Spring sunshine

Today in the garden.... glorious sunshine and a couple of daffodil thieves.

Cup of cheer

Here is a little snippet of a series of designs for stationery I'm working on at the moment. The writing at the bottom is a scan of my grandmother Ada's French lesson notebook I found in a box of dusty old books in the sleep-out. I hope she won't mind me using her school girl scribbles in my artwork!

Blue and white garden

At this time of year the garden is full of flowers, although the trees are still bare and wintry looking. Throughout the winter season I have planted some of my favourite spring and summer flowers - holly hocks, fox gloves, delphiniums and poppies. Hopefully they will survive the frequent and unwelcome  visitors to the garden - brush tail possums, wandering lambs and rabbits. The three escapee lambs from the paddock next door ate all of my just-about-to-flower ranunculus. Lamb stew anyone?

Here is a little corner of a textile design using flowers from my garden painted in water colours.

Anenomes

I planted these mixed colour anemone bulbs last year. I might have to make time for a bit of flower painting this week - I think these could be perfect subjects for a watercolour and coloured pencil textile design....

Vintage Butterflies

I love the 50's pastelle colours on this vintage Nestle 'Butterfly Caddy' chocolate tin. Perfect for summer colour inspiration!

Brightening the garden

 The showy flamingo-pink blooms of the flowering quince brighten up the cold winter days 

here in northern Victoria.

Silver Princess blossoms

 The Silver Princess Eucalyptus puts on a fantastic display during the colder months.

Japonica and peach blossom

My youngest brother is a Landscape Architect but is also my go-to man for any thing Adobe related, much to his chagrin. Here is a baby announcement he recently created for some friends, using my illustrations of japonica and peach blossom. 

Nice job Michael!

Lanna Lush

My finished pencil case design for the last assignment of 'Make Art that Sells' e-course. The brief was for a 'hyper-lush' design using your collections as a starting point. I'm not a huge collector of things in general (apart from Art & Design books and novelty erasers in my primary school years.....) but I do love a good fabric stash! This embroidered textile came from the Hmong Market in Chiang Mai.

Pink and Purple

 Another week in Lilla-land has sped by with an insight into the wonderful world of Wall Art. The brief was for an abstract piece of wall art (with lettering) in a colour combination determined by birth dates. Being a Pisces, I scored pink and purple. I finally got an excuse to dig into to my collection of sari fabrics gathered from a back-packing trip to India a few years ago. The joys of being a fabric hoarder......

'Papillons' and 'Home is where the Heart is'.

And my pesky cat.