Just for a change - Fairies!

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Mugs, Mousepads & More

Pink Fairy Party Invitation by helikettle

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Tree Paintings #8 - Pen-y-fal again

A different view of the trees I posted yesterday - and, judging by the light, later in the afternoon.

I think one of the things that attracts me to painting trees, in spite of my reservations about using too much green in my paintings, is the colour of the treetrunks.

When I was about 9 years old, I had my first male class teacher, which we all saw as quite an event! But there is only one thing I remember from the whole of that year in Mr D's class; it's an 'art' lesson where we were informed that we should not colour the trunks of trees brown. In fact we were offered a shilling - about the equivalent of a week's pocket money - if we could find a tree with a brown trunk.

Looking out now at my apple and pear trees, they do indeed have dark brown trunks and branches but I'm afraid it's too late to claim my shilling!

Tree paintings #7 - Pen-y-fal

 

Just a few minutes walk from my home is a winding and overgrown path along the bank of the little Gavenny (Y fenni) River, which flows into the River Usk in Castle Meadows, giving the town its name (Aber = mouth of, Gavenny = the name of the river). Soon after I took the photo for this painting, someone came and cut back the greenery and spread grey chippings on the path so I was glad I'd grabbed the opportunity before that happened!

There's a picturesque wooden bridge over the river which leads to ......a huge estate of houses about ten years old! They are built on land that belonged to an old hospital, known as Pen-y-fal, and parts of the old buildings have been made into apartments.

But just before the houses begin, there's a very small area that's been left untouched because it was a graveyard for the hospital. And that's where these two trees caught my eye and begged me to paint them! 

They remind me of a couple of young ballet dancers, arms outstretched and their feet in 5th position - what do you think?

Tree paintings #6 Goytre Wharf, nr Abergavenny

 

One of my favourite places to take visitors is the Brecon and Monmouth Canal at Goytre Wharf, just outside Abergavenny. 

There's a restaurant, a little museum and gift shop and sometimes there are special events for children laid on, with such treats as pond-dipping! But I just love to walk along the towpath where the boats are moored up and I've done several soft pastel paintings of the canal and the boats.

I was there with a friend one very hot August afternoon and it was wonderfully cool on the towpath but there's also a small area of woodland (above) between the main road and the canal, also very pleasantly shady on a swelteringly hot day!

I don't normally much like using a lot of green in my paintings so I don't know what happened in the painting of the towpath below but it's actually one of my favourites. It obviously also appealed to a man who worked for the Waterways and he bought the original at my first exhibition, in spite of the high price I put on it, and later ordered a print of it for a colleague's leaving present.

Brecon & Monmouth Canal Print/Poster. by helikettle

A question of style...

When it comes to style, greeting cards are probably as much subject to fashion trends as anything else. So anyone involved in designing with the hope of making money from it, probably wonders whether their sales would increase if they made a conscious effort to keep up with the current fashions in design.  

Many articles and blog posts would advise us that anticipating trends is essential. But is it?

Early last year I came across a florist’s shop in town that I hadn’t previously noticed so, as I had some of my floral cards with me, I decided to go in and ask the shopkeeper whether she would be interested in selling my greeting cards, based on the assumption that occasions that call for flowers nearly always also call for a greeting card. The florist pointed to a range of cards in a rack along the back wall and politely told me that they stuck to this one range of cards.

I should have known! The cards were pretty in a very pink and feminine kind of way - just a few lines and lots of flitter - and so was the shop! The style of the whole enterprise was cohesively ‘contemporary’, from shop-fittings to the florist’s overall  – a style I remember from my teenage years and didn’t much like at the time, and now like even less as it makes me feel so old that I remember it from the first time around! My rather heavy-handed oil pastel flowers (right) in particular, would have looked utterly out of place in such an environment. But that is a style that is fashionable at the moment and as far as I know, the shop is doing well.

So should I have gone home and tried to design something in that style? 

I might have done if it hadn’t been that a few months previously, I had watched an interview on our local news with a company in Cwmbran who specialise in making Christmas decorations – all the year round! The message I took away from that interview was that the fashion in Christmas decorations for the coming year was called ‘Gilver’ – gold and silver on a black background. So I designed some Christmas cards in that style, even though it wasn’t a combination I would ever have considered using if I hadn’t seen the interview. Some of them sold, but I can’t honestly say they were any more successful than my other designs. That Christmas I noticed that only 2 out of about 60 Christmas cards that I received reflected this fashion for ‘Gilver’.

 

Maybe there are two equally valid ways to go?

Maybe we could design for the younger end of the market, the demographic group that is likely to be far more concerned with keeping up with the latest fashions? Or, alternatively, we could recognise that it’s possible to be ‘stylish’ without necessarily being ‘fashionable’ and stick with our own natural style?

"You do not create a style. You work, and develop yourself; your style is an emanation from your own being." Katherine Anne Porter

Some years ago I attended series of fascinating lectures at the Victoria & Albert Museum by well-known designers of the time. I’ve forgotten almost everything I learnt there – apart from one thing! One of the lecturers – I think it was Charles Jencks -  began his lecture with the questions, ‘What is ‘style’? and surprised us, earnest students that we were, with the answer, ‘Style is whatever I, and my friends, like’.

People are different! Many follow the rapidly moving cycles of fashion but just as many know what style they like and choose it, whether it is the ‘fashionable’ one or not! So we can choose which of these groups to target.

But if we choose to stick to our own ‘style’, disregarding fashion, we need to recognise the ‘niche’  market where we are likely find sales and not expect to sell in great numbers to anybody and everybody!

Quentin Blake has never been bothered by fashion – he continues to do what he has always done best, what he has become known for. I could say the same for Greeting Card Universe artists Carole Barkett, Chris Fothergill and Diana Ting Delosh, among many others. They have their own ‘style’ and their work appeals to people who enjoy that style and/or subject matter, regardless of the changing fashions.

It’s simply a case of realising the importance of finding your niche market. I have discovered that my style is mostly suited to the older age groups, which is hardly a surprise, given that I’m no spring chicken myself! So I will bear that in mind when deciding which outlets to approach. My foray into the florist’s shop now seems decidely naive and I won’t make a mistake like that again!

I’ve read that ‘insects’ are going to be all the rage this Spring so maybe a few will creep into my designs if it seems appropriate. But if they do appear, they will be in one of my own styles!

I am enormously thankful for the diversity of artists’personal styles. Just imagine how boring it would be if everyone followed the fashion trends!

Tree paintings #5 Black Mountains Forest, nr Abergavenny

 

This is one of my few rather dark and gloomy tree paintings. It's part of the same forest that covers the steep-sided valley that I described yesterday and on the map it's called the Mynydd Du Forest - the Black Mountain Forest and it certainly does look pitch black as you enter it.

But we always refer to it as the 'Where's my Teddy Woods' ever since my toddler grandson kept looking up at the trees and repeating 'Where's my Teddy?' We eventually twigged that one of his favourite bedtime stories was called 'Where's my Teddy?' and that there is a somewhat similar wood somehow involved in the story! Such is the impact of the illustrations in children's picture books!

More recently my son and I went for a 'walk' up through the forest but it's very steep and slippery underfoot so when we came to a proper track that circled the mountain horizontally, I was much relieved and there were some stunning views where the trees cleared.

However, after a while we realised that the path was not leading us back down in a circle to my car, which was parked down by the river but in the opposite direction. I would have happily gone back by the way we came but that was too boring for my son and he set off straight down the mountainside with me following as best I could.

I was not dressed for this sort of adventure as we were planning to have lunch at the Skirrid Inn after our walk; it was very wet and slippery so I was also a bit worried about spraining an ankle and as my son isn't insured to drive my car and of course there is no mobile signal out there, that could have been tricky! But I survived, apart from travelling down some of the distance on my backside and having to make sure I kept my back to the wall at the inn because my best trousers were so muddy from the slide!

I've heard that the SAS train in that area but I've never spotted them. Perhaps they were hiding behind the trees. It's not hard to imagine!

Tree paintings #4 Black Mountains, nr Abergavenny

To the North and West of Abergavenny are the Black Mountains, of which Sugarloaf is a part and a short distance up the main road to Hereford, set back from the road at Llanvihangel Crucorney, is the Skirrid Inn, which claims to be the oldest inn in Wales, formerly used as a courthouse, complete with the beam from which miscreants were hanged – and haunted!

When I first lived in Hereford, about 25 miles from Abergavenny, my daughter and her family came to visit and I asked a neighbour's advice on places to visit during their stay. He recommended that we should cross the border, have lunch at the Skirrid Inn, and then drive down one of the many steep-sided valleys that run through the Black Mountains to a curve in the river where people picnic and even camp, and children can safely paddle in the fast-flowing stream.

So, after a memorable Sunday roast at the Skirrid Inn, we set off to find the picnic spot. The drive seemed endless because the road was very narrow and winding and the forested valley walls often made the road dark, almost like a tunnel . But eventually we found the tiny carpark, where paths led off into the forest and the painting above was the result.

My daughter wasn't keen to get her feet wet but I couldn’t resist and took off my shoes and took my little grandson for paddle, which he thoroughly enjoyed!