Shoshiplatypus

Today is my 71st birthday (eek… I haven’t even managed to get my head around being 70 yet!). The day started badly with my waking up at 7.00 a.m. so I thought I’d get up, but I’d only started to get ready when I felt so tired and in need of more sleep that I decided to go back to bed again. I slept till 8.30 and for the rest of the day I have felt mega-fatigued and wiped out. Not great for my birthday. I have had a very busy few days and it’s ME payback, I’m afraid. Hopefully I’ll be better by tomorrow so I can catch up with various jobs, and then on Saturday we’ve got a family wedding to attend.

My presents

As usual, my hubby has come up trumps! He is very imaginative and thinks outside the box when it comes to presents. The main present I knew about, because I chose it – more later, but he got me a couple of other things as well, which was a surprise, and he made me a fun card by cannibalising two other cards and amalgamating them to make a new card that was personal to us. Great fun.

These are the other two presents he gave me. He’d been shopping at Marks & Spencer’s!

He’s bought me a gorgeous big sourdough loaf made with a combination of British wheat and German rye flour, and full of seeds. We are going to have this with our chunky veg soup this evening. Also he bought me a rich fruit cake decorated with whole glace cherries and nuts, and we had some with our tea this afternoon.

It is delicious!

For my birthday in 2020 during the lockdown, he bought me a pineapple! As I reminded him today, when I pulled it out of the bag, I roared with laughter – I mean, who gives anyone a pineapple for their birthday? If he had given me a more regular sort of present, I may not have remembered it particularly, but this one stuck firmly in my mind, and the emotion it generated when I opened it! It was eaten and gone in a few days but the memory lives on. Presents don’t need to cost large amounts of money to be special, and the pineapple, and the sourdough and cake, are so special because my hubby knows I love these things, and opening them made me laugh with pleasure and enjoyment!

My main present

This was a book I had seen on an art video I was watching several weeks ago, and I knew I wanted to get it. It is a kind of catalogue of art materials, but so much more than that – it is a collection of different materials and equipment, many of them manufactured by small family companies or individuals, although some of the major companies are represented as well, for example Winsor & Newton. There are illustrations of how artists have used these things. There are many artists featured in the book as well, with several pages devoted to each one, with a little about their lives and the work they do, and with their online web addresses etc. shown, so you can follow up on them if you wish. The book is published in Canada and several of the artists featured come from there.

The book itself is  a relatively small paperback (approximately 6 1/2 x 8 in and a good inch thick, and quite heavy) with very good quality matte pages with a slight sheen, very richly illustrated in full colour. It is an absolute feast. Not only does it give you information about the respective artists and the materials, but it is a huge source of inspiration for any artist. An initial flip-through has shown me that many of the pages would serve as inspiration for colour alone – colour combinations to create new and interesting palettes, and ideas for composition, and also how to use the various materials and equipment in interesting ways. It is an amazing resource book.

The cover itself is a treat. Here is how you first see the book.

It has a dust cover and also a kind of belly band that tucks around the cover front and back.

The dust cover and belly band removed.

I turned the dust cover over and was surprised to see that there was art on the back as well.

It was then that I discovered that this was folded in half, and when I opened it out fully, there was more art inside!

Isn’t this just glorious? They didn’t have to do any of this; most publishers would simply have given us the book and no dust cover.

Here is the book with the dust cover removed. It is also most attractive, and different from the dust cover.

I have selected a few pages to show the kind of thing featured in the contents. This first one is one of a series of pages, an article about an amazing woman in Sheffield, England, the steel and cutlery capital. She has a small workshop in a converted Victorian public toilet complete with its original tiles, and she makes unique and beautiful scissors. Some of the designs are beyond extraordinary, and the examples of the designs in her sketchbook are works of art in themselves.

If you think you know everything about paint pouring, you ain’t seen nothing yet! This artist does paint pouring on a grand scale, in a warehouse for a studio, with vast canvases and literally gallons of paint. After the pouring and manipulation of the paint, he spins the canvas and centrifugal force does its work and transforms it further. All quite unpredictable! I went on his YouTube channel this afternoon and watched him in action. As you can see from the photograph, he gets nearly as much paint on his clothes as on his canvases.

One of several representations of hand-made paints, this one being earth paints. I love the hand-made and shell pans for the colours.

A page spread from an artist who likes to paint eclectic domestic objects and ephemera. What a riot of colour!

Stencils from the Stencil Girl, and examples of how to use her lovely designs. Layers and layers of gorgeousness.

Little vessels made from hand-made paper. I love the muted, subtle shades.

Swirls and swirls of paint. Inspirational for shapes and colour palettes!

A page from the Winsor & Newton article. As with all the pictures in the book, I love the composition. What a celebration of Payne’s Grey and how fabulously it washes out to this soft blue. This is definitely a colour I am going to pursue.

Don’t you agree that this whole book is a total delight? Talk about sparking joy! It is a feast of colour and inspiration. Definitely one for any artist’s book shelf.

Despite feeling lousy physically all day, my birthday has been a delight. It’s been very quiet, just the two of us and the kitties, but we both had our combined birthday treat at the County Show recently – I have yet to upload the photos of that lovely day out.