Light as a feather

 Still playing around with feather designs...here's one I finished on my lunchbreak today and coloured digitally.  Might paint it these colours and turn it into a collage!

Interviewed

Just a note to say there's an interview with me up on the Auckland Fair blog which you can read here!   I'm hoping to bring some prints with crazy patterned feathers to the Fair this time and this is a design I've been playing around with... 

Save the date

I'm excited to announce I'll be having a stall at the next Auckland Fair, at its brand new location in Shed 10 down at the waterfront!

I'm working on some new prints to bring along to the Fair, hopefully the abstract feathers I've been staying up late to paint will work their way in there. Pencil it in and hope to see you there!

Slings and arrows

The last few nights I've been drawing some repetitive stylised feathers and playing round with colour combinations, painting them with watercolours.  Tonight's feathers are going to be pastel icecream colours I think!  

Close to home

Well I just got back from Sydney, but I don't have any photos of the lucky country as Mr. Millicent Crow is still in Australia with the camera.  So I thought I'd share some photos from a bit closer to home...these are the Manukau Harbour and Tasman Sea back in wintertime.  I'm working on some giant paintings of this area...well giant for me who loves to paint with a tiny brush!

Sardine dream

A fishy little drawing from my sketchbook...

Anemone

The dairy up the road from me has the best anemones.  I got a bunch of them and rushed to draw one before they dried up or the cat wrecked them by smooching them too much !

Taranaki adventuring

We spent last weekend in New Plymouth making a video for our newish band Mermaid and Mariner. A possible location was this surreal hilltop with a fountain, a carillon, an observatory and a fabulous mountain view, but we ended up making the video beside the mighty Tasman Sea.  You can watch it here!

And then we heard about a shipwreck in Oakura, so went to investigate that...

...and decided that we'd found the location for our next video!

Fished for my wish

Just a funny little drawing of a sardine that I did on my lunch break the other day.  Thinking I might turn it into a print or something.  "I fished for my wish" is what we used to say when we played "Go Fish" and got the card we were hoping for from the pickup pile...did you say that?

Featured

I'm lucky enough to be the featured seller on the Felt website this week and there's an interview with me here.  Felt are having a giveaway of some of my wares so if you'd like to enter, pop over to the Felt website and leave a comment after the interview.  Good luck!

Team effort

Mr Millicent Crow and I made this poster last week, for our show at the Inch Bar in Dunedin which is coming up soon.  Next week!  I drew the pictures and Sam put it all together.  Any Dunedin recommendations welcome, we're going to catch up with some old friends, have some nice coffee at Modaks, do a bit of op shopping (hopefully for some nice old woollen blankets), go to Tunnel Beach or maybe Seacliff, and marvel at the beautiful Victorian houses!

New in the Felt shop

Last weekend we had the wonderful, busy, Auckland Art and Craft Fair (more on that later), this weekend I am marooned on the couch with a sprained ankle, and taking advantage of having time at home to update my Felt shop.  So I've now got a bunch of my new prints that I had at the Fair in my Felt shop if you'd like to take a gander!  Including this tea rex, who I'm pleased to say got many giggles at the Fair!

Wish upon a star

I've been spending hours hunched over the computer colouring this typographical drawing (you can see it without colour here) and I think it's nearly ready to send off to the printers.  I've been working on my handwriting on another project too, a facebook banner for our new band, Mermaid and Mariner.  

I'll hopefully be bringing my new print along to the Auckland Art & Craft Fair this Saturday...fingers crossed that I can get it printed on time! I'm wondering what other wishing superstitions I could have added, do you have any?

Typographical solutions

 I've been working on a print based on all the things I superstitiously wish on, and I finished inking it this afternoon.  I was working on it in the cafe by my work the other day on my lunch break...when the waiter brought me my coffee he asked me if I was working on "typographical solutions."  Um, yes, I guess I am.  Sounds better than sitting around drawing!

Feathered

I finished painting my feather drawing the other night - I used watercolour and a bit of gouache.  The drawing's A3 so I'm thinking of having some printed as A3 prints...and I'll bring them along to my stall at the Auckland Art and Craft Fair.  I'm working on a hand-lettered print at the moment and then I think the next thing in my drawing queue is to draw a mermaid and mariner for my new band with Mr. Millicent Crow!  

Mitre Peak

 

When we were on tour in the South Island in February we were lucky enough to play in Milford Sound, be taken out into the sound on a boat and visit the very magical underwater fish observatory.  When we arrived there in the early evening the light was very magical and I snapped a fuzzy picture of Mitre Peak on my phone, to capture the colours.  I knew I wanted to turn it into a painting so the last couple of months I've been working on it, with half my bedroom floor covered in a drop cloth and strewn with paints.  And here it is hanging in our lounge:

You can see how very full of granny squares our couch is...at one stage we had so many granny square rugs we had to keep some of them in the car!

I'm having fun doing some landscape painting...I think next up will be one of the Manukau Heads!

Birds of paradise

I've been drawing some of my collection of feathers to make a new print for the Auckland Art and Craft Fair...and I had a little play with colouring them in Photoshop. I think for the print I'll colour them with watercolour.

In real life the feathers were a bit more drab than this...but I'd like to find a bird with feathers of all these colours!

Interviewed

There's an interview with me on the Auckland Art and Craft Fair blog today, which you can read here.

One of the questions we were asked was about our workspaces...at the moment my lounge is strewn with feathers as I've been working on drawing feathers for a new print to bring along to the Fair.  I've also got my sewing machine and overlocker out - I've been trialling a shift dress pattern to see if I want to make it in more elaborate fabric (turns out I do) and I've got a giant painting drying in my bedroom.  What a creative mess!

Manukau Heads

 I'm working on a giant painting of Mitre Peak at the moment, from when we went to Milford Sound on tour back in February.  And I've got another giant canvas sitting in my room, which made me think I should also do a giant painting of the Manukau heads.  So a couple of Sundays ago we took a drive out to the Otuataua stonefields to take a few reference photos and watch the sun go down.

 Such a beautiful and slightly eerie place.

There is an avocado orchard there that is part of the regional park and you can take five avocados per person.  Note to self to go back in avocado season!

Band craft

Since we started our band The Bitter Years, lots of my craft time seems to have been focused on band craft.  Lately I've been making ribbon bunting for stage decoration and flower crowns for human decoration.  

You can see us playing an old timey country song in our lounge here!

See you at the Fair!

I'm happy to announce that Millicent Crow will be at the next Auckland Art and Craft Fair, on the 28th of June in the Aotea Centre!  After some recent forays into making ribbon bunting for my band I'm hoping to have a ribbon bunting-decorated stall.  More info about the Fair is available on the Auckland Art and Craft Fair blog here.

The Bitter Years in Auckland

After traipsing round a whole lot of the country this summer our band has its first proper Auckland show this Friday night and I made us this poster.  We're playing in a beautiful historic church hall as part of the Auckland Folk Fortnight with Great North...expect banjos and flower crowns!

Green ribbons, tall mountains

 I've been experimenting with some new ribbons for my huia brooches and thought I'd try out some in my favourite colour, a mossy green (I have an embarrassing number of cardigans that colour).

 And I've been planning a painting of Mitre Peak, probably one of the most painted places in New Zealand, but after I visited Fiordland earlier in the year I thought I'd love to have a giant painting of it in my lounge.  I'm having a (legitimate) sick day off work with a cold, so I thought it was a good chance to steal some time and get started on it!

Crowns of glory

I had so much fun making flower crowns at Splore that I decided to make some for our band to wear.  We played up at the Coatesville Markets in the tail end of Cyclone Lusi on Sunday and it was good to have some red flowers to cheer up the grey day.  

 The dudes got flower brooches instead, which they wore with their Millicent Crow medals.

Posers

I'm tempted to wear my flower crown to work tomorrow!