Another post at last!

About time I added a post to this sadly neglected but highly sophisticated blog!

Lots of wonderful things have happened this year.

I now have four book contracts. Three with Search Press, UK for knitted toys and a History of Textiles with Remember When, an imprint of Pen and Sword, also UK. Very exciting. I feel my life has now begun in earnest.

Pictured here are two photos of my gothic knitted horror.

I've also uploaded an illustration I did for my daughter of the Queen of Hearts..

The pencil drawing of the little girl is unfinished but I think it will start a series of fine pencil drawings called The Playroom.

I have so many ideas and plans I just need the time and energy to get them up and running.

I'm also getting a website done. It will be: http://www.fionamcdonald.com.au/ I shall link it to the blog when it is ready (we are only in the prelimanary stages).

Until then I shall try to keep this blog a little more up to date with lots of pictures.

Gothic Graphic Novel Idea

I've loaded them up back to front so that the top one, which should be the last in the sequence, is first, so scroll down and then back up.

I've been playing around with some black and white drawings of the creatures I am designing for a book proposal of knitted Gothic creatures. I though it would be fun to do a comic with them.

Princess Dolls

What is it that I'm trying to do with my dolls? I think back to when I was a little girl and constantly drawing pictures of beautiful girls in long dresses with lon hair. Princess dolls have to be so beautiful!

Large Soft Sculpture figures

Four large figures done way back in the late 90s. I still love them. Johann witht he white hair sold. The Wife of BAth and Wayne, in the striped trousers went to live at the gallery, Chaucer on Bridge Street in Uralla. And the Succubus was eventually transformed into the Whore of Babylon, top photo, which got into the 2002? Blake Prize Travelling exhibition.

Sunday is a large pastel. I began several years ago but only finished it early last year. I love groups of women not interacting with each other. There is tension but not open antagonism. I wonder what this says about my relationship with the females in my family? No, I can't say it's autobiographical.

The dolls' argument is acrylic on canvas. It isn't finished but I'm loath to get rid of the sketchiness of it. I must have painted this in 2007 I think.

These two charcoal drawings were done way back in 1990. I did them after a trip to the NT. We stopped at the Hermansburg mission and I did sketches of some of the buildings there. I've used the architecture in these two drawings.

I haven't looked at these images for ages but find them not too bad at all. I should build on this dark theme of solitary figures in ruined buildings.

I've been looking at so many exciting art works recently. I feel inspired. I'm going to put in for the Sculpture by the sea show and I've an idea for the Blake. I'm determined to re awaken my art career and ditch the teaching.

I'm going to post more pics, some might be duplicates but as I'm the only person who looks at this blog, too bad!

A pastel drawing from last year and a soft sculpture cow

More pictures

Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care. This was a sletch for an idea of a child asleep with doll images crossing the floor in front of her, you can see the idea for the composition in the top of the picture.

I just love Rookwood cemetery. I haven't been there for years. I did this sketch years ago and based a large painting on it. It fitted in well with some short stories I was writing.

The pencil drawing for Melusine.

Bird in the Afternoon- another narrative without text, or rather to accompany text but not directly linked to that text. Would love to do a narrative in text and pictures where the drawings are part of the narrative, not just an accompaniment.

What am I doing?

I really haven't got the hang of blogging. I've linked this blog to facebook, I think. I'm hoping to use this blog to showcase my artwork and toys.
I dream of giving up my day job (casual teaching) and making enough money each week from toy sales to pay the mortgage and have some left over - like for going to Florence for the Biennale (or just sending some work over for it).
The recession should be a good time to start a business selling locally made, affordable toys and patterns and kits for making your own. Marketing is my downfall and the urge to give away my products to people because they like them. Any managers out there? I'm sending a call for help into cyberspace. Mayday, Mayday, Mayday...

Time for an update

The Toy shop. This is one of the paintings for Sophie Masson's story about two dolls. The story was written because I gave her two of my handmade dolls. Whether we'll get a publisher interested, I don't know. I personally don't think there are enough stories about toys.

Just a boy, not a portrait of one real boy but a little bit of different boys, including my son Gabriel, now 15.

This is an illustration for Cinderella. I got the idea from an engraving by Dore. I love fairy tales with pictures that look like classical paintings.

Pan. I did love this fellow, maybe I shouldn't have sold him, still, I'd have to store him somewhere.

Sherlock Holmes and other murder mysteries have inspired me to do a series of illustrations which are not directly linked to any particular text but are supposed to suggest a narrative of their own

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