new inspiration

I love Mark Ryden. Dark and disturbing, his paintings resonate with brilliant color and Renaissance echoes. The Tree Show is a particularly good book, the plates are vibrant and the photos of the ornate frames being carved are amazing. I feel like carving frames again.

I'd never heard of Scott Musgrove and bought this book on the recomendation of Amazon. I like it. Its weird. His creatures are odd and characture- esque, with their stretched mouths and forlorn expressions. I like the good quality of the book, how the paper feels, not to mention how fun the paintings are! His pallette is right up my alley, lots of pink and green!

The illustrations by Nicoletta Ceccoli are dreamy and bright, like sweet confections. Azalea loved the pictures (she promptly asked me to make nearly every toy she spotted). I loved the style, sort of diffused and airy, yet the details tightly rendered.

I've been an admirer of Femke Hiemstra's paintings for awhile. I love how she tucks her jewel-like pictures into old tins and on beaten books. They are so small, so intricately detailed, so strange...I love them. So, I made out like a bandit, with my new stack of books. I feel my creative batteries getting charged every time I open one of them. I look at color a lot, but am drawn to the imagery, whimsical and surreal. Now I'm torn, should I paint or wire wrap? Well, both those will have to wait, I have to keep carving! The new pewter designs are slowly emerging, I have a new heart link with a dainty skull surrounded by swirls, a faceted bead that will (hopefully) look like silver pyrite and some tiny nugget charms that look like wax seals.