Cute Inspiration

Inspired by icons of cute such as Hello Kitty:



and Miffy:



plus the handmade cuteness of Etsy friends, and other cute things in my collection;



I am starting to move my work in a slightly new direction. Sort of a creepy-cute direction. Various cuteness seems to have been invading my studio lately, and the cute could not fail to invade my work too. And, being me, it comes with a creepy edge.

The creepy-cute invasion of my work begins with Evil Bunny. I'd say that his bark's worse than his bite, but rabbits don't bark.

Click the image below to see the listing:



Look out for more creatures coming soon! Here's a few designs I've been playing around with:



In the meantime, click below to check out the new Creatures section of my Etsy shop for bats, cats and more:

Firing my imagination

My latest piece, Fiery Heart, is so called because of the bright, tropical-coloured beads I've used in its creation.



Inspiration for the colours used in its design came from a magazine advert for paint. I thought that the combination of brights in the room set just looked so gorgeous together that I needed to use them in my work.





Its so colourful that I almost want to keep it for myself. I won't though - you can buy it now on Folksy - just click the image below:

Halloween in July part 2 - a beaded skull

Production of the Halloween range has begun, and one of the first pieces I've created is this beaded skull:



This piece is the result of a series of sketches, in which I was working out how to make the skull look right. In my designs, I often draw something out as a line drawing first to see whether it would work in wire, as the construction of my wire pieces is basically made up of a series of curved lines. I always drew skulls face-on, and, as a line drawing, that always made them look too monkey-like.





However, while watching Buffy (series 7, which has a hand walking up a skull in the title sequence),



I hit on the (now obvious-sounding) idea that the skull did not have to be symmetrical face-on image, but could be a side-on image instead.





Thus, this design was born - a simple line drawing in copper wire, adorned with glass beads. Click the image below to go to the listing:

An unlikely source of inspiration

A few days ago I took inspiration from an unlikely source - a Wallace & Gromit poster on my wall.



Much as I love them, they've never inspired me to paint before, but looking at the background of that image I had an idea.



I'd been looking for something different to paint, something other than the trees and sunsets. So this simple landscape was a solution to that.



It's not a huge departure from my usual style, but it's something a little different. And it's inspired quite a few works in progress.



As has this sketchbook piece, painted a few days before, which was also an attempt to do something different (this attempt to do something different still ended up in painting trees though, lol).





I'm now newly inspired to paint, after a bit of a dry spell. Which is no bad thing.

New Year, New Art

So what have I been up to since I last blogged? Working very hard for Acme Jewellery, mostly. But all work and no play makes Jen a dull girl, so I've had a few decent nights out too, including seeing Madness on the 12th Dec and Aladdin (a panto starring John Barrowman) on 20th Dec. Yayness! With them, plus Bill Bailey and Alice Cooper, I've had a busy winter :D

I started a new project in the Christmas holidays too. The actual paintings have nothing to do with this, but me starting to paint again was inspired by reading Anthony Keidis's autobiography. He described how he and the rest of the Chilis lived in a house while writing Blood Sugar Sex Magik, and that John would be painting in his room there. Just the word 'painting' made me want to paint stuff, so the next day I started off a new sketchbook of paintings, little ideas for future canvases.

The first page of the sketchbook is a version of this canvas (click the image for a little more about this piece):



Using that canvas as inspiration, I painted a similar scene in watercolours and acrylics:



I traced the outline of the tree onto a piece of acetate with a marker, then added to this using copper-coloured glass outliner. I cut a hole in the top of the plastic, then attached it to the rings of my sketchbook with black ribbon.







The next page. Painted in watercolours:



When I was in college, a few years ago, one of the things the tutors had us doing was drawing the negative space around a figure, rather than the figure itself. I've come back to this idea, painting the sky around the tree rather than the tree itself.

I'll have more of these soon, plus some canvases and Valentines cards based on them.