Its been an interresting month filled with quite a few small freelance jobs, big church events, brainstorming new products and – I’m not sure what else – but time has certainly flown!
Now its time to evict the mountainbikes that have taken up residence in my art space, reclaim my half of the studio and start putting pen to paper.
I am very excited about developing my new product, a product that incorporates quite a few of my passions, aimed at kids between ages of five to about eleven.
One of the things on my list of “things to be accomplished before I go to an old age home” is making my own illustrated storybooks. Some of the other dreams are: making up fun, interactive activity books with puzzles and games relating to my stories, and paper cut-fold-and-paste activities; somehow I would like to combine these products with my love for print, paper and teaching.
this is what happens when I abandon my studio: mountaing bikes take up residence!
The stories in these books will all have a Cape Town theme, inspired by local history and folklore. The characters that I have developed in the last few months will feature in these stories, they will be taken out on adventures in and around Cape Town. I will assemble small “activity sets” with my storybook, colouring-in pages, pencil crayons, paper or cardboard cut-out activities and something else. I would like to have at least three activities per set. The “something else” I still have to work out!
Another plan is to sell my original artwork. We (my brother and I) have designed a very stylish framing system, these frames are so clever, they can be packed flat and posted anywhere in the world and you can assemble them in two ticks – all by yourself.
Lastly, I have been doing some more lino-cut experiments. At the moment I am still deciding between water-based inks and oil-based inks (I prefer the latter), and my palette is very limited as I have not found a supplier with a nice wide selection of colours. Perhaps I need to mix my own.
a two colour experimental lino print
more of the background has been cut away
Ooh that looks cool. I don’t know when last I did lino cutting.
Go Janette Go!!!!! I LOVE the idea of the adventure packed story books for kids – especially with the activities etc. And your characters will be the cherry on the cake!
The framing system also sounds very interesting… where can one see it?
Love the ideas!!