This is the first post from Inkdropart.

A daunting task, to suddenly be expected to fill the white glaring screen with writing, not only once but over and over again. And the posts will not only deal with just anything, but something as personal as the things that inspire me and how that inspiration translates into my pottery and drawings.

The suspense is almost unbearable – will anyone love it, what if people loath it, or worst of all – it just leaves the reader indifferent? There have already been many a time I’ve changed my mind about doing a blog, arguments such as; “Why would people want to read anything of mine”, or “I can paint or do pottery I don’t know if I can write about it”, have been put forward, only to be met with equally strong counterarguments, both from the little inner voices in my head (we all have them admit it) and those wonderful people surrounding me. Those who think that what I create is actually something to hang on the wall. Literally in some cases.

So here goes, I’m plunging into the deep, unknown abyss that is called blogging. It’s worth a shot isn’t it, what’s the worst that could happen? Punctuation gone wild?

I suppose this is the time to introduce you to what I actually do. Well since I’m someone easily interested in many things I do a lot of stuff, whatever I fancy at the time really. But it does generally fall into three categories.

-Ink illustrations, reminiscent of archaeological technical finds drawings.

-Drawing and painting naive colourful drawings or painting portraits.

-Pottery.

Some of the illustrations and drawings are done by hand and some are digitally drawn, once again it really depends on my mood that day.

As time goes on I will post more info on individual pieces, but for now here are some quick examples:

This is a drawing of an Ogham stone made with pen and ink, the Ogham script has been embellished with gold leaf. The drawing is about 70cm in height.

My ink illustrations are mainly inspired by archaeology and are very reminiscent of what I draw in my day job – the main difference is the ones I do in my own time are done by hand, to a larger scale and sometimes embellished with gold leaf.

Drawing drawn by hand and digitally coloured. It's a whimsical, colourful fairy tale landscape.

If my pen and ink drawings seem more like technical drawings, my freehand is the opposite, whimsical and inspired by naive art, lots of colours and happy images, and oddly enough a dash of medieval illuminated manuscripts. This is where I go wild with colour.

This is a drawing of a Sophie and her doggie. It was completely finished digitally and then printed as a fine art print.

Portraits are a challenge as you want to translate the facial expressions accurately – that’s why they are so much fun.

Finally the pottery is mostly pre-cast shapes into which patterns are carved before the item is fired the first time. These patterns often turns out to be inspired by nature or patterns I’ve seen on archaeological remains.

This vase was inspired by frost on glass. The pattern was carved into the green-ware. Grey glazed was applied and wiped back to bring out the pattern.

I’m sure as time goes on I’ll be trying out more styles and techniques.

Hopefully I’ll be able to post about it and you will be interested in reading about them. If you have any comments I’d love to hear from you!