Original hand drawn and painted brooche pin badge art by Mel Stringer

I can not get enough of Mel’s work.

Make sure you check out her multiple web bits: Her site, on flickr, her blog and her shop. Every single page of every single one of these places is worth your eyeball time.

Climbing for Illustration Friday

Mel’s version of one of her favourite vintage cards.

via Handmade Romance & Gemma on The Vine

The girls have gone through the fence for a play with the neighbours so the house is suddenly very quiet and very empty… apart from the mess! I started to tidy things up and found this in Amelia’s school bag. Lucy is a reoccurring character around these parts. There have been stories about building tree houses, going to school, dealing with a little sister and so on. I was happy to see our heroine in heart-shaped glasses busting stereotypes again in her most recent adventure. Go Lucy!

Here’s a fun idea from Susie Ghahremani of Boy Girl Party – order a custom illustration designed to your specifics. Answer a series of questions for Susie to narrow it down and get your own personal B G Party original. What I like about this idea so much is that it takes advantage of the wonderful communication tool that is the inter-web. Makes me want to think of ways to do something similar.

Werribee Open Plains Zoo – it was a perfect day for checking out the animals. We even had to wear sunscreen.

My favourite part was watching the beautiful female lions have a snack, with a little growl accompanying each mouthful. I only felt slightly nervous that Lily wove her way right to the front of the crowd and watched with her nose pushed against the fence. The girl knows no fear.

My least favourite part was standing in line about to board the tour bus only to have Lily say “I need to do a wee!” followed by me hoisting her onto my hip and running (staggering) my way through the zoo to the bathroom and back just in time, cursing my too tight jeans and my general state of complete unfitness. I felt like one of those wooden hippos up there, only not smiling so much. Oh, of course! That’s why I feel completely wrecked tonight! I’m off to collapse on the couch and enjoy (seriously) some more old episodes of 30 Rock. Brilliant. Even better than the zoo.

School is back and Lily has decided to start afternoon napping again which is kind of her, so I am getting a little bit of creative time:

1) painting wooden dolls

2) getting back to those marshmallow bunnies

3) piling stuff on my sewing table

4) reading “On Writing” by Stephen King but not actually doing too much writing. It’s good! I haven’t read much SK before but even his memoir is a page-turner.

More faces. The Dover Design Sample arrived in my inbox this morning and these girls stood out to me, as I have been painting so many faces recently. They are by American illustrator Charles Dana Gibson – who I had never heard of, though his illustrations are so iconic they seem instantly recognisable. With a little google searching I was fascinated to read about a whole chunk of American illustration history. Gibson was an illustrator turned editor and owner of Life magazine, owner of an island, head of the US government’s pictorial publicity division during WWI, whose illustrations captured a modern kind of American woman. She was a spirited, independent woman who played sport, had a career, drove a car and even had the vote. His “Gibson Girls”  became enormously popular:

“There was merchandising of the Gibson Girl on the level of Mickey Mouse or Star Wars. Large size books (”table albums,” they were called), china plates and saucers, ashtrays, tablecloths, pillow covers, chair covers, souvenir spoons, screens, fans, umbrella stands…all bore the image of Gibson’s creations. There was even a wallpaper for bachelor apartments, with the lovely Gibson faces in endless array.

A popular turn-of-the-century hobby, pyrography, saw people burning the Gibson Girl into leather and wood; and the image was traced and stitched into handkerchiefs. There were plays, songs, and even a movie based on his creation.” from Gibson-Girls.com

Further:

Wikipedia on Charles Dana Gibson

About Irene Langhorne Gibson who married Gibson after turning down 66 (!) previous suitors.

That’s my art history paper for the day. Bye!

Little fuzzy – more doodling on wood… these little blanks I bought from Winterwood and I drew on them with my indian ink drawing pen. The ink bled a little but not enough to worry about. Phil thought I should make an entire chess set. Now that would be fun.

I seriously love painting on these wooden dolls – I can’t believe I put it off for so long.

Museum trip – 10am.

Children move fast in low light -

See how fast my nephew moves? Here he is with his favourite item of the day – fossilised dinosaur poo. At least the poo stood still. After attempting a couple more photos of kids oohing and ahhhing at wonderous displays I moved on to taking funny-face photos of inanimate objects.

angry

gloomy

cheerfully inquisitive.

Working on kokeshi dolls – turned by my awesome Uncle. About to sand out the nose on the front one and try something a little less clunky. School’s back today so it’s back to sewing rabbits. Stay tuned.