I’ve been away with the fairies for the last couple of weeks, well, I’ve been reading about some of the myths surrounding fairies, fay, fae, fair folk…. I started with Tolkien’s On Fairy Stories, which felt like a natural starting point, I then went on to read Tolkien’s Smith of Wootton Major for obvious reasons 🙂 and delved into Celtic Twilight by Yeats. They all pointed me in different directions but all had a common them in many respects, if time allows this week I’d say another reading of Faerie…
Read MoreCategory: Artistic
Code Name ‘deFender’
Back in the mists of time, okay forty odd years ago, some military genius said “what our troops really need to keep moral up on the battlefield is a good guitar so they can rattle off some good licks after battle.” So, the military hierarchy got round a table and decided that a bog standard electric guitar would be far too weak to survives being thrown into the back of tanks, used as clubs when guns jammed, and generally mistreated. After hours of head scratching, cursing, doodling on paper, checking…
Read MoreIt’s not just dribble, it’s pretentious dribble
Over the last couple of weeks we’ve visited a fair number of art galleries in Scotland and the North of England, and we have seen a great deal of great art. ‘Isabella and the Pot of Basil’ by William Holman Hunt for example (on display in the Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle) is something we could have spent hours looking at. When you look at Hunt’s Isabella you can see he has spent hours observing light, shadows, colours, shape, form, how light reflects off objects onto other objects… Hunt has then…
Read MoreA Hobbits Deco Pipe
This month over on the John Howe forum the theme of the month is Deco… ..adding beauty to function. While the functional aspect of the object remains, the representational side of ti is considered as an art form in itself. So I decided to paint a Hobbit’s pipe which had been carved with an ivy leaf pattern around the bowl.
Read MoreIt’s not just a book…
More on the ‘book’ theme for the John Howe forum, whilst I used The Lord of the Rings here it could apply to almost any book. It’s really not just about the book, it’s about what the book brings out of you or what it makes you feel.
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