Showing posts with label Art. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Art. Show all posts

Wednesday, 24 March 2021

Easter 2021 Printable Colouring Pages! Including FREE colouring page!

 I loved creating colouring pages for you all last year, so this year I thought I'd do something similar!

This year, I'm offering two options: one colouring page which will be free to download on the blog, or the option of buying a set of two pages from my Etsy shop (also downloadable).  See below for link!

Etsy shop Easter Colouring Pages

So, without further ado, here's my FREE 2021 Easter colouring page. 



And, here are some sneak peeks at the option for sale in my shop!
Priced at  just 96p! 


If you do decide to use either, or both of the colouring pages, I would love to see how you decorate them! So, if you post them to Instagram tag me at @mauveink
That's all, lovelies, I hope you have an eggcellent Easter!




Sunday, 14 June 2020

Ms. Bunny reads! A new FREE colouring sheet from me to you!

I have a new colouring sheet for you today, this one is perfect for all the bookworms out there who love to snuggle down with a stack of books!

Friday, 24 April 2020

A gift from me to all of you...

Hello, my friends,
    Recently, I've been thinking about what I can do to make people's days a little brighter as we live through these uncertain times. As an artist, I realised there was one thing I most certainly could do: make some colouring pages and provide them, free of charge, to anyone who needs something fun to do!
This is the first page I've made (hopefully not the last), "Ms. Bunny in her Garden"
Just click on the JPEG image below and print it out to start colouring!
Note: This one might be best for slightly older art lovers, as there is a lot of floral detail in the picture that little ones might struggle to colour in!
Ms. Bunnyin her Garden.

Thursday, 20 June 2019

A Midsummer love story...


by Holly Cox


Roses.
Dense and deep at the heart of the wood roses grew. White roses mingled with red roses whose sharper thorns tore the petals of the white. They seemed to spread and flex the moment anyone drew close.
When Jean was young and filled with curiosity he would run off into the woods and play beneath the branches of the rose bushes.
Time and again he pestered the woodsman Franz until he told him the story of those roses.
'At the center of those roses,' Franz said, 'there lies a sleeper.'
'A tomb?' Jean asked. He knew the soft words people said when they meant death. He could imagine how a tomb, once lovingly planted with roses, could become so overgrown.
'No,' Franz said. 'A sleeper; one day, someone will approach and wake him.'
'Oh?' Jean was not sure he believed this story but he wanted to believe it.
'At the center of those roses, so they say, lies an enchanted Prince,' the woodsman frowned and hefted his axe. 'But who knows if the story is true or not.'
'Have you never seen it for yourself?'
'No, the roses will not let me near.' The woodsman gestured for Jean to watch as he swung his axe down on the mass of roses which strayed over the borders of the path. They swayed for a second and then, where the blade had struck, fresh shoots erupted each tipped with a tight red bud.
'Whatever lies within, it is touched by magic. That much I know for sure. The woodsman hefted his axe onto his shoulder and walked away humming an old country wedding tune. Yet it seemed to Jean that he the roses whispered to him, whenever he drew near he heard them saying;
‘Come to me, my love. Come to me.’
Jean stayed a moment longer and then he had gone home into the setting sun.


Years passed. Jean grew out of his habit of playing in the woods and applied himself to his studies instead. He forgot the roses and the woodsman's fairy tale till one evening, Midsummer Eve as it so happens; returning home from the University at which he studied Jean had cause to pause in the shade of those woods. He should have hurried through them, for at night the trees creaked and the shadows howled and it was all too easy to lose ones way. Ah, but Jean was a rational young man, student bold and brave. Jean did not hurry.
The roses were still there; growing in greater abundance than before. They bowed invitingly to Jean as he approached. The blooms so vivid; so mingled in their red and white he could not resist temptation but reached out a finger to touch them. The rose he touched was white as snow but beneath his finger it flushed as bright as a maiden's cheeks. How beautiful Jean thought and he touched the next bloom and the next till they were all flushed beneath his hand. Flushed their petals fell. With a creak the stems of the roses drew back. Dry bark sighed against dry bark. How could this be? Jean reached out again. He touched the bark of a branch but it shrank away from him. He watched the branches wither and part into the unmistakable shape of a passageway.
He recalled the story and he hesitated. One day, someone would come to awaken the Prince. However, even if there was any truth in the story that person would not be him. He was not a prince or even a nobleman. No, he was a poor student who would, in the fullness of time, inherit a bakery in the town.
Yet the roses parted to grant him entry.
He put one foot on the hearth and then, feeling a little bolder, he stepped all the way into the passageway. It was dark ahead of him; he put out his hand to feel the way and felt the rose thorns prick his skin. He feared that the entrance would vanish behind him; he feared that the roses would swallow him up but the woods remained behind him, twilight blue and full of noises. He took a few slow steps forward; he felt the prick of thorns with each step. There was a light up ahead, a flickering lantern flame whose light fell on a stone wall and a door of metal furnished oak.
There was a ring on the door and he reached for it. The door fell open at his touch. Dust hung in the air before him, bright sparks in the light of torches that ringed the walls of a large circular chamber. At the center of the room stood a dais draped in velvet which must once have been sublime but had succumbed to the passage of time and hung in dusty folds. All of this must have been here for some time yet the torches still burned and perfume scented the air.
'It cannot be.' Jean said to himself and he half expected that it would all fall away then like the figments of a dream. Nothing moved. He looked at the dais again and he saw, resting on the velvet, an object both beautiful and horrible: a glass coffin. Within the smooth crystal walls he could make out the shape of a body. Jean stepped back, he did not mind admitting that even his rational mind was afraid of the decay time must have wrought. However, fascination got the better of him. He stepped forward and was astounded to see the body of a young man about his own age and still very much whole. There were spices and solutions he reminded himself that could make a body seem whole for centuries. A clever trick, so carefully done in this instance that he could have sworn the young man was alive. Dark curls tumbled around a fresh face with flushed pink cheeks and lips red as cherries. Jean's footsteps echoed on the floor as he moved closer. He saw the hands of the Prince folded at his waist. He saw the Princes clothes, the style two or three hundred years out of style. He must have lain here that long at least. Jean brushed a little dust from the lid of the coffin. As he did so the whole coffin fell to snow and blew about the room leaving nothing between him and the Prince.
It must have been very fragile after all this time and shattered, Jean told himself. After all, glass does not turn to snow.
He could have sworn he saw the Prince's lips part a little revealing moist pearly teeth. The Prince's nose twitched with breath. Jean leaned forward and stared at these signs of life. He must have lost his footing for a second because in a second his own lips touched the Princes lips; lips deceptively hot as blood. He drew back, reached for the handkerchief in his pocket and dabbed at his lips. He was not a superstitious man in the habit of kissing dead lips and relics.
'At last,' a soft voice whispered, 'you have come!'
The Prince's dark eyes were open and his mouth curved into a smile. He spoke in the most beautiful voice and with each word the roses that choked the windows fell away with a great rustle of leaves. 
'I knew you would come,' The Prince said. His lips pressed; warm, against Jean’s lips. Jean’s arms slowly moved to enfold the prince. Outside the windows of the tower, the roses died away to a last few delicate blooms and the moonlight fell cool upon the tower floor.

On Midsummer Night, by the light of the moon, Jean and the Prince talked and embraced until 

falling asleep, on the cusp of dawn, the sunlight of the longest day found them and warmed them as 

one.   

©Holly Cox 2019

Friday, 22 June 2018

The turn of the year...

Well, midsummer has flown by, as ephemeral as a moth flitting through moonlight. Now, begins the long, languid sink into lengthening nights and shorter days. It's a loss and, at the same time, a moment of joy for the solstice holds open a door to the seasons yet to come. Autumn lies on the other side of that door, which I like to imagine resembles the moss cloaked, ivy wreathed door leading to Francis Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden, and winter too. There are falling leaves there and bonfires, hot tea and the possibility of snow. Berries hang, dark and red on the other side of that door, crows caw and wheel over stubble speckled fields and far off, in the distance, the faint fairy lights of a Christmas tree beckon.
For now, however, luxuriate in the honeyed sun of long days, the flowers blooming. Take inspiration from the summer months, store up the days as one stores up summer berries and locks their sun soaked secrets in jars of jam.
I know I will be letting the summer inspire me, and after the summer, the autumn will inspire me and after the autumn, the winter... And so it goes, on and on, a beautiful seasonal dance.

©H.Cox 2018
A page of Apple folklore from my folklore grimoire,

Thursday, 24 August 2017

The wonder of Raphael...

"How generous heaven sometimes proves to be when it brings together in a single person the boundless riches of its treasures and all those graces and rare gifts that over a period of time are usually divided among many individuals can clearly be seen in the no less excellent than gracious Raphael Sanzio of Urbino."
Giorgio Vasari 'The Lives of the Artists'.

Photograph: My own.

A little deviation from my usual topics of perfume and writing for this months blog post because, with only a couple of weeks left to catch it, I wanted to say a few words about how magnificent the Ashmolean Museum's exhibition, "Raphael, the drawings", is and to say that, if at all possible, it is a visual feast not to be missed.
    I adore Renaissance art, history and architecture so I was, naturally, deeply excited by an exhibition of this kind. The paintings are, of course sumptuous, lavish displays of colour and texture but there is a certain additional magic to the drawings of great artists.
     Looking at these sketches, a delicious shiver runs up the viewers spine knowing that the master's hand has moved across these simple sheets of paper. Here are the bare bones of paintings, the arrangements planned and carefully adjusted long before the oil paints have been mixed and the canvas stretched. Each mark on the paper flowed from Raphael's mind to his hand and, looking at such a body of work gathered together, it seems all the more wondrous that these fragile shadows of his thoughts remain with us. Indeed, somehow, seeing the work which underpins Raphael's virtuoso paintings increased my appreciation of the finished masterpieces. In these sketches, I marvelled at the care taken over the positioning of an arm, the drapery of a robe, the sublime realism brought to bear in depicting the human form. The little plump baby hands and feet to bee seen in drawings for Madonna and child paintings are so lovingly, exactingly rendered that one half expects to see them kick and totter: clasp and wave. His depictions of age creasing the face and loosening the skin are no less tender and exact. Indeed, I found myself smiling several times as the faces of loved ones were recalled to mind by the way in which the master had depicted lips curving into a smile or folding into a slowly forming frown. The treatment of each subject is such that, as with a carefully crafted Angela Carter short story,  the impossible sits effortlessly alongside the possible and a wing unfurling from a human shoulder seems the most natural thing in the world.
     The brilliant display of these sketches only heightens the pleasure. The exhibition is arranged chronologically so that the viewer, moving through the galleries, can appreciate the evolution and progression of Raphael's art alongside the story of his life. a marvellous structure which also has the advantage of first presenting the viewer with Raphael's beautiful, youthful self portrait; an image full of promise and intelligence which allows us to relate to the artist both as a human being and a genius before we move on.
      Many drawings, where Raphael used both sides of the paper, have been hung so that the dual angles are visible and the viewer can enjoy the delicate delight of seeing a clear sketch on one side ghosting through to the other in a rather magical way. In addition, after indulging oneself with, as I recall, three rooms of artwork, the exhibition closes with a fabulous display of the tools which would have been used to create them and a video recreating the process and forensically examining the layers of size, charcoal and silver point which make up some of the works. If, you have not been rendered quite speechless with awe by the artworks alone then, I assure you, seeing the work which went into their production will certainly lead you to be dazed with sheer admiration and you will probably find yourself wandering back for one last look at the art works before you leave with a smile on your face and a mind filled with beautiful images.
      At the close of this short review, my advice is simple: if you're looking for an indulgent cultural experience to savour this Bank Holiday weekend then "Raphael: the drawings" is perfection. However, remember that, as the Ashmolean Museum's official website advises, booking ahead may be a good idea and the exhibition ends on September 3rd.

Acknowledgement for the opening quote regarding Raphael goes to Giorgio Vasari and the Oxford University Press edition of The Lives of the Artists, which is also an invaluable volume for anyone interested in the history of Renaissance art.