The Darwin Centre

Having never visited the Natural History Museum before I was presented with a fantastic opportunity to visit during a day trip to London. With nature being a long held fascination and passion of mine it is certainly a long overdue visit!

 The section of the Museum which I found most interesting was the newly constructed  cocoon like Darwin Centre, which housed thousands of specimens of Flora and Fauna from around the globe. The beautifully fragile insects were utterly beautiful and remain a firm favourite of mine for both photographing and drawing (as can be seen below.

 If you are interested in visiting the Darwin Centre, which is a fantastic experience for all the family visit the Natural History Museum website for more information: http://www.nhm.ac.uk/visit-us/darwin-centre-visitors/index.html

Hive of Activity

As activities in recent months have revolved around designing, printing and displaying my work, returning to the nature which has inspired so much of my work has been thoroughly enjoyable. Having missed recent developments in the garden, I decided to make the most of some beautiful weather and take the time to observe different plant species, and the insects they are attracting to the garden. I was thrilled to see a wide range of different Bumblebees frequenting the garden, including a female Cuckoo Bumblebee (my eye is not expert enough to distinguish exactly which) and honey bees. As stated in a previous post, we plant as many nectar and pollen rich plants in the garden as possible in the hopes of encouraging the growth of the bee population, however this has had an unexpected consequence. During my time in the garden I suddenly became aware of a rather noisy swarm descending upon the garden. Closer inspection revealed the swarm to be thousands of Honey Bees, whom had decided to build a hive beneath our new birdbath. Watching the vast mass of bees was utterly fascinating, I eagerly await the development of our hive and what may come next!

'Virtue' progress

As my 'Virtue' repeat is an A1 design It has required extensive photoshop manipulation post-scanning to piece together each section of the design and retain its high quality. The design is now 'pixel perfect' and ready to be put into repeat and move onto the next stage of editing; adding a background.

Garden Progress

Having lived at my current house for almost 2 years now it is interesting to observe the development of my favourite space, and how much its changed since we arrived and started making our mark.
Much of the hard work is down to the keen gardener of the house, my mother, but I have contributed with a few purchases, and the new found use of my ebay account to order seeds.

The top image was taken 2 days before we moved in. Largely lawn with small borders, largely empty. The garden became spruced up, but still rather bare. Winter turned it into a lifeless and rather bleek place, save for the Holly bush, and sadly caused the demise of our palm tree.
Beyond saving the palm tree has now been felled. Arches continue to spring into life, more borders are added and the lawn appears ever shrinking. The last image was taken in mid July. We have also taken delivery of a half sized green house, but thats yet to be snapped.

Its wonderful to finally see the garden establishing itself and becoming wild and blooming, credit due to my mother of course.

Documenting Nature

As nature seems to move faster than I can keep up with I am largely relying on my camera to keep me up to speed with the developments in my garden.
Almost every day I ferrit around in the garden, looking for new arrivals sprouting, blooming or dying. Summer seems to be a constant barrage of new flowers springing up left and right, my drawing skills would be in overdrive if I tried to study everything first hand, so Im relying on detailed images of every plants stages of growth for refrence when the flowers are long gone. Here are a few of the more artistic results: (Its bees galore at the moment, which Im enjoying)

Bluebells and Berries

As I considered my design work further and the sort of prints i wish to achieve I began creating a ditzy print suitable for indigo discharge. Many of Morris's prints were indigo discharge, and it is a method which I am eager to use. As bluebells appeared to be everywhere I decided to study and photograph these, eventually creating the repeat below.
Fruit was also a topic I was eager to study, so I began drawing blackberries from my own photographs, and created a repeat from my studies:

Spring is sprung

As the spring flowers bloom and colour begins to blossom everywhere my recent trip to Matlock allowed me to take a number of photographs of flowers and nature for my project. Below are some of the images which I believe may be inspirational within my project:

Thinking Space

As my ideas for the project begin to develop and pressure mounts, a break and some thinking space is always useful for creative development. So a long lone day trip to Matlock allowed for some deep thought about my project, and to get inspired by the nature which surrounds me. Walking is one of my favourite pass times, so a 10 mile walk in the hills around Matlock allowed a much needed break.
Here are some images from the High Tor and of the river Derwent:

Colour Palettes

Once again, I began to contemplate colour palettes for my project. I am keen to draw my palette from nature itself, so I used my own photographs of nature to observe the different tones and shades in nature, and considered the type of atmosphere I want my colour palette to capture.

An afternoon in Matlock

After a morning of discussing our self written briefs with academics, me and fellow students decided an inspirational and spontanous trip to Matlock was required to begin the project and enjoy the sunshine!
Fish and peas, ice cream and sunshine are the only way to enjoy our 'inland seaside'.
I photographed a number of natural shapes for early project inspiration, and a wonderful sunset once home.

Airy Citadel ...

'It appears to me that almost any man may like the spider spin from his own inwards his own airy citadel.' - John Keats

The above quote inspired me down the path of studying spider webs. I wanted to capture the beauty and technical perfection of a web in my visual studies, so I experimented with different media and techniques, including collage, watercolours, biro and cutting. Below are some of my favourite studies: