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We’ve been house-hunting for the past several months (OK… flat/apartment hunting. Whole houses in Amsterdam being a little out of our league! Perhaps a better term would be home-hunting), and it’s a very time-consuming and oft-demoralising process. But on the plus side it does mean I have had plenty of opportunity to explore parts of the city I wouldn’t normally find myself in. I was recently on the Prinseneiland, which is just a bit North-West of where we currently live and really so close that it’s ridiculous that I haven’t explored it until now!
Prinseneiland, where the writing’s on the wall and space invaders invade…
Where birds are welcomed to bathe on a large oak table next to a canal (or to dangle, forlornly inverted, from streetlamps!)…
Where a mural pays homage to Nelson Mandela’s prison vegetable garden…
Where greyhounds (with bright red collars) sprint apace, and red foxes frolic amongst the roses…
And where the geometry rocks!
Right… after that little diversion I must get back to the books. I have a Dutch exam fast approaching and a vast list of so-called sterk and onregelmatige werkwoorden to get to grips with. Thankfully the postman delivered ‘201 Dutch Verbs Fully Conjugated’ a few days ago… so I’ve got plenty of fun reading ahead ^_^
Well, the Design*Sponge DIY contest came to an end yesterday and my mural/owl came in second. Thank you to all of you who voted for it – it’s been fun participating and great to receive all your positive feedback. Thanks also to Grace at Design*Sponge for organising the contest, and to the sponsors: 2modern.com, sparkability, growmodern and readymade magazine (looking forward to receiving my first issue… for more DIY fun!).
As the prize of $450 was entirely unexpected and came about in no small part thanks to your votes I have donated half of it (£115/€146 by today’s exchange rate) to the World Wildlife Fund for conservation projects in Southern Africa (in the hope that it might go towards the preservation of endangered owl species… or any other creature in need of protection). I hope you’ll agree that this is a worthwhile cause and thank you for making the donation possible.
When I saw that the image used for the donation link on the WWF website was an owl I knew it was meant to be :-)
‘Self-promotion’ is not one of my strong points, and although I really like making things I have a hard time actually showing them to anyone (that’s a problem for someone who is a designer / illustrator by trade!). So I don’t know what came over me when I decided to submit my mural painting to the ‘DIY Contest’ over at Design*Sponge. But once you’ve hit that email ‘send’ button there’s no turning back! I was surprised (and very happy) to learn recently that of the 500 DIY projects submitted the mural was selected as one of the 20 finalists. Thanks very much to all of you who gave me encouraging comments and helped me to ‘face the fear’…
You can check out the 20 DIY projects here (they were posted in five sets of four so you’ll need to view the earlier posts to see them all. My mural is listed as No.18). And you can vote for your favourite project here (voting is open until next Tuesday, 18 March ’08). I like Kirsten’s Suitcase Dog Bed (No.10), and Natasha’s Baby Doll Coat Rack (No.4) is delightfully creepy.
If you’re looking for another diversion check out this beautiful sashiko pincushion (and all its equally beautiful non-sashiko pincushion pals) that Kate from needled has made.
In my other life (as the aforementioned designer/illustrator) I have been working on some research for a set of illustrations for a client. My research has taken me, desk-bound, to Cape Town, Hong Kong, Johannesburg, Melbourne, Singapore, Durban, and across the length and breadth of New Zealand. It has left me with a serious case (more so than usual) of wanderlust! So it’s very fortuitous that I have a trip to Cape Town planned in the not-too-distant-future (17 days and counting!).
And finally, here are a couple of the specimen drawings I’ve been working on when I haven’t been researching far-flung sunnier climes, admiring beautifully hand-stitched pin cushions (and entering DIY contests?!). I still have a few more creatures to complete before I can begin work on the repeat pattern design I have in mind, but I hope to be able to get started on that soon. In the spirit of ‘facing the fear’ I’m throwing caution to the wind here and posting them at a bigger size than last time.
images at the top of this post are l to r:
diy contest – mural detail | rocky outcrop, cape point, south africa, april 2005 | seaweed specimen detail | sunset, paternoster, south africa, april 2005
Here is the completed owl (the ‘work-in-progress’ in my previous post).
He’s a tubby little fella…
… but that doesn’t seem to bother him.
He’s quite content perched amongst the branches of his chosen tree.
I have been side-tracked away from working on my specimens this week by the persistent call of a guardian owl for my forest.
So, I’m in the process of making a small owl painting to be hung amongst the mural’s branches. An interior mural is essentially a static thing – the concept of it being more dynamic, changeable, appeals to me. Something that can be added to or subtracted from, altered to reflect a mood, an event, the shifting seasons, the passing of time…
If the owl works out I may populate the forest with other creature paintings – bunnies for spring, a snow leopard for winter?
I like the idea of this little guy watching over us as we sleep. And I’ll definitely be using GID* paint for those saucer eyes! (* Who can resist the mysterious allure of glow in the dark paint :-)
