I have Been searching the net for insperation for my project and i decided that i wanted to
stick to my my irsh roots and explore irsh folklore and mythology, i have always been fasinated by myths and tales from my nan who had all these crazy stories about faries and suchlike and i felt this would be perfect inspiration for and artistic out come :)

above shows some old irish illustrations from an old folklore story called

LEGEND of PRIEST and WERE - WOLVES.....

possibly my outcome?

I just remembered I took these images of artwork at a cafe in town with my mobile, so the qualitys really bad. I really loved the pop-up effect, and the fact there done in wood is perfect for the theme "forest" I could possibly maybe do something along these lines for my final piece, I know its still early days to be talking about final pieces', but I could take inspiration from what I have been looking at and my photographs. we'll see. :)

first set of photographs

These are my first set of photos, I used my beautiful two year old niece as the subject, I wanted to try use little red ridding hood and the teddy bear picnic as inspiration and I also wanted the outcomes darker. The fact that the images are showing a two year alone in the woods is dark enough (she wasnt really alone, clearly lol)

I used photoshop to do a (dodgy) colour mask one image, which after I did reminded me of the movie "schindler's list", its a brilliant movie, if you haven't seen it I'd recomend you do. After I coloured masked that I adjusted the others. one image shows her food for grandma scattered on the forest path, this I found quite sinister, almost crime scene like. The teddy bear picinc images are very cute, not really the dark effect I wanted. I have lots of images I just selected a few to post. I'm going out again to take more photographs to see what else I can come up with. All comments are greatly appreciated thanks. :)

oh p.s - if your going to take a two year old out to take pictures of them......dont! they dont listen and say "NO!" alot.

I found this Japanese artist by complete serendipity - happy accident! Her stuff is amazing! I have always had a thing for root systems - trees and branches. These are from her installation Urban Nature. Her name is NAOKO ITO. The comments that some people gave about her glass jars are funny because they show how some people really seem to appreciate it, and how others are poking holes just out of plain jealousy! I like the way she puts some little jars inside the bigger jars. I'm wondering how she preserved them all. Someone else also said within the comments that they look like the branches will grow, and so the jars will multiply to contain them. I think it's just fabulous!

These are my photos from Slieve Gullion. My niece showed me how to upload my images!! I had saved them in my word document instead of my images!

FOR SIOBHAN - I've just remembered how to do the pictures! Only because I just saw it again there now! When you go into the New Post bit and there's the wee Compose box to do the writing, along the top where the Font types and spell check and stuff is, there are wee icons of a rubber / eraser (!), a film reel and a picture - click the picture and it will allow you to upload pictures! Oh the joys of not knowing how to use this and making lots of mistakes!!

OK, I'm going to go with this one first - it's a painting belonging to my parents, well my Mama more so! There are all sorts of Witchy stories behind it, plus it has always drawn very differing comments from people! Some people hate it, others are transfixed by it! It has always reminded me of the Fairy Glen in Rostrevor, except I don't think that it is of there. The photo I took of it is the best of a bad bunch because I couldn't get proper lighting. I'm going to put other stuff on now too.