Dragons and Daffodils for St David's Day

A new month, a new Birth Month Flower – the Daffodil! 

And for once it seems just right – when I think of daffodils, I always think of March, although I took this photo in my garden way back in the middle of February!




But the Daffodil is very appropriate for March for another reason as well. 

March 1st is the Feast of St David, the patron saint of Wales and the Daffodil is  one of the national emblems of Wales. So it all slots together rather nicely.

St David's Day Daffodils Greeting Card (Welsh) by poshnpainterlycymru
 

I get the impression that St David’s Day is celebrated more enthusiastically in communities around the world that have a Welsh connection than it is here in Wales. The Los Angeles festivities certainly outdo anything I’ve come across here in Wales.

Here's what I spotted in the window of one of our charity shops -

And this is how St David's Day is celebrated in Los Angeles -

You can get more details
HERE

But I can only really speak for Abergavenny, which is so near the border with England that it’s full of English people like me. 

St David's Day, Welsh Costume, Our Home to Yours Cards by poshnpainterlycymru
 

And even here the younger schoolchildren wear the traditional Welsh costume to school on March 1st. Tesco had the outfits and other Welsh paraphernalia on sale well before Valentine’s day!

I’ve been working on a pattern of Welsh national emblems for my Posh and Painterly Cymru store. The daffodil, the leek, the harp and the dragon, as well as the little girl in Welsh dress.

I couldn’t help giving the dragon a bit of a cheeky expression and I hope this won’t be regarded as an irreverent depiction of one of the main Welsh symbols! I think I’m influenced by the fact that on the whole the Welsh have an enviable sense of humour!

I noticed it almost as soon as I moved here in 2002. I went to concert given by a Male Voice Choir – South Wales, especially the area known as 'The Valleys', is famous for its choirs. It was quite a solemn affair and some of the singing was extremely moving. 

So it took me aback somewhat when the interval arrived and the conductor of the choir morphed seamlessly into a hilarious stand-up comedian!

Bilingual St David's Day Dragon Greeting Card by poshnpainterlycymru

Around the same time, I heard on the BBC Wales news that the number of prescriptions for anti-depressants in Wales far exceeds that of the rest of the UK, per head of population. And suicide rates are also higher. So maybe that sense of humour hides a darker side to the Welsh personality.

But surely the daffodils are an antidote to the gloom! 

St David's Day Greeting Card: Cute Red Dragon by poshnpainterlycymru
 

It has certainly been one of the gloomiest winters I can remember even though I haven’t been much affected by the weather at first hand. It has been relatively mild, though I’ve worn a raincoat far more often than usual. 

But so many people have been far less lucky. Power cuts have been widespread and lengthy, some lasting throughout the Christmas period. A great many homes and businesses have been flooded, trees have been uprooted by the gales, causing fatalities and damage that will cost millions to repair.  

And it just seems to have gone on and on. 

St David's Day Daffodils Greeting Card by poshnpainterlycymru
 

So this year, more than any, I think, the daffodils will be welcomed wherever and whenever they appear!

Welsh Nursery Rhyme Book Illustration

Cover image by Robert Karr

Oes gafr eto? Oes heb ei godro

Ar y creigiau geirwon

Mae’r hen afr yn crwydro,

Gafr wen, wen, wen,

Ie finwen, finwen, finwen,

Foel gynffonwen, foel gynffonwen,

Ystlys wen a chynffon wen, wen, wen . . .

 I’ve never been a huge fan of facebook but it was the means by which I was invited, last Spring, to contribute an illustration to a book of Welsh Nursery Rhymes to be sold to raise funds for the St David’s Day celebrations in Los Angeles.

I've lived in Wales for just over ten years but I didn’t know that there were specifically Welsh Nursery Rhymes. Nor did I know that St David’s Day was celebrated in Los Angeles, although my overseas sales of St David’s Day greeting cards has suggested that March 1st is an important date in Welsh communities worldwide.

I chose a rhyme about goats, partly because of my brief but unforgettable experience of keeping goats when my children were young and partly because I had already been sketching goats for my ‘Chinese Year of the Goat’ greeting cards. But I think what actually decided me was that when I read the English translation, I knew instantly how I would approach the illustration.

“Is there another goat? Yes, not yet milked

On the rough rocks

The old goat is wandering

White goat

Yes,

Bald white tail, bald white tale,

White side and tail, white, white white.

And the second, third and fourth verses just substitute ‘red’, ‘black’ and ‘blue’ for ‘white’.

I challenged myself to make the coloured goats look reasonably natural by making the most of the lighting in the background landscape – eg one goat looks black because it’s silhouetted against the bright sunlight and another looks blue-ish in the shade of the tree. 

A soft pastel painting I had made previously of the Sugarloaf mountain, provided all that I needed by way of backdrop for my goats.

Which just left me with the question of what to do about the fact that the rhyme implied two people conversing. I decided on two elderly, rather Welsh-looking, country folk, possibly goatherds, although I had never been aware that goats were kept in Wales. I had thought of making their smocks a nice bright colour so that they would stand out from the background, but a google search identified that only creamy white smocks were worn in Wales.

So I was left with the decorative border to provide colour and what better than the bright red berries of the Rowan Tree or Mountain Ash, which grows plentifully in Wales! (Its Celtic name, ‘fid na ndruad’, means Wizard’s Tree.)

I had the drawing finished during the summer but, with the Surface Pattern course beginning at the end of August, it was a rush at the end to get my illustration painted in time for the December 1st deadline!

The launch will take place on Sunday, March 3rd

Click

HERE

for

DRAGONS & DAFFODILS,

St David's Day Greeting Cards & Gifts

(many with greetings in Welsh)

Daffodils 'snapped' in my garden in Wales on Feb 17th

Patchwork and Daffodils

The patchwork design I began last week has found its way onto a few products on Zazzle and I intend to create more from it this week.

Denim Patchwork Messenger Bag, Pinks, Blues by helikettle

As planned, I put the ‘blocks’ together on the Zazzle site but it was very slow-going! 

Making all the pieces exactly the same size on Zazzle was time-consuming so I had another try at fitting them together on my computer before uploading the whole piece, keeping my fingers crossed that I wouldn’t run out of memory. At one point I did get a message saying that Windows was increasing my memory and warning that some requests might be denied in the meantime, so I left it alone for a while and went off and did a few jobs around the house.

When I came back I was able to continue and this cushion has the larger pattern on one side and the smaller one on the reverse –

Denim Patchwork Pillow, Pinks, Blues by helikettle

This Ipad case is a good example of what I mentioned last week – I hadn’t anticipated that the pattern, when repeated, would turn out to have such a prominent 'slanted' effect!

Denim Patchwork iPad Case, Pinks, Blues by helikettle

Meanwhile, spring seems to have begun to arrive in my garden. And seeing buds on the daffodils, I felt a strong urge to paint some! The daffodil is the Birth Month Flower for March; it is also the traditional Welsh flower featured on St David’s Day cards, as well as Persian New Year cards.

So I decided that treating myself to a bunch of daffodils when I went shopping would be money well spent. But I was disappointed to find that the only ones left in the shops were the short, straight-stemmed kind with no leaves – really boring and not at all what I was looking for!

One of the things that I love about daffodils is the way they move, ‘tossing their heads in sprightly dance’, as Wordsworth wrote.  Somewhere I have a sketch from long ago of just a couple of long-stemmed daffodils, with their leaves and I remember that it was their ‘gesture’ that appealed to me and compelled me to draw them.

But the nearest I could find in town was a little pot of tiny daffodils – apparently I had left it too late for a bunch! -  so I bought it and began to draw them. I often draw flowers over and over from different angles before I paint them. It’s almost like 'getting to know' them so that when I come to paint, their shapes are really familiar to me.

The trouble with this particular pot of daffodils, the only one left in town, was that all the flowers were facing inwards! So I took a bit of ‘artistic licence’ and  moved the left-hand clump over to the right when I drew them, to make a much better composition.

I had hoped to try out my new water soluble crayons at last and I started out with some lovely blue sugar paper to give a bright sunshiny background. But the colours, dry, weren’t strong enough to show up on the blue background and the paper didn’t respond at all well to being made wet.

So I moved on to some watercolour paper. That worked better, but I felt that the effect of the crayons was too heavy for my ‘tossing their heads’ daffodils and I ended up painting them in ordinary, transparent watercolour, after drawing them with watercolour pencils.

I hadn’t wasted my time with these various experiments, though, as with each attempt, I became more familiar with the 'personalities' of my daffodils. My scanner didn’t do a particularly good job – the yellows came out too pale and the orange was a strident red. But I made some minor corrections digitally and I'm quite pleased with the multi-purpose end result –

 

 

One painting has formed the basis of several ranges of cards. But in case you're thinking that I've saved time by using one design for several occasions, these, with all their variations and their search engine-optimised titles, descriptions and keywords are going to take hours to upload! It will probably take me all week - at least!

But I also have an idea sketched out for a ‘Thank You’ card for the lovely staff at the Endoscopy Unit at Ysbyty Ystrad Fawr, who were so kind and went out of their way to make me feel as comfortable as it's possible to be with such an uncomfortable procedure, a couple of weeks ago. 

I can't wait to get started on it . . .

.

Doodling a Dragon

Now that I’ve taken down the Christmas decorations – and cleaned up after them! – and the Christmas cake is all eaten, it’s time to get back into ‘work mode’! I’ve made a new work plan and it includes, at some point, opening a new Welsh Language Zazzle store.

The emphasis is on ‘at some point’ as I have plenty of other, more urgent things to do. But my Naughty Pencil couldn’t resist doodling a little dragon for the new store’s banner.

I’m not sure yet whether to give my dragon teeth. And how can I make his face look less like a cow's? Just a couple of my immediate reactions on seeing my doodle on the computer screen. I’m very thankful for my computer because, when I scan in an image and see it on the screen, it often helps me to see things I want to change. So the finished dragon may be quite different in all sorts of small ways.

I hope to take my dragon to the next stage and paint it over the weekend – and it may even form the basis of a new St David’s Day greeting card.

Stay tuned . . . 

Time to make Christmas Cards to sell locally!

It really feels as if Spring is on the way today. The crocuses are out in the park and there are buds everywhere. But it wasn't just the sunshine that put a 'spring' in my step as I came back from town this morning; that was the result of a pretty successful meeting with the newsagent!

The good news is that 34 out of 50 of my red dragons have been sold in just over a week and the newsagent said that if I'd brought them in earlier, they'd have probably sold out. And the even better news is that he paid me for all 50 and has kept the ones that haven't sold yet, even though St David's Day was yesterday.

The slightly less good news is that he is already covered for Mothers' Day and St Patrick's Day so didn't want mine. He told me he works 10 months in advance so we agreed that I should take in my Christmas cards as soon as possible. Apparently anything with 'Abergavenny' on it or bi-lingual (Welsh/English) greetings sells well.

So my next job will be to add the appropriate text to some of my Christmas cards and perhaps to make cards from some of the photos of Abergavenny in the snow that I took in January. This one, for instance,  is a recognisable location in town, with the recently restored tithe barn on the left and the Blorenge in the background - and, by chance, a good space for some Christmas Greetings down at the bottom!

It feels a bit odd to be doing that now that the snow seems to have finally left us, but that's the way it works!

As for the Mother's Day cards I'd made - I only made a couple of each and I'll try my luck at the coffee shop after the Wednesday walk.

                                                                                                                                                                   
Greeting Card Universe seem to be taking about a week to approve cards at the moment but hopefully more like this one will be appearing in my online store any day now!

Red Dragons for Sale!

I'll be keeping this relatively short and sweet today, the reason being that I've just devised and sent out an online survey to all my UK 'contacts' to try to establish some facts about our card-buying habits here in the UK (It's looking interesting so far so I'll post the results when they're all in!). And a great many of these 'contacts' are friends I haven't been in touch with for a while; so they've written back with all their news (and in some cases, useful advice about card-selling!) so I'll probably need the rest of today to reply to them all!

Everyone seems to be complaining about our weather! In fact, it's difficult to think of a winter when the snowy stuff has gone on for as long as it has this year. Yesterday was dark, cold and whitish stuff kept falling from the sky but it didn't settle so we had all the downsides without the benefit of lovely 'snowscenes'. Not that I mind at all when I'm stuck indoors working, but I was glad of a fine break in the weather this morning for our Wednesday walk with 'Let's Walk Cymru' and on the way home I took a detour to the newsagents where my dragons are for sale.

The shop was too busy to ask how they were going but, judging from the gaps in the displays, it seems as if at least some of them have been sold.

In the coffee shop after the walk, I happened to be sitting facing an area of shelving where a watercolour painting of a local scene and a small basket of, I think, handmade cards were displayed for sale. So I'm thinking that this might be another possible local outlet for my cards. One of my fellow-walkers warned me that the trouble with trying to sell my cards in Abergavenny is that there are so many artists in the area. True, it is an 'arty' sort of place but luckily, I know, from previous experience that this can actually be an advantage. 'Birds of a feather flocking together' can apply to the way a particular location can earn a reputation for being the best place to find a particular item. After all, nearby world-famous Hay-on-Wye , with its population of just 1500, has about 30 bookshops and I doubt whether anyone would warn that it was therefore a difficult place to sell books!

In my questionnaire there are a couple of questions about what people would expect to pay for a greeting card and, as I was leaving the coffee shop, it occurred to me that people who think that £1.50 is a lot to pay for a card, are quite happy to pay £2 or more for a cup of coffee that they may well hardly notice they are drinking if they're engrossed in a conversation! Food for thought there, I think, and it raises the whole question of pricing not only greeting cards but art in general. More on that another time....

It's now bucketing with the sleety stuff again so I shall settle down to my emails and think myself lucky that I don't have to go out to post them!

A whole bunch of flowers!

 

For some reason that I can't explain, I seem to be almost addicted to the weather forecast! I think my fascination may have sprung from learning about the British Climate, and its main characteristic, 'variability', in A-level geography - I don't know, but even if I'm too busy to watch The News, I always make sure to catch the weather forecast! And I have three weather website icons on my desktop, which I check regularly! I was particularly keen to know what today's weather would be because I'd had a slight problem with my drains yesterday and a neighbour had kindly agreed to come round and 'rod' them for me this morning!

'Wintry showers', sleet, hail and snow were all forecast - but in fact I wasn't too worried. For once, I didn't believe the forecasts. It's the nearest Saturday to my eldest daughter's birthday and, beginning on the day after she was born, we always had lovely spring-like weather for her birthday party that enabled us to let the little 'guests' out into the garden to let off some steam. Year after year the same thing happens, Spring seems to arrive suddenly on the Saturday nearest 17th February and today was no exception. It was probably the first time I'd really looked at my back garden for a while - and there were several little clumps of crocuses 'smiling at me'!

I'm no great photographer, though I do take a lot of photos. I'm not in the least bit worried about definition - I'll leave that to the real photographers - because I mainly take photos for references for paintings, a kind of modern-day sketchbook. In fact I sometimes think that a slightly out of focus photo enables me to really see what I want to paint...that's my excuse, anyway!

Last time I wrote I suggested that floral designs are generally acceptable for most occasions for most women and throughout the spring and summer, I pop out to my tiny garden with my camera whenever something catches my eye and paintings often follow. I've tried painting the real thing instead of using photos but it gets very hot in my attic and the flowers tend to wilt even sooner than I do, even though I paint very fast.

The greeting card publishers, Phoenix Trading, in their Advice for Artists, rank 'flowers' fourth in their list of popular subject matter for greeting cards, behind Fairies, Football and Animals (mostly cats and dogs). I know I am always pleased to receive floral greeting cards, particularly in the winter months when there are fewer flowers in the garden to enjoy. Most of my friends have similar tastes - and yet, so far, I have sold very few flower cards online, in spite of there being plenty to choose from.

On offer in my Greeting Card Universe 'store' are flowers in soft pastel -

 

- I am rather attached to this one and have refused to sell the original, partly because it was one of the better things to come out of a very disapppointing family holiday on the Burgundy Canal. But also, it was one of two of my pastel paintings that were accepted by the Bath Society of Artists for their Summer Exhibition a few years ago, as a non-member entry.

That was quite a big event for me! When the anxiously awaited postcard dropped through my letter-box, informing me whether or not my paintings had been accepted, I was totally mystified because it just had 'RESERVED' stamped across it. Having no idea whether this meant that my work had been accepted or whether it was on some sort of 'reserve' list, I phoned a friend in the Bath area to see whether he had any idea what it meant. Like me, he thought it might possibly mean that it had been accepted but didn't want me to 'count my chickens...' so I plucked up my courage and phoned the gallery, who confirmed that my paintings had indeed both been accepted. So, that is a painting I have hanging where I frequently walk past it to restore my confidence in the inevitable moments of self-doubt. However, as a greeting card, or a print, I am more than willing to part with it and it can be bought through Red Bubble.

I have also painted flowers from my garden in oil pastels and made them into greeting cards -

 

and in watercolours - 

This is my latest floral design -

 

I didn't have any hyacinths for reference so I painted it this week from memory as I'm very fond of them and grow them in pots for indoors, in spite of the fact that I seem to be sensitive to them - my favourites, the white ones, actually give me a headache and make my glands swell!

On Zazzle, my flowers have graced mugs, aprons, mousepads, bags and more! Compliments keep appearing on my store wall and products featuring my flower paintings seem to be popular amongst other artists. As I mentioned, my screenprinted Sweet Pea bookmark won a Today's Best Award. But so far not one of my floral designs has been sold. I'm beginning to think that the reason may not be so much to do with my 'products' as with the fact that I am getting relatively few visits to my 'store'. A few days ago I discovered how to make my store statistics visible and learned that my daily total of visits is generally in single figures, whereas other stores clock up double and treble figures daily. Judging by the number of comments and messages on my store walls, I would imagine that most of the visits I do get are from other artists or store owners, rather than from potential customers.

I'm at a loss to know what to do about this! I blog, I update my facebook fanpage regularly and I've made a webpage of all the addresses of my online stores, complete with 'flash panels', to email to friends and other contacts. I also check the Zazzle forums daily so as not to miss any opportunity to have my products promoted on Squidoo Lenses and so on. I'm not sure what more I could do.

Maybe it's a question of being patient and giving it time?

On the other hand, I have just printed out 50 assorted St David's Day dragons for sale in my local newsagents.

 

(This is the painted-paper collage version).

I approached the newsagent because he seems like a particularly patriotic Welshman and his shop is one of the few places to buy bi-lingual Christmas Cards here in Abergavenny. He seems keen on art, as long as he can see what it's meant to be - he has nothing but derision for most of what's on display in our local art gallery, selling for thousands of pounds!  When I was exhibiting my soft pastel paintings a while back, he was very willing to display posters for my exhibitions and he once embarrassed me dreadfully by introducing me to a shop full of customers as 'Mrs Monet' - but that was a while back and I don't think he recognised me. But even if he does remember, I think it's a small price to pay for getting some of my cards sold here in the UK. It will be interesting to see how they go - whatever happens, the newsagent is happy. The warehouse he gets his cards from had plenty of St Patrick's Day cards but none for St David's Day. So me turning up out of the blue with my samples made his day!

"Dw'in dy garu di"

We've had a light sprinkling of snow again today so I thought my oil pastel painting would be a welcome reminder that Spring is not far away - and, of course, the daffodil, along with its cousin, the leek, is one of the national symbols of Wales. You know for sure that you have crossed the border from England when you begin to see banks of daffodils growing all along the roadsides!

And I've just discovered that Valentine's Day has already been and gone in Wales! It was a couple of weeks ago, on January 25th - not that you would have noticed! But you can trust the Welsh not to follow the herd and in 2003, even Tesco sold greeting cards to celebrate the special day of the Welsh patron saint of lovers, St Dwynwen.

Even though I earn my living, in part, from the sale of greeting cards I have designed, I wouldn't wish us to adopt the American trend of having a greeting card for everything under the sun! St David's Day is fine by me though, especially as I'm very fond of daffodils and dragons!

I had great fun creating my collage dragon and using it to create 'T-shirts and badges as well as cards' on Zazzle. And the daffodils above are also available as a greeting card (for St David's Day or otherwise) too!