Catherine Campbell

sticks and stones...

After lots of changed ideas and many sketches, I finally have some little characters finished. These are the first four in a series of eight I have called 'Sticks and Stones'. I quite like who they have become! Each one is drawn on heavyweight archival watercolour paper and I ended up using pen and ink, watercolour, oil pastel and coloured pencil...

After spending so long doing all the intricate details in the hair and watercolour patterns it was kind of exciting to quickly add all the coloured bits in... hehehe cheap thrills! Anyway, these four are sitting quietly over in the shop if you would like to take a look.

p.s. Was anyone watching the red moon last night... so lovely.

oh my...

This afternoon I arrived home to find this package under the front door.

I knew what was inside...

I held my breath and quickly flicked through all the pages until I found this...

and this...

and then I pulled out a poster made from this little character...

I then had to sit down for a while and take a few deep breaths.

These photos don't do Frankie any justice, it was starting to get dark and I just couldn't wait... it is all much prettier in real life!

Ahh... I'm kind of a bit too excited... I don't know what else to say.

Oh... i'll try and get a bigger scan of the interview later in the week...

butterflies...

rainy day games...

While working out my new series of drawings I have been playing around trying to create a contrast between fine little ink details and some crazy style oil pastel colours. These two drawings turned out kind of how I wanted them to. Even though they aren't part of the final series, I thought I'd show them off...

They are up for adoption over here if you'd like to keep one... or both!

eights and sixteen...

I'm thinking in eights at the moment. Tomorrow I will hopefully have eight new pictures to show you... maybe sixteen, but more likely eight. I have been very inspired by this image...

and want to make another little print set, similar but different to these...

... almost finished.

Also I had an idea, a while ago I posted about wanting to do a drawing everyday and then on the last day of each month upload all the months drawings in one post. Well, I just realised that over here on typepad you can have lots of blogs in addition to your main one, so I have decided to create a little side-kick blog for my one-a-day sketches. It doesn't exist yet but it is in the making.

sun...

a stampede of horses...

Blogland is full of the most wonderful and generous people. Today I want to tell you about a lovely lady named Meighan, who owns a blog called 'My Love for You is a Stampede of Horses'. She has written a post about my work with lots of images so I just wanted to say thankyou, you can go and take a look by clicking the image below...

Edit: Some more lovelies I just wanted to say thankyou thankyou to... Aussiepatches and 315thomas for putting my work in their winning Etsy posters (congratulations to them for winning!), and Eshu for linking to my 'Spooked' print, thankyou xxx

in the garden...

Today was a lovely sunny day and I can almost believe that wonderful Spring is on its way. Spring is my most favourite time of the year... planning vegetable gardens and planting seeds, I love being outdoors in the sun (as do most, I'm sure!). Today I started to turn up some soil for my future vegetable patch, I must say it looks fertile and promising. This year I plan to have a vegetable patch 'in the round', by that I mean I'm going to plant in a big square around the plum tree. I figured all the other growing vegetables might encourage the plum tree to give us a few plums this year. So here is a very early progress shot...

Also, while I was out enjoying the sunshine I noticed that one of my rabbits has some very interesting patterns in his fur. Every year as he gains and loses his winter coat his patterns change and at the moment he has a love heart right in the middle of his face. Good one Captain Mushroom...

i scream icecream...

Some new flavours are available... the last of the icecream moments are a-waiting over in my shop...

'Searching for Romantic Icecream Moments (Pistachio)'

'Searching for Romantic Icecream Moments (Strawberry)'

'Searching for Romantic Icecream Moments (Caramel)'

and... 'Searching for Romantic Icecream Moments (Licorice)'

These are all available right here.

one a day...

One of my favourite artists, Martha Rich, has a website called Freedom Wig where she uploads a new painting every day. I like the idea of making an image everyday and then recording it, it must be annoying some days but it also must be interesting to look back on all your images and see your own little visual diary appear. Well then, I have decided to do something similar. My plan is to make a little drawing each day and then on the last day of each month I will upload all of them here on my blog. I think I will then pick the goodies and add them to my shop as affordable little originals. Oh I hope I can stay committed... I guess now that I have told you dear blog, I am under pressure! Here is some one-a-day work by Martha Rich...

p.s. Thankyou for all the icecream love! I have still got four more flavours to show you, hopefully tomorrow.

icecream thoughts...

Brains are full of insecurities, don’t you think? Sometimes you wonder what in the world you are doing, where do you fit in, and how can you really expect people to take you seriously? Last year I dropped out of a Masters degree because, despite my love of a good essay (I’m a sucker for cultural theory), the little world that I want to live in doesn’t quite click with the world of academia.

Every now and then little stories and people appear and they reinforce that what you are doing is the right thing to do. If something makes you happy and you are passionate about it then that is reason enough to do it. Having a love for what you do is the most exciting, intelligent and dynamic thing in the whole wide world.

So you get to thinking… let other people worry about being taken seriously, I must get started on that series of drawings based on my favourite icecream flavours, definitely been putting it off for too long. There you go... enough chatter… let me introduce you to the ‘Searching for Romantic Icecream Moments’ series…


'Searching for Romantic Icecream Moments (Raspberry)'


'Searching for Romantic Icecream Moments (Blood Orange)'


'Searching for Romantic Icecream Moments (Bitter Cherry)'


'Searching for Romantic Icecream Moments (Coffee)'

I have just added these little originals to my shop so you can find them right here.

Oh almost forgot, I picked out some patterns...

 

strange ladies...

Just for inspiration, some strange ladies that I like the look of...

John Galliano Fall 2007

new curtains...

This weekend I made some crazy patchwork curtains for my studio out of an old tablecloth and some material scraps. Recently we did a room swap with the bedroom and the studio so I am slowly sorting through the clutter, trying to turn the studio into a nice little place to be. Now that I have the curtains out of the way I need to find lots of inspiration to cover the walls!

kingbrown launch...

Last night we went along to the exhibition opening/launch of Kingbrown Magazine, issue three. It was lots of fun and full of people, when we got there we couldn't even get in the door! We were running a bit late so I forgot my camera but here is a picture of my finished bottle...

Here it is in a bit more detail...