Poppies, and stencils

When Mum passed away recently a friend gave us some flowers which included poppies and seed heads – awesome! I have been fascinated with poppies since we visited Italy in 2010 and use them a lot in my artwork. Having the real thing on display in the kitchen inspired my to take a bunch of photos, do some drawings, and finally cut some stencils. Huge thanks to Michelle Ward for lessons learnt while doing the Crusades – without your lessons I doubt I would have managed it. I have now got stencils for two flowers, and two different heads plus the masks for all but the big poppy. I couldn’t work out the bridges to keep it in one piece but may have another shot at it yet.

I have had a quick play with them on newsprint and am happy, so tomorrow I’ll start playing in earnest. Earlier in the year I was given some lovely old, never used and in mint condition, prints of  John Abbott’s The insects of Georgia produced by the Alexander Turnbull Library. I am going to be participating in Legato 2013 and have a vague plan in mind involving the prints, transfers of photos of Dad from the war, and the poppy stencils. We’ll see…

(the images are wrinkly because I am too impatient to wait for the ink to dry before scanning)