A Miscellany

Miscellany: A group or collection of different items; a mixture

Here is a mixture of some things that have been going on at our place, mostly to do with art and appreciating what is good, beautiful and true...

We've found some very helpful watercolour videos on YouTube and I've posted some of what Moozle's done below after she watched them. There are oodles of them by the same artist & I've made a playlist of the videos we used. There are various levels but a good one to start with would be this one:

The Fifth Day Sea Creatures by Christopher E. Wade is a welcome addition to the area of children's picture books that 'explores some of the diverse ocean life that God created in the Biblical account of the 5th day of creation.' What is unique about this book is the author's beautiful and painstaking  illustrations. He uses a pointillism technique along with watercolours which he demonstrates on his blog here.
A review of the book is here and there is another book on winged creatures coming...

The American artist Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986) isn't a well known artist here in Australia and I possibly would have passed her by if Moozle hadn't shown such an interest in painting flowers. We're using some of her paintings, including those below, for picture study for a few weeks in order for Moozle to take some time 'to see.'

'Nobody sees a flower - really - it is so small it takes time - we haven't time - and to see takes time, like having a friend takes time.' 

 Petunias, 1924

'When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it's your world for the moment. I want to give that world to someone else. Most people in the city rush around so, they have no time to look at a flower. I want them to see it whether they want to or not.'  

Autumn Leaves, Lake George, 1924

'I decided that if I could paint that flower in a huge scale, you could not ignore its beauty.'

The only book I could find on the artist was the children's book below by Mike Venezia, which was written for younger children but it has a good selection of her paintings and Venezia's books are always fun to read.

 

I feel like I've been doing this forever - 1 inch hexagons using the English paper piecing method.

Larger hexagons - one and a half inch - i.e. each edge is 1 inch long - using up scraps. I'll wait until I have a good hundred basted before I attempt to put them together. I'll use tones, light, medium, dark to work out how the pieces will fit together. Moozle is helping me with this.

I use these pre-cut templates