Art for Kids

I had a pleasant surprise this morning. I often check the Etsy blog every day, but this last week RJH took a vacation and we've been taking some time to make sure we're prepared for the baby. He's done a huge amount of work building furniture, and we made some purchases. Somehow it seems more real, now that we have a car seat and stroller. Decorating and preparing the nursery is an on-going project, of course. So, this morning I was particularly interested to see the Etsy blog article Art Scouting: Picks for Kids thinking I could gather some more ideas. I love that cover shot and spent some time contemplating how the T.Rex image was made. I scrolled down and was delighted to see my own 'Sailing Ship IV' featured! It and another in the series are already packaged to go to the post office this morning, since they sold yesterday (though I didn't clue in that my print had been mentioned till this morning). I do love the idea that art for kids can serve as a starting point for bedtime stories. RJH has been advocating bold, simple works for babies and that maybe the multimedia work will be better a little later (once the baby's vision is more fully developped.... after all, they can barely focus more than a foot away when they arrive). He might have a point, but I confess, I'm looking forward to the magic of imaginative bedtime story telling - and more complex art too!

There's still several ships in the series, by the way, and reproductions of a couple of the sold one of kind prints in the series are available too. There's some fabulous prints by fellow Printsy members; Cecca's Crocodile Tea Time has been in my favorites for a long time and I love Natalia the Winged Lion's prints as much as her imaginative handcrafted jewellery, as well as some artists who are new to me.

Two-Headed Turtles

I've had the image of a two-headed turtle, with a variously patterned shell, in my mind for some time. This week I've been making a series of linocut artwork on this subject.





This is a continuation of the series of linocuts embellished with all sorts of beautiful ephemera and Japanese papers. Some of the subjects are imaginary, some are real. The two-headed turtle is in the middle ground. While fantastical there are many examples of polycephaly (multiple-headedness) in turtles. In fact, just yesterday, AP reported on a two-headed turtle born at the San Antonion zoo named Thelma and Louise, an, um, improbably named Texas cooter. Like human conjoined twins, the two-headed turtles result from the failed separation of monozygotic twins. These animals often occur in mythology. The sections of its shell, and lily pads are printed on Japanese washi papers or on the pages of a suminagashi marbled vintage French book. Each multimedia artwork is one of a kind!

that deep blue, late afternoon sky

I'm really happy to have a proper place for my paper now. RJH found me an antique map cabinet, so I can store my large sheets of Japanese washi. I have smaller file folders for small pieces of washi (chiyogami, katazome-shi, unryu and so forth) and other papers. I also have some Thai and Nepali screenprinted and batik papers, some Chinese screenprinted papers, French and Italian patterned papers, a little bit of Brazilian marbled papers, and some beautiful paper I brought home from Amsterdam (whose provenance I don't know, since I don't read Dutch) and a collection of ephemera. This piece, for instance, uses vintage sheet music given to me, years ago, by Lady Redjeep and a bit of a vintage book illustration, which was part of a thoughtful welcome package by vintagepaperparade for 'A Spring Handmade Market' a couple of years ago.

Sailing ships

I had this idea to combine my extravagant collection of Japanese washi papers and assorted ephemera with block print, like I had done in my Unicorn Amongst Umbrellas series for a while. I based my ship block on a decorative drawing on a sixteenth century Dutch map. The sails are washi, a nautical chart, some vintage sheet music from Lady Redjeep and assorted things.