December/January W.I.P. and Thoughts on Friendship

Just before Christmas I spent a night in the Clinical Decisions Unit of our local hospital - nothing too serious but initially a bit of a mystery. 

And someone commented that the CDU is where they put people they don't know what to do with.

Which is exactly where, in my mind, I have consigned Finnegan the Fish for the time being, I'm afraid! I could, perhaps, make him into a Pisces birthday card for a start but I think he might benefit from some friends, when I find time - and that could result in a new repeating pattern.

It's not that I've been totally lacking in creativity since my last Work in Progress post. When I took down the Christmas decorations, I realised that I don't have a 'Winter' door decoration so I hastily used the Honeysuckle from my garden to make a little wreath and decorated it with Ivy (also from the garden), some artificial berries and fir cones, a burlap bow I happened to have found in a sale before Christmas and a robin that I've had for years. It's a bit 'rustic' (aka 'rough and ready') but I feel that's somehow appropriate for a Winter wreath to distinguish it from the more festive Christmas door decorations.

I've also been planning birthday cards for three of my family who have birthdays in the next few weeks, starting with one of my grandsons who will turn 15 at the end of January. Always hard to think of something appropriate for teenage boys and I'm wondering whether something with fifteen elephants might work. 

With that in mind, I've been using photos from Google Images as models for drawing as I don't know any real-life elephants, let alone any who are prepared to pose for a portrait.

I'm very fond of all elephants and made 'Heffalump' birthday cards for my family when I was in my teens.
But I particularly love the expression of the one in the bottom left corner !

In between times I've been busy using existing designs to create more gifts for Valentine's Day and St David's Day, for sale in my Zazzle stores.

Zazzle introduce new products most weeks and it's hard to keep up with them all. So it's time to do some catching up to fill the gaps -

Nesting Mugs from my Hearts and Roses Collection

Daisy Chain Hearts Pouf from my Daisy Chains Collection

Welsh Emblems iPhone 6 Plus Case from Posh & Painterly Cymru

Blue Faux Welsh Tapestry Hip Flask to Personalize from my Posh & Painterly Cymru store

During 2014, I noticed that by far the most frequently re-pinned 'pin' from all of my Pinterest boards is a quote about friendship. 

And that's made me think a lot about the concept of friendship for a while; how do we define friendship, especially since facebook widened the definition of 'friends'? What do we expect of a good friend? 

And so on . . .

So I've decided to try to fit in making some illustrated quotes about Friendship of my own. I've begun working on one that has been floating around at the back of my mind for a while. I hope to have it finished to post on the social media later in the week.

There are plenty of 'Friendship' quotes to be found on the internet. But it would be good to have some new, more personalised ones. So I'd also love to hear how you would finish the sentence:

"A good friend is someone who . . . "

(Answers in the Comments of this blog or on facebook/G+/Linkedin/twitter, if you prefer - thank you)

Guest watercolour artist and teacher, Michele Webber, answers the question: Can Art be Taught?

Prompted by a small email discussion with Judy, I thought I would talk about something  I am often asked. I have been teaching classes for several years now. I have taught toddlers, teenagers, adults, the middle aged, the very elderly and the disabled. People from every type of background and profession, ranging from people who are pretty competent with a paintbrush to people who haven't painted since school.

And they all ask the same thing: "is it just natural talent, or can I learn it?" I must admit, I used to think that it was only about talent; art always came easily to me. But years of teaching has made me profoundly change my mind. Of course some people are more talented than others, but that goes for lots of things, like driving or cooking or operating computers. I have never taught anyone who did not improve, and some made remarkable strides that surprised themselves as much as me. It is very personal; some people progress slowly, others fast, some find talent in detail, others in bold abstraction. Some people can paint portraits, but struggle with landscapes; others paint fabulous landscapes but have trouble with still life.

I have been moderately successful with teaching as I decided at the start my main rule would be guide, don't preach. The best art teachers work with what they have. You cannot make someone who is bold and painterly produce detailed botanical work. Nor can you get someone who is precise to paint splashy abstracts. Sure you can challenge them and give them a little push in a new direction, but style is inherent, like genetics, and finding their own style is what will make them happy. That's without even mentioning physical challenges of different glasses prescriptions, shaky hands, or the very common colour blindness (four times as prevalent in men as women!)

And really, is it all about the result? I have seen disabled teens struggle for days to produce something recognisable; but their pride and happiness makes the work priceless to them. I have seen the relaxation and companionship of a painting class help people through divorce and depression. And I have seen the elderly given a new lease of life by having soemthing to do that doesn't require youth and vigour.

But perhaps the best thing about learning to paint is that it teaches you to look at the world in far greater detail than before. Time and again students have told me how they suddenly notice colours and shapes in everyday objects that before would have been invisible to them. The world is fast and hectic, and art forces us to look closely at nature, to be really involved in the world around us instead of just rushing through with mobile phone in one hand and cappuccino in the other. And that may be far more valuable than producing a good picture.

So yes, I say art can, and definitely should be taught.

Thank you to Judy for kindly allowing me to contribute to her blog this week.

You can browse - and buy! - Michele's wonderful collection of cards and gifts with a 'Southwold' theme at her Zazzle store.

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!

"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!

Card for an absent Valentine

Just two weeks to go until Valentine's Day - and I think I've had enough of it already. I can fully understand why there is a growing market for 'anti-Valentine's Day' cards! The whole thing is getting a bit out of hand.

The sending of 'Valentines' - decorative little notes - began in Britain in the 19th Century and was a convenient way for a bashful young man to put his feelings into words without having to actually think what to say! By 1847, Esther Howlan had built up a little home-based business, selling her handmade Valentines in Worcester, Massachusetts.

Things have come a long way since those days, with Valentine's cards available for everyone under the sun - 'for my daughter', 'for my teacher'.....'from your dog'! I presume the idea is to make sure that nobody feels left out, but I can't honestly imagine that receiving a Valentine's card from one's furry friend would exactly boost one's self-espeem!

I'm afraid you won't find any such deviations from the original intention of 'Valentines' among my collection at Zazzle, though I have gone so far as to design a card (above) especially for a Valentine who is absent - for whatever reason!

The inside is left blank for your own message - if you're feeling poetic, 'missing you' would at least rhyme with 'sad and blue'.

At Greeting Card Universe, it already has a message inside - though, as ever, customers can easily change or delete the inside message if they wish.

Romance alive and kicking in 12th Century Bavaria!

Christmas doesn't seem all that long ago and yet the shops have already well and truly moved on to the next excuse to separate us from our cash. It's not just cards - there's everything you need to properly celebrate St Valentine's Day, from overpriced, over-packaged confectionery to naughty knickers!

Whatever would St Valentine make of it all? Though, to be more accurate, I should have said, what would the many Christian martyrs who shared that name, think of the way we celebrate their feast day in the twenty first century? In fact the link between the various St Valentines and the February 14th 'holiday' is lost in the mists of time, if it ever existed at all, so they probably wouldn't have a view on it at all.

It's more likely that the idea of a special day for celebrating romantic love stemmed from the Middle Ages, and that Chaucer happened to mention someone called 'Valentine' in that context. Chaucer was writing towards the end of the Middle Ages, a time when the tradition of 'courtly love' and chivalry was at its height, especially among the poets of that time.

The picture above belongs to a collection of poems about courtly love, by mediaeval Bavarian, Austrian and Swiss poets, known as the 'Minnesang, which simply means 'love song'. Wouldn't it make a classy Valentine's card! Or how about this one? or this one?

I still think the one above is the best of all - a treasured postcard I bought when I was au-pairing in Germany in between leaving school and going to universtity (where I promptly gave up French to go into more depth with German, mostly mediaeval - probably for no better reason than that I was so entranced by the colourful paintings of the period!)

Little has survived of the music to which these poems were set but here is one of the poems -

Dû bist mîn, ich bin dîn:
des solt dû gewis sîn.
dû bist beslozzen
in mînem herzen:
verlorn ist das slüzzelin:

dû muost immer drinne sîn.

and its English translation -

You are mine, I am thine;
Of that you can be sure.
You are locked up
In my heart;
Lost is the little key:
You must be in there forever.

Wouldn't that be a touching 'verse' for a Valentine's card - not at all sure who has the copyright though! I rather doubt whether our modern-day equivalents will still be around 1,000 years later but in the meantime, we do our best!

A selection of handpainted Valentine's cards is available from my Greeting Card Universe Store and you can use the on-site search box to see the collection of Valentine's gifts I have created for my Zazzle store, many of which can be seen in the flash panel at the bottom of this page.