Illustration Friday 'Bottled' and 'journey'

Having been bottled up in the office all day, Jake felt free as a bird behind the wheel of his cabriolet!

Having fun with collage!
Because I was so late posting this it has run into the next week's topic which luckily enough is 'journey'.

Warning

Illustration Friday 'Warning'
I didn't get the background done in collage so I photoshoped in a simple red one just to have it up for Illustration Friday, but I'm too late anyway!
Oh well, if I ever do finish it properly I'll post it again.

Illustration Friday 'Layer'

Agatha may not have been the best layer in the coop,
but there was nobody like her when it came to a scoop!

For the birds.

A real favorite of mine.
Sorry it doesn't fit on my blog properly, but click on the youtube in the bottom right corner and then watch it in full screen.
Enjoy.

The ice book

The Ice Book from Davy and Kristin McGuire on Vimeo.

This is magical.

Dandelion clock

Thematic Photographic is 'Singles'.
My photo has a solitary spider and if you think about it, you hardly ever see two spiders hanging out together, do you? Except the hatching of baby spiders then there's hundreds all milling around!
The dandelion clock doesn't really portray singles, but I love them and after all it is a single head albeit of multiple seeds.

Curves

Thematic Photographic is 'Curves' this week.
This is a close-up of my hydrangea, one of my favorite flowers.

Blue footed Boobie

Thematic Photographic is 'Blue' this week.
So here's Stanley, my Blue Footed Boobie, whom I made a couple of years ago.
In fact he's already featured on my blog with his pal George.
He's a bit of a twit but I'm very fond of him!

Carnivorous plants

I took these photos at The Chelsea Flower Show in 2006.Their bizarness really caught my imagination, I'd never come across them before. They look like a gathering of little aliens, deadly aliens if you happen to be a curious insect!
They're tropical pitcher plants aka nepenthes aka 'monkey cups' because monkeys drink the water that gathers in them.
I'm submitting these photos for Thematic Photographic.
I'm a week late, but the theme was "far from home" and as these plants originate in tropical rain forests, I felt it was fitting!

David Attenborough's documentary is well worth a watch.

Follow that rainbow.

Thematic Photographic this week is "Wet"
We get a lot of rain in Ireland, but at least we also get a lot of rainbows, silver linings and all that! Oh ya and pots of gold hidden by leprechauns too!
Not that I'm religious or anything but as a kid suffering rainy summer days I liked the story in the old testament that when Noah and the Ark landed God promised that there would be no more floods,(what a liar) and the rainbow was the sign that the sun would shine again.
Hope is powerful, ask Annie....the sun will come out tomorrow...!

From the origin to the extreme!

Original

Black and white


Photoshop here we go....


My favourite!


With a little more colour...


And a step too far!

All the best in the new year to everybody, and happy Women's little Christmas:)

Agreeable Tiger Moth

Thematic Photographic this week is 'Turning Colder'
I haven't been out with my camera recently, so I trawled through the archives and decided to give this guy a requiem.
He's an 'Agreeable Tiger Moth' as far as I know, which isn't very far!
I've no idea who he was so agreeable with to warrant such a fine name, maybe he nods his head a lot after crashing into the light bulb a few hundred times:)
Anyway he was chosen for this chilly theme because it looks like he has on a large fur collared cape .
And I think these moths die as the weather turns colder.
If I didn't know any different he could simply be in repose, like a mini Dracula moth!
After all they are both night creatures.
Halloween must be getting to me:)

Illustration Friday 'Transportation'

Illustration Friday is 'Transportation' this week.
I'm afraid mine is a rerun , but I thought it was quite fitting for the theme, the transportation of pollen by Mr. Busy Bee.

Blue eyed Spider monkey!

Now I know I messed around in photoshop with this photo, but amazingly, the blue eyes are for real.
They call her Ol' Blue Eyes and she lives in Fota Wildlife Park where you can read all about her.
I didn't notice her blue eyes when I was taking the photograph as she was too far away. It was only when I saw them on the laptop and even then I thought it a trick of the light, the blue sky reflected. It is so unexpected.
The idea behind turning it into black and white was to try to high light the blue eyes, but I realise that it actually just discredits them.
I've put in the original photograph below just for the unbelievers!
I do like the black and white though, it reminds me of the old Tarzan movies I loved as a kid.

Thematic Photographic this week is 'Branched'
Well Ol' Blue Eyes would have branched out into the modeling business, given her most unusual features, had she been given half a chance.

Carbon footprints

Illustration Friday's theme this week is 'Beneath'.
These are my baby's footprints at six months old.

May the grass be always green beneath your feet, my darling one.

I used beetroot juice for the original, which came out a lovely soft baby pink, perfect!
But it has faded terribly since, you could hardly see the print when I took a photo of it.
So off to photoshop we go and kill all the cuteness.
Now it's more like a thermal image or what a carbon footprint might look like:)

Mosaic floor in Honan Chapel

As I was going through my photos for this weeks Thematic Photographic, which is 'Parallel', I came across these photos of the Honan Chapel's mosaic floor by Ludwig Oppenheimerin 1916.
It's a stunning work of art, my photos do not do it justice.

I love that Oppenheimer seems to pay little or no deference to the fact that it's a catholic church floor he's designing .
You are greeted at the water font by the twelve zodiac signs and then ushered up the aisle by what looks to me like a Japanese river god, but maybe it's meant to be God pouring forth life, or something!

It's been a few years since I took these photos, I'll have to go back with my camera and get the full story.
I cant remember, but I've a feeling Adam and Eve should be around somewhere.

Old fashioned pram in applique

Illustration Friday's topic this week is 'Old Fashioned'
I nearly did a self portrait as I'm feeling a little out of date and out of touch with what's hip today!
There, see, I bet nobody says 'hip' anymore.
Well as you can see I went for an easier option, an old fashioned pram in applique.
If only I had an old fashioned Nanny to go with it, I might even get round to sewing it all together:)

Still life in black and white

This maybe taking the Thematic Photographic theme Still Life a little too literally!
A couple of dead things(a butterfly and a daddylong legs) and a scull on a bed of feathers, taken to the extreme in photoshop.
I may have got a bit carried away but it was great fun!

Circus McGurkus inspired Illustration Friday.

This weeks Illustration Friday's theme is 'Acrobat'

Well,little Larry the Lemur is always pretending to be a circus performer, right now he's imagining he's an acrobat balancing precariously on the tight rope at dizzying heights, never before seen, in the big top of the stupendous tremendous Circus McGurkus.
And drum roll.....

Old celadon Lister generator

The theme is 'letters' this week on
Thematic Photographic
This is a photo of an old broken down abandoned Lister generator, well a piece of it anyway.
The reason it caught my eye is that the crackle of the enamel reminded me of the beautiful Chinese celadon pottery .
And I liked the backwards letters!