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.

Hearts and Flowers

'Hearts and Flowers' is the sentimental violin or piano tune played in old black and white films at moments full of pathos like when Charlie Chaplin's character is at his saddest and most downtrodden. I recently rediscovered the joy of working with felt, it is very forgiving as it doesn't fray and have only recently learnt basic crochet. I enjoyed making these felt hearts and crochet flowers, but can see that they could benefit from further development.

Craft Stall Coming in March

Over Christmas and New Year I have been working on various crafts for a spring charity morning on the 21st March at the Eastcote URC. The morning is in aid of the Macular Society. My dad suffered from macular degeneration in the last few years of his life, so this cause is close to my heart.

I have been creating new sleeping angels, more gadget pouches and overhauling my cards and books, as well as developing my Star Heart Dolls. It should prove to be a busy day as Amy is performing in a Stagecoach production of Annie in the afternoon.

In Concert

I was very pleased to take part in the NGhaSaid concert last October. It made me think of other times I have performed live sets, in music events around South East England. I used to perform my music live much more regularly than I have done in recent years.

I now mostly perform once a month at St. Mary's Church Informal Music Evening. I recently came across notes I'd written in the early nineties when I used to perform my songs about once a week at various folk clubs in and around London, on my own mostly but also with other people, other singers, a guitarist and a flautist.

I find performing in public, my music or anything else is a bit stressful, however if you do a good job and other people appreciate it, it can make you feel quite satisfied and pleased with yourself. These pictures showcase my music making on both sides of the millennium.

Beatle Dreams



 

I didn't know much about the Beatles until John Lennon died. After he died his music and the music of the Beatles, seemed to be everywhere. I was soon a big fan, falling in love with songs like A day in the life, Strawberry Fields Forever, Eleanor Rigby, Blackbird, Penny Lane, In my life, Tomorrow never knows, Here comes the sun, the list goes on and on. I won the 1984 Feltham Art competition with this  painting of the Beatles in their Sergeant Pepper outfits. Below is a picture of my small collection of Beatles' memorabilia.

 

 

These are two copies I painted of the 'Illustrated Beatles' lyrics 'You won't see me' and 'There's a place' and also a sketch I drew of John Lennon which I'm quite fond of.

 

  

 

 

 

In the cafe

Amy and I discovered the fun of animation after a visit to the Museum of Childhood in Bethnal Green in 2007 and having a go on the magic lantern, creating a mermaid swimming and a girl eating soup. I translated these moving images onto the computer using GIF animator and then put the images together using movie maker, adding my songs in the soundtrack. The mermaid swimming formed the basis of 'Gone Swimming' featuring 'River Child' and Amy's 'girl eating soup' features in the above short film 'In the Cafe' which is set to my song 'Island of Happiness'.

Twelve Days

A few years ago Amy and I became a little obsessed with the song 'The Twelve Days of Christmas'. Amy spent a few days working on various pictures depicting the twelve days. She ran out of steam a bit by the time she got to ten lords a leaping, eleven pipers piping and twelve drummers drumming, so the later days have been 'digitally enhanced' to increase the numbers. I spent some time working the pictures into a montage with the help of movie maker and a version of 'The Twelve Days of Christmas' I found on an old Marks and Spencer's Compilation CD. The resulting video can be found on my YouTube page. More recently I developed the pictures into a series of Christmas Cards.

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.

Gone Swimming

Ballet and swimming have been important activities while Amy has been growing up. When Amy was in primary school swimming pool parties were all the rage. 'Gone swimming' features pictures Amy drew inspired by swimming lessons and swimming parties and also pictures by Amy and me of mermaids and underwater scenes. 'River child' was written and recorded by me on my old tape recorder portastudio.

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.

Lorna's Reviews on GoodReads

 

 

I love reading and hate it when I don't know what to read next so I joined GoodReads on Friday morning for more ideas. I have so far rated 30 books, reviewed 16 books and have some ideas about what to read next. I don't think I'll be rating or reviewing many more books until I have caught up with the extra ideas I now have. Above are my two 'best book' shelves and below are twelve books I have thoroughly read and enjoyed which I have rated and reviewed on my page at GoodReads.

 

Halloween Party

The first version of Halloween Party went up on YouTube in 2008, it was set to Saint Saens' Danse Macabre and is still available on the LornaJHart channel. I was very pleased with the pictures drawn by Amy and me and with the animation and was very keen to use the ideas for one of my songs. It took me a while to work out an arrangement of the moving images for my Halloween song 'Scorpio Eyes', but I was pleased with the result when I finally got to grips with it.

AmiloFinn on Vimeo

AmiloFinn now has a channel on Vimeo at http://vimeo.com/amilofinn. I am hoping to put videos of ALF Creations books and DVDS on there, as shown in the picture below. I'm only allowed 500MB a week, so it's going to take some time.

Music Collection on Pinterest

 

 

I have recently been sorting out my music collection and have also been painting and drawing various pictures representing different artists, styles and genres. The two above represent Classical and Jazz, the Cellist is inspired by Jacqueline du Pre and Jazz is inspired by Ella Fitzgerald. There are ten pictures on the board at the moment.

 

You can find the board at http://www.pinterest.com/lornafinnigan/music-collection/

Concert for N-GHASaid

I had a really enjoyable evening, the night of the N-GHASaid concert on the 2nd October 2014. I hadn't been to the Northwick Park Hospital Social Club in years, it hadn't changed much and still has a traditional pub atmosphere. 

The proceedings got off to a slightly late start and then we were treated to a vocal and guitar duo, Charles on classical guitar and a poet, before it was my time to play my 'Music from the Movies' selection of piano pieces. Charles had bought his keyboard in for me to play and my piano teacher had suggested I purchase a universal sustain pedal, which would really enhance my performance. The pedal was a very good idea and I'm glad I made the detour via central London to get one. I was quite pleased with my performance and people said it sounded good, it would have really good if the keyboard had been touch sensitive and had one extra octave at the bottom.

After my tunes I was accompanied by my colleague, Kiran, and my daughter, Amy, who sang John Lennon's Imagine with me accompanying them on the keyboard. I was really pleased that my daughter had got up to sing, that was the highlight of my evening. After Imagine, we had Phillopino dancing interspersed with Kiran's Indian singing, both were excellent.

We had to go early as Amy had school in the morning, but my boss stayed on and won the raffle. In the morning I heard that we had managed to raise over £500 for the charity, so I was pleased with what we had achieved.

 

Passtimes Handmade Cards

The set of 'Passtimes' handmade cards came from a set of website designs I produced, which never made it onto the web. At the time I loved looking at old style web designs like 'Pat's Web Graphics' and 'Moyra's Web Jewels'. The passtimes designs are based on the popular hobbies of fishing, genealogy, book collecting, gardening, drama and wine making.

Music from the Movies

I have been practising hard for a concert next week in aid of the Northwick Park Hospital charity N-GHASaid. I am really getting into music from the movies at the moment and have compiled a mix of some of my favourite movie music on 8track. You can find it on my AmiloFinn 8Track channel at http://8tracks.com/amilofinn/music-from-the-movies

Lavender Matrouskas

Last year I became fascinated by the Matrouska doll design. I have found and been inspired by various Matrouska themed craft dolls around the web so decided to design and create some of my own. I had originally intended them to be quite a bit bigger, but found, in practice, that a small lavender matrouska is much more practical and pleasing.

Pictures at an Exhibition

'A little girl and her mother visit a magical art gallery where pictures come to life and take you on fabulous adventures. 'Pictures at an Exhibition' is inspired by the work of Modest Mussorgsky.'

I developed the 'Pictures at an Exhibition' idea into a short illustrated story and a DVD film which I sell on my craft stall. The pictures the little girl, Grace, visits, include a lot of stories and pictures by Amy and are divided into different coloured rooms as follows.

In the Blue Room: The Planets, The Puzzle, Gone Swimming

In the Green Room: The Tudors, The Legend of the Dream Box, Phoenix

In the Red Room: Through the seasons, Snow White, In the Garden

Details about these individual short films and the short films themselves are available on the LornaJHart YouTube page and the Lorna Finnigan Facebook page.