This is a water colour I painted in South Africa a few years ago whilst visiting family – I was sitting in a surfer cafe which had this interesting mix of life and death and adventure. I really liked the juxtaposition of the ideas and the naturalness of it all.
The following images are close ups of parts of the paintings – it was all done free hand and on the spot.
So I’ve been working on a new series of colouring in sheets – this is one of the raw picture before digital clean up and is for when Cuddly Science (my thing with the puppets) is more Cuddly History!
It is based on Roman Mosaics including being purposefully wonky! I want to do some actual mosaic colouring sheets based on real mosaics but need to sort out the source photography images first – I know I have a lot of the Orpheus Pavement somewhere!
The cleaned up “activity sheet” version is going out at The Festival of Archaeology event at Gloucester Cathedral and when I get a moment it will go up in the Cuddly Science category on The WigglyPets Press.
I am working on colouring in sheets for my Cuddly Science workshops again – this one is based on sketches of ammonite specimens I did as an undergraduate. It needs cleaning up and then I’ll pop it up as a free down load 🙂
This weekend is the virtual launch party of my poetry, music and art album Within and Without. It went live at 10 am this morning 🙂
There will be give aways and postings of links, explanations of the recordings, videos and more. I am running a Facebook Event, a Google Plus Collection as well as blogging across various platforms 🙂
I will be going until 11 pm Sunday evening!
Within and Without is an on going art, poetry and music project that I started several years ago. This is the first part and contains the visual poem A Stranger Dream which is also a colouring in book I have produced. Some of the colouring in sheets or art visuals are included in the download along with art work from a sister book not yet released that goes with the track Winter’s Heart.
The whole download costs £1 and comes free with any merch purchase you make. If you wish to just just purchase the merch you can go to my Etsy shop.
I hope you all enjoy the work.
I painted this as a present for my inlaws – it is their garden and cat Wallace. I loved how the light shone through the palm tree in the morning whilst we were staying with them and how the plants frames the mountain.
It’s Simons Town South Africa for those who want to know 🙂
This is a water colour painting on A3 paper – it was painted during a super moon event that my friend felt had significant astrological importance. She ran a group meditation and I painted.
So I have a Patreon account – the idea is that people can basically sponsor me to create art, poetry, science etc… at the moment I am posting the progress of a secret art project up on there. Though the art work will eventually go live for everyone to see you are looking at a year or so I think but if you are a patreon then you can see how and when the project progresses – this is only fair as it is money from this platform that has allowed me to buy the art supplies I need for said project.
There will be extras for the higher paying patreons as well 🙂
Also it is not the only thing – often my stories and poems appear on there before they go public as well.
One secret art project.
Art prints of A Stranger Dream have arrived – these are wonderful – I am really chuffed with the quality and I have found some black frames which work really well with the images.
Currently there are only three designs: Dismissed, Identity Clinging and Love. As these sell I will have enough capital to get more made but it is going to be a slow roll out – sorry guys!
Also I am not currently selling things online other than the book itself which you can get through amazon. The reason for this is that the after affects of head bang make it still a bit too much for me but I am selling them at events.
Obviously I have only just launched A Stranger Dream: Love
Trying to decide what type of ink style colouring in book to draw next – so here's a poll! tweet me "other" too 🙂
— Sarah Snell-Pym (@Saffy) May 6, 2016
Yes it’s on twitter – I’m not quiet sure how this works but if you can’t click the options on there then just comment 🙂 Also I am happy to consider other suggestions 🙂
Thanks muchly 🙂
I am a poet, I am an artist, I am many things some of which seem contradictory – after the head bang last year the question of identity reigned large in my vision of self – not just my identity but everybody’s and societies reactions to identity issues – so I started working on a series of images.
I was learning how to draw again and the ideas were appearing faster than I could create them, I spent 3 months working on the visuals for A Stranger Dream. And mainly I have had positive feedback though some people do hate the style and that is fine it is stark, it was meant to be.
But what is A Stranger Dream? Well for a start it is not A Stranger Dream it is A Stranger Dream: Love but it’s not it is
or both or neither or something…
It is a non-linear visual poem on identity, gender, our place within family, our concentric non-ecludian intersecting and exclusionary circles of all the cultures of us – it is the distorting mirrors within our own heads – the fitting and the not fitting – the fires within.
I know it doesn’t look it but it was a hell of a lot of work.
Then someone said “it says colouring in book to me” and I thought… why not?! I thought people colour to relax, to sort thoughts, to just be themselves and that is fitting – plus colouring in book is on the list of to-dos and I have been producing colouring in sheets for my kids workshops for ages.
So I started by popping the images up as individual sheets for download and colouring – they are still there and they are free.
Then I made ring bound ones at home for shows and events… people far away started asking how they could get hold of them so I have created a colouring in book complete with purple spine and title box because… I am the Purple Poet!!!!
Here is a picture of the spiral bound ones at The True Believers Comic Book Festival earlier this year.
And this weekend (April 22-14 2016) I am having a launch party – sadly I am only running a virtual one but it is going to be epic!!!
I will be pinging around the internet – of course hoping people will buy the book but as I said don’t feel you have to because I put the individual sheets out there for free download and I know times are tight (having said that I need to buy more art supplies… to you know produce more art!).
There is a Facebook Event, a Google+ Event, a twitter hashtag # astrangerdream and my patreon account (which will have hidden extras in it for patreons only). There are also the blogs namely this one and Turquoise Monster which is my poetry blog 🙂 So I think that is pretty much everyone covered – I am hoping to do a little film thingy too but we will have to see how the laptop holds up!
The colouring book is already up on Amazon and Book Repository etc… it is appearing as £10 odd – I meant it to be roughly £7 if you’ve bought the £10 copy let me know as I have a little goody bag to post to you containing some lovely tie-in items 🙂 (yes I am trusting people to be honest here! Thankyou 🙂 )
Oh and there should be a gallery unveiling where people can post pictures of their colouring in – if they wish 🙂
There are going to be give aways but there will also be merch for sale and special offers etc… (sorry guys I would love to give you everything for free but I do need a new computer!).
I am actually stupidly excited about this and am even making myself an outfit out of the art work! The poetry cards have arrived and are beautiful in a way I was not expecting 🙂
Most of all though regardless of weather you buy or take for free or just look – mainly I hope everyone will be enriched by the work itself, it was very important to me whilst creating it. It’s kind of an imprint of the soul, maybe a darker one than people would like but it is… something – I’m not quiet sure what.
I hope you will join me for turning the starkness into a rainbow.
