Conkers in Marble Bowl

'Conkers in Marble Bowl'

This is my finished water based oil painting of 'Conkers in Marble Bowl'. I wanted the richness of the green to ground the heavy bowl, and to compliment the deep brown of the chestnuts. I wanted to do a painting after finishing sketches of conkers.

Conker studies

Every autumn we collect the conkers from the magnificent horse chestnut trees. I can't decide whether i prefer the ones with white or pink blossom! I used to collect them from my under the tree in my auntie and uncles garden - hours of fun, but i can remember the beauty of conker hunting. The fresh green colour of the spiky hard husk, and the contrast with the white skin inside. Then the soft downy pith on the white patch on each conker, and the stunning deep vivid chestnut brown, waxy, shiny, pure and new. So vivid, each with its individual pattern of darker swirls, some huge, some tiny, some split into twins. I felt like each one was a newly discovered jewel, and ranking them in order of beauty. Now i display them in the house in bowls until they loose their oily sheen, and become dull and faded. Then we use them in the corners of the rooms to ward off huge spiders!! (scientifically proved wrong but seems to work!)

These were studies done in oil pastel, i love the slightly abstract feel of the first one, the essence of conkerness!

and the second, showing the beautiful gleam of the white pith inside.

These initiated the oil painting 'Conkers in a Marble Bowl on Green'.

Raku Pots

Raku...

Sunday was Raku day at pottery - a glorious sunny day, nice to meet some new people, all art-oriented. Raku firing was interesting, not knowing how the end product would look was exciting. The kiln was heated to 1000 degrees, then the pots removed and put in sawdust to cool. Finally they were taken out and scrubbed with wire and water to remove the blackened ash. All the time you could hear the crackling coming from inside the pot! With rapid heating and cooling, it is a process prone to breakages, so i was very pleased when both my pots came out intact. I did one with a grey glaze, which has a lovely crackle finish with ghostly grey spots underneath. The other was a turquoise glaze with copper glaze smudged over. Not sure where the turquoise went, but ended up with a metallic grey, dark brown and bright copper streak! Fun :)

Taking the pot out of the raku fire - v hot!

Putting it into a dustbin full of sawdust to cool

Finished after scrubbing the blackened surface off to reveal the different finishes

Turquoise and copper glaze, right white/grey glaze

Ferns Felt

This is my latest felt, two ferns - this was very intricate and time consuming to do - laying strands of felt onto wet pre-felt. Very scary to felt without moving the threads out of place!!

I used shades of black, blue and green to add detail to the fern, and experimented with filling in some of the loops to make a solid colour leaf.

Felting reduces the size of the felt, and makes the image fuzzy, so the image has to be spaced more and made larger to compensate for a 1/4 - 1/3 reduction.

I think this is a great result, it looks beautiful held to the light as you see the threads more clearly inside the felt. However, i think the process is too intricate to be felted - the effort may be better as a drawing, and perhaps detail in felt achieved by free-sewing on the machine, afterwards. Will try another technique next time to compare...