May Art Club replay!
And a little life update - book launches and window painting
Hello to you all! I’m so sorry for the delay in reposting this! I'm in a busy period working on various new illustration projects at the same time - which is great - but the beginning time is when I am doing a lot of thinking, and I think it slows me down everywhere else!
What other news do I have? I went to my lovely friend
‘s book launch for her second book, Invisible Dogs, published by Rocket Bird Books last week. It was a fabulous launch - I even had some fluorescent freckles painted on my face by Ruby’s lovely daughter!It’s a superb book! I think children will love the concept of invisible dogs, and combined with Ruby’s gorgeous and stylish illustrations, it’s sure to be a hit! Congratulations Ruby!
In other news, I decided it was time to take down the painted window I did for Rewild the World at Bedtime on our front room window. I had never painted a window before, so I decided to practice on our window, as a few friends had recommended practising before doing the real thing. I’m so glad I did, it made the whole thing so much easier. We were getting some lovely shadows in the sunshine, and all the colours added such a nice jolly-ness to our living room.
But I was beginning to feel a bit embarrassed - what would the neighbours think? That I have a raging ego!? And also, it can’t stay there forever. And then I remembered the beautiful window that Cornelia Parker painted in the bathroom at Kettles Yard. I was always so taken with it, I love Cornelia Parker’s artwork, there’s something so gentle about it, and she weaves feelings, story and emotion into it so well.
Also, let me take this as a moment to say, if you’ve never been to Kettles Yard, it’s so worth a visit. It was originally the Cambridge home of Jim Ede , who was a curator at the Tate Gallery in the 1920s and his wife Helen. Jim was a passionate advocate for contemporary artists at the time, with whom he became friends, and he acquired many artworks of people who were emerging at the time and went on to become celebrated artists, like Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, Ben Nicholson, Winifred Nicholson, Alfred Wallis, Christopher Wood, to name but a few. They moved to Cambridge in 1956, and converted four small cottages into one house where they displayed lots of their collection. There’s something so special about it, partly, because it’s been preserved as they lived in it, and also because they had such a beautiful eye for curation and, for want of a better expression, interior design.
(can you spot
!)So, here is my Cornelia Parker window! I love it!
Ok, on with the replay! I decided it would be fun to paint cats for this Art Club, so we did warm ups, as usual, and I did a few exercises exploring different ways to look at and draw cats, and then I led us through an exercise painting these cats from a picture in my book Kittens of the Greek Isles (one of my charity shop books!)
It was a fun club, and I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to post the replay!
Recording and reference photo below for paid subscribers. And don’t forget, it’s Picture Book Club this Thursday!
Until next time!
Ella xx
P.S. Have I done a post about all the windows I painted? Are you interested in one?