And Wendy that you can see, is a first edition, and very rare with the original dust jacket, like this .... but it's much more important to me because I vividy remember him reading it to me, as a wee girl, and I always loved the illustrations, by Mabel Lucie Atwell.

Ashputtel ~ the whole story!

2010-05-05T08:47:00.000-07:00

Sweet greetings, fair friends! ~ and welcome, to my first proper blog entry.

So, I thought I'd start with something from the vaults, which I've never shown in full before. This is my picture book submission for Ashputtel. It's the original Grimm brothers version of the Cinderella story. It's also my first big illustration project, and very much a cross-over piece from my previous "fine-art" work .... which sort of means that I didn't really know what I was doing, it was all new, and I tried a bunch of crazy experiments!! ~ I'd never go about it the same way now, and I think, in retrospect, that my approach was a bit mental! but interesting, nonetheless... I did four finished double page spreads (the colour pieces) and the rest of the book, as roughs....Anyway, I now present, for the first time, the whole story, page by page. Are you sitting comfortably? ... then I'll begin....

(if the text is too wee to read, click on individual images for really big versions. x)

Dipping my toe in the Blogosphere Sea!

2010-04-13T07:06:00.000-07:00

Greetings to any wanderers astray in the silvery Cyber-sphere, who may stumble across this!

I'm setting this up, to share my artwork, and a bit of what inspires me, and anything interesting I may be up to. It'll probably take me a wee while to suss out using blogger, but I hope to have some nice pics for you soon. .... hooray! ~ I shall now consider myself launched!