Tea and Poetry

'Tea and Poetry' was a specific SubVerse passivity; an extremely mild alternative to an activity. It was an interesting idea based on the notion that certain flavours of tea were well suited to certain flavours of poetry. These are the combinations I came up with.

 

Star Heart Virtues

While working on my virtue project I came up with six Star Heart Virtues inspired by the words and concepts I was dealing with. I have based a collection of cards and dolls on them. Joy is represented by a pink rose, Faith an orange cross, Grace a yellow book, Hope a green leaf, Peace a blue bird and Love a purple heart.

Boy Toys with Manly Virtues

After drawing my three virtuous girls with blonde, brown and auburn hair, I thought I would do a complementary project for the boys. Of course virtues are for everyone, but I did a little research and came up with three 'manly' virtues that were also contemporary boys names; Loyal, Valliant and Earnest. I made the boy dolls before I worked on the pictures which are inspired by three contempoarary heroes; Jacob from Twilight, Ron from Harry Potter and Peeta from The Hunger Games. 

Scenes from a Childhood

These 'scenes' were collected when I went through all my old creative work and found a selection of pre-teen stuff that I quite liked. I wasn't sure what would stand up on its own, but thought I could turn my ideas into attractive digital collages using Paint Shop Pro. The first collage has a spring feel to it and the second collage is more Autumn orientated. Below is a more integrated, illustrated version of my childhood poem 'Out of the Door'.

Digital Collage

I have long been a fan of retro and vintage digital collage and recently started to create my own digital collages. I had a feeling that although they have an 'easy' feel about them they would prove to be more difficult to do in practice and this has been the case. However I do feel I am beginning to get the hang of them. There are some good on-line tutorials about creating them and I have a board devoted to my own digital collages on Pinterest.

The Feminine Virtues

I drew an A3 picture of a blonde, a brunette and a red head ages ago, when I was a teenager. I recently thought of developing the girls a bit more and started to think about what virtues they might represent. These are the virtues I think best suit them, the brunette is Modesty, the blonde is Kindness and the red-head is Patience, I've called them the feminine virtues.

Destination Deep Space

The illustrated poem, Destination Deep Space, developed out of a collection of leaflets I designed to advertise an art show I organised in 2005. The words and pictures are amalgamated from and inspired by different sci-fi movie posters of the 1950s. I loved films like 'The man with X-Ray eyes' and 'The incredible shrinking man', when I was growing up and loved reacquainting myself with them when developing the art show's promotional material. Although those two films don't feature in my poem or pictures, other wonderfully titled films, like 'The land that time forgot' and 'The day the earth stood still', do.

Fur, Fin and Feather

These three pictures represent the creatures of the forest, the fish of the sea and the birds of the air. They illustrate three of my songs 'Primitives', 'Our Watery World' and 'Phoenix'. I painted the forest and the ocean pictures ages ago, before my daughter was born. I had more trouble coming up with a picture for 'the birds of the air' and finally settled on a digital collage.