Out and About

I did manage to get to the museum yesterday and drew a couple of pheasants. My favourite was the Silver Pheasant, simple black and white plumage with beautiful markings. I'd love to make a long etched plate of one of these birds. I've had to scan it over a few different pages and haven't quite managed to get him all in, but you get the idea!

Today I went back to Castle Espie. I got in contact with the staff a few weeks ago to ask if they had any specimens and they showed me to the attic where they have a secret stash of old, dusty birds. It was great!

View of Stangford Lough from Castle Espie.

Tomorrow I hope to get to the Belfast Print Workshop and finally join! I always get nervous when it comes to taking steps towards printmaking again, I love it, but it's such a wide area of possibilities it slightly daunts me. I think this is a good thing though!

New Fantail Brooches

I'm still making them! Here are a few new ones I have available until I send my order to my new stockist Mattt on Gertrude Street, Melbourne. I'm also looking for stockists in the UK and Ireland. If you're interested please send me an email at bridbird78[at!]hotmail.com.

Bridbird is Flying the Nest!

Once again I've lost my camera charger. I just don't understand why this thing is so elusive! You'd think with all this taking apart of our house and belongings I'd find it somewhere along the way. but no. So no new photos.... Oh, but wait, I took some photos on someone else's camera of my exhibition. I'll see if I can find them. In the mean time, just to say, this is the last day to buy any of my gocco prints. I'm shutting shop on these prints and leaving them all behind when I move to Belfast, so they wont be available after today. So if there are any you want, get them now before it's to late! I'll also be announcing the winner of the giveaway later today or tomorrow.

My exhibition will be up until 26th September, but maybe for longer. Bird's Gallery are holding onto the pictures until I return next year or the year after, so if you can't make it during the show I'm sure you can still see them after.

What have I been up to?

Recently I've just disliked sitting at my computer, hence lack of blog posts etc. I always feel I should be getting on with something else. Here are a few of the other things I have been getting on with instead.

The Crows.
I started playing around with unique state prints made from two plates and various scraps of fabric. I found it all a bit stressful, which sounds silly, I should just immerse myself into 'playing' but constantly at the back of my mind I keep thinking 'deadline, I've got a deadline' and should concentrate on work that I'm more sure about for my exhibition in September. I do like the deep red crow with black lines on top. He was made with a collograph plate painted with PVA and grit inked up in red, then a dry point plate printed in black over the top. I really like the deep rustiness of the red colour.





Sketch Etchings
These are dry point etchings, the plates of which I made at Wye River in January. I decided to sketch straight onto the plate, rather than make the plate in my studio from drawings in my sketchbook. I like the immediacy of this way of working, but it is a bit nerve wracking because you don't want to mess up the copper plate.



I must also mention the winner of my may giveaway was Stef of Distracted Muse. I'll be posting her little felt brooch to her this week! Thank you to everyone who took part. I'll have another giveaway soon!

Evolution

I've just been looking at my inactive listings on etsy on my bridbird shop and I found these. They are my very first fantail brooches, before they were fantails! They've all change quite a lot since then, changes that I didn't actually realise while I was making them! I find it interesting to see the evolution of a design.

The first brooches were made with synthetic felt, the colours were more limited and I wasn't so keen on the feeling of the synthetic felt. I stopped making them for a few months, but then I found wool felt sellers on the internet that had a wonderful range of colours and I started making them again. I always thought I'd make these brooches for a short time only, my attention span is sometimes quite short and I don't like repeating the same design too often. I decided I'd keep making them until I got bored of them. The birds soon became fantails because I liked being able to decorate their tails, as well as their wings. 

Now the birds have become more stylised, their heads aren't so rounded and I feel the stitching is more confident. I still love making them, I think because each one is different. I'm not going to stop making them any time soon, only when my eye sight starts to go!

On a Roll

I'm doing well with the old blog this week eh!? I think today it's because I'm aiming to go for a walk/run and I'm procrastinating.

Anyway I thought I'd post up a few of the Fantail gocco prints in the other colour combinations. As soon as I manage to get to the art shop to buy mount board and somehow get A1 sheets of it back on my bike I will be selling these new goccos at Rose Street Artists' Market. Until then, I've added them to my etsy shop.

I also want to make cards out of them, but that's another logistical issue with the large sheets of card and only a bike!

Remember to check out the Oz Bush Fire Appeal etsy shop, it is still open until 31st March and there are lots of goodies to be had. It's all for a good cause!

Right I'm off to see if my Frogmouth is home.

Waiting for Autumn

I'm foolishly hoping that as soon as 1st March comes around this summer sun madness will all be over! It's getting a bit too hot for me sitting at the computer here, so this will have to be short and then I can retreat to my studio which hopefully will be a bit cooler.

I've just taken photos of my most recent etchings and listed some on my etsy site. I thought I'd show them on here too.







Right, too much for me, I'm off to cooler climes.

Thirty Minutes

Yesterday I made a new book. It's called "Thirty Minutes in St. James' Park, London" and contains a collection of drawings of (mostly) birds I drew while in St. James' Park, London, last September. I am editioning it out of 50 and they are photocopied on my scanner printer machine from pen and ink drawings and then hand bound.


I have been wanting to make a range of small artist books and zines for a while now. My first one in this range is called "Seagulls Outside State Library" and I was selling it at my market stall before Christmas. I want to sell them on etsy, but I'm not sure which shop to put them in, or maybe I should open a new shop, but three shops might be a bit much! I'm going on holiday tomorrow, to the beach, so hopefully I'll be able to work it all out by the time I get back!

Feather In Your Hat

I've been stitching and stitching trying to get ready for Christmas. I've started making more of my fantail hat/ lapel pins since they seemed popular at market last weekend. They are made up of the same layering and hand sewn embroidery as the Featherstitch Fantail brooches with hand felted balls to embellish!



I'm also happy because I have finally sorted out my packaging for my brooches. I bought myself a rubber stamp of my "Bridbird" label and I found the most perfect little boxes, in a $2 shop would you believe! Unfortunately the shop has now run out of boxes but I think I may have found a (very cheap) supplier online. I've given them my card details and now waiting to see if anything arrives! Hope they come soon, fingers crossed they come at all!


I've added more brooches onto my Featherstitch Fantail sight too!

Etsy Sale Prices

Are you an Etsy shopper? Are you Australian and finding it too expensive to shop on Etsy anymore with the fall of the Australian dollar? Well, I've decided to amend my etsy prices for the time being in my Bridbird shop. Kind of like a SALE! All my small gocco screenprints are now $11 US from $16 US.

I have also changed my prices for my BridgetFarmerPrints Etsy shop. This needed to be done to keep my etching prices consistent with the gallery prices. I can't charge more than the galleries do for my work!!

All small Australian native bird etching $65 US from $82

My exhibition opening at the Australian Print Workshop went very well yesterday. Thankyou to everyone who came along. Here are a few photos of my work before the opening. The exhibition continues until 20th December so there is lots of time to look in if you are in the Fitzroy area.

This Week's Birds

This week, at the museum's discovery centre, Anna and I were given a Kookaburra, another Red Wattlebird (I like this bird and request it every week), a Spangled Drongo (have you heard of a better named bird?!) an Australian Raven and an ugly Eagle, (not the scientific name.)

After three weeks of drawing birds I'm getting very excited about starting some new plates for etching. I feel a bit daunted because I think I'm going to make my new series much bigger, (up until now the majority of my plates have been 6 x 6cm and from the scrap bin!) but I'm feeling ready for the challenge and raring to go. I'm booked in next friday and I can't wait.




To view the rest of this weeks drawings go to my Flickr page.

Drawing at the Museum

Today I went to the Melbourne Museum in Carlton Gardens where I had arranged to draw some of their collection of birds. I rang up last week and gave them a short list of birds I'd like to draw and today myself and Anna found ourselves being greeted by a Magpie, a Butcher Bird, a Red Wattlebird, a Chough and a rather worse for wear Honeyeater.

My photos of my drawings aren't particularly good so I think I will take some more tomorrow in the daylight, but for now here is a left hand drawing of the Chough (pronounced 'chuff.') I draw with my left hand to keep my lines lose ( I am normally right handed.)