Look at my cute love letter I got today !

“Hi Jane,

I have drawn you a picture. It is a picture (on the left) of our yard the other day. It was very windy and the rainbow lorikeets couldn’t fly good and all the branches were swirling in the windy air.  The other picture is of our yard the next day and I took Nate (her brother) to look at the flowers with ladybirds on them.

I really liked watching your video and Little Red Riding Hood. I am going to be a artist like you.

bye I have to give Dad his fathers present

From Sheridan

p.s if you look close enough you will see that it indeed Sheri and Nat (blue of course) standing in the middle of the flowers. CD.

I don’t think Sheridan has to wait until she grows up to be an artist, I think she is one already!

Do you ever have weeks where you experience both dizzying highs and deep-sea lows…of course you do! Well, I am having that sort of time now…

One of my favourite people in the Universe flew from her new home in Singapore to visit me in Byron. I think we laughed non-stop for 4 days! Kirst’s hubby has an exciting job that has seen them living in exotic locales for the last 6 years. I am so happy for their success with career and raising the cutest family – BUT! -( a bug selfish BUT! ) man alive, I miss her so much. long distance friendship is certainly not as nourishing as the person live and in , well…person!

As well as Kirst’s visit, I have been super inspired and painting and drawing like craaaaazy…I am working in different mediums, and finding the challenges, experimentation and discovery of new materials quit delightful…a little frustrating too…but I am getting to where I want to be. And that my friends, is a great feeling!

aaaaand, my husband has choofed off on his long awaited, meticulously unplanned surf trip to Uluwatu, Bali. The agonising over which surfboards to take has occupied much of his mind for the last month. I spoke to him last night, and he has rated the surf as the best in his life! He is loving the friendly Balinese people, the fresh seafood, hanging out with a great mate and the amazing waves of course!

Plus! My store and gallery in Byron Bay has never been busier or looked better. All the new art journal supplies are inspiring people to get creative. All pretty great right?

I suppose life has to counter-weight all these highs with a few poops to keep me from floating off on a smile balloon… seeing my friend has doubled the amount I miss her, I am feeling lonely without Angus and I backed a hire car into our vehicle…and yeah, I didn’t take the extra extortionate car insurance…and yes! in the grand scheme of life on earth, these are nothings!  But I was so enjoying the ride on cloud 9 before the free-fall…haha!

Luckily I landed on a ‘good drawing day’…and spent yesterday doing some sketches that I really love.

Anyways…I am finishing  my first watercolors in preparation for my next exhibition…here’s a sneaky peak!

from 'Above it All' - Water colour series by Jane Davenport

Blue Suede Mantis © Jane Davenport

I was wandering aimlessly through my photo library as I searched for images, ideas and inspiration, and meandered into my praying mantis file. I have quite a collection! Looking at the images, I had the stories and location associated with each one jump into my mind.

This may be because they are so tricky to find with their perfect camouflage. Also, as the top invertebrate predator in the garden, they are relatively scarce in number and probably quite territorial. But I think the majority of the truth lies in the fact that I just like them. I admire them.  I can relate to a mantid (yes, you heard it here first). I would be hard pressed to bring back such clear recall for every bee I have seen for example, even though I am very fond of them also!

The most recent mantis I worked with was the Jade eyed gargantuan a few months ago (here).  The first mantids I worked with are featured in the featured image . In between are dozens of other individuals. I  just really love photographing them and I think it shows!  I have been asked to put a proposal together for an exhibition, and well, the answer has just presented itself – well, to me anyway!

I would love to see these charasmatic creatures staring from gallery walls en masse. I have had mantids feature in a few of my exhibitions…but I think they deserve more than that! I did have one of my mantis images towering over the entrance to  “What’s the Buzz?” exhibition at the Perth Zoo. The magnificent 2m mantis was a favourite with boys!

Anyway, I will send of my proposal and let you know what happens…

Jane

I feel very close to all my artwork. They have become my friends! And I will always care for them.

Kamikaze Bee (c) Jane Davenport - click to purchase

” Kamikaze Bee” holds such a cherished place in my heart and I need to self-celebrate a little today! This image represents the starting point of a monumental journey for me. I  created this image way back in my early bug days, on my first Christmas with my then boyfriend (now husband!).  It was during this trip that my fairly new interest in photographing bugs turned to a serious obsession.  By a quirk of destiny I took it not far from where I live now. But there was a lot of moving around and adventure before arriving back where I started!

This image won a big award in Los Angeles called a ‘Guru’ and was key in securing a scholarship to the Sante Fe Workshops in New Mexico where I had the joy of studying with John Paul Caponigro. It was on the plane coming home from that AMAZING experience and blazing with the passion and confidence to stop dreaming about becoming an artist ‘one day’ and setting about to make my own wishes come true. That I really could do it and that I would follow my bliss.

The little creature is an Australian  blue-banded digger bee. It is swift, solitary and an incredibly hard worker. Head down and bum up she collects treasure from flowers…I feel a kindred spirit there! Thanks little bee.

Choose Happiness,

x Jane

Yep, I get another year wiser this week!

Angus gave me the most DIVINE woolen rug from Las Ninas. It is Bolivian – back loomed, muted colourful yumminess. It is in my new art area and is lovely, lovely lovely. I will go and take a photo now to show you!

I have 5 studios within my studio…they seem to be breeding! So this is my ‘pondering’ studio. It is my favourite space in the world. It contains my lovely old Art Journal desk. My beloved books. A place to think with pencils, paint and paper – and no computer. ( Man alive,  the computer is a time succubus for me. )

My Bolivian wool rug!

I have been up very early, reveling in my survival of another year. I don’t feel ANY different. I still feel about 8 years old. I don’t think I have changed much since then (a bit taller!).

Have a wonderful day!

Jane Davenport art journal ©

x, Jane

What doesn't kill you, makes you stranger. Pages from Art Journal.

Just some doodlings from me today!

choose happiness,

xJane

You can tell when I have a commission / exhibition/ project that I am really excited about because my studio gets super-clean and totally reorganized. Instead of getting down to work and actually being productive, I start on all the little ‘chores’ that have been lurking around at the periphery. Things that are ‘sort-of’ important … really tidying my studios,  labeling/categorising images from the past months, scanning/ photographing artwork and journal pages, priming canvases, reshuffling inspiration boards, watching podcasts and queued YouTube videos…blah, blah,blah.

All this cleaning and shuffling is an important part of my creative process.

In the distant past, I used to get tempted during this phase to watch TV series and  -gasp- play video games…now that really is a waste of time!….lots of fun, but a waste of my life! So I curbed that wicked addiction through massive willpower and now I practice what I call Active Procrastination. While I am gathering and sculpting my thoughts under the surface, I do all the ‘sort-of’ important things. They need to get done eventually as they are beneficial, but they are not ‘red-hot’ important.

So although I am not actively doing my most important work, I am doing good stuff! To the onlooker, I still look productive. But inside I feel like I am dawdling and pottering around. I am organising, tidying, preparing, cleaning up.  I am not wasting my time. I relax into this process now because I know I will have my internal processes in order, my thoughts sculpted and eventually get down to the real work – usually right before the deadline -  and pour forth in a great creative deluge. Aaaah the relief!

I know that this is about to happen in the next few hours. I was invited to present a proposal for the most EXCITING commission two weeks ago. And I have since moved my whole studio around, finished a sketchbook (really!), filled my entire art journal with backgrounds and learned how to use three software programs. In the past I may have paniced a bit and beat myself up worrying about why I can’t get started on my ‘proper’ work. ! But now I understand my creative process and I have been whistling away as I Actively Procrastinate.

And today I am feeling ‘angsty’. I am getting annoyed at everything and everybody because it feels as if they are blocking me from focusing on my Proposal. My poor husband just came up to my desk, and his footsteps drove me crazy! I was SCOWLING WILDLY by the time he got to my desk – my look said “WHAT DO YOU WANT! LEAVE ME ALONE! AAARGH!!!”. And now I feel so mean, because he was very kindly bringing me a delicious coffee…! Luckily he has been on this creative path with me from the beginning, so he understands the process!.

Once I finish this post, I will have to go completely radio silent as I begin to poke, squeeze and meld my ideas/thoughts/ideas into something I can comprehend. I am often frustrated and a bit manic during this phase – the whole world stops and condenses to just me and my work.  And then Once I have bought my ideas into a coalesced form, I will shape them into the Proposal. And once I have finished  printed, PDF’ed and posted the proposal, the dancing around will commence! YAY!

What is your creative process? Have you noticed your creative patterns? I would love to hear them!

Wish me luck in creating an amazing proposal for my next large-scale outdoors art installation – it’s soo exciting…must get to it!

Choose Happiness,

x Jane

"Everyone always referred to her as a bright girl." © Jane Davenport

I am feeling very BRIGHT today…I woke up this morning with the rising sun, leaped out the front door for a 5km run,  (is this rhyming? ), then I swam for an hour…KIDDING! It is so cold today (granted it’s only Byron Bay cold – not snowing in the mountains cold) and its reminding me that the ladybirds and most of my insect friends are in hibernation or hiding…so there are few of my Bugjects to photograph. And I miss my little insect buddies!

Having a small pine-full moment…so I had a peep through my huge library of ..sigh… ladybird images ( it’s gargantuan actually , but don’t tell anybody) , and this one caught my eye. I created it in the middle of summer at the Chicago Botanic Gardens. There were flowers everywhere, it was hot and the air was buzzing with little creatures. Nice ones, not the bitey variety. Spring through summer and into the turn of autumn you will find me outside, in the gardens, poking my nose into flowers and looking at the little life. But not in winter.

HOWEVER! that means there is more time to draw and paint, and there has been a lot of that going on…. AND lots of technological advances. The Institute of Cute has a Facebook page and went from 4 friends to 160 (and counting !) in a few days with a bit of effort. AND there was the videos of course, on the IOC’s own YouTube channel (!). And today I start building my Etsy store. The excitement is palpable here in ladybird land…

Of course, there has been a little assistance. I have a magical fairy called Erin helping me. She comes in to the studio 1 day a week and it amazes me the difference in energy it makes. Angus an I both get prepared for ‘Erin Day’ in advance, and we are making videos and thinking about ‘the business end’ of the art studio which adds to the momentum. Even just the tidying up for our guest worker is of huge benefit! And on the day she is here, I think we work harder, just to ‘set a good example’.

…so I am feeling like a Bright Girl too.

Choose Happiness,
x Jane

(click here if the video isn’t showing - )

Yesterday afternoon this was my studio. Overlooking the famous surf break called ‘The Pass’ at Byron Bay. How I LOVE my home! Love, love LOVE it. Angus was out surfing, and I sat and painted at a picnic table with the birds twittering all around me and a few curious onlookers. I intended to do some writing, but painting is all that happened!

The Magician is on the new journal I made myself (hello!) with a canvas cover and lovely water colour papers interleaved with glassine and tracing paper. I drew her that morning  as a preliminary sketch for a series of paintings I am working on.  I plan on doing the front cover tomorrow…!I might draw the little bird in the nest I photographed…or maybe transfer the photo onto the canvas and paint parts of it…or not….hmmm…some more experimentation on the way. Lovely!

The little girl with bugs-on-a-string is a sketch i drew ages ago. I transferred her into my Moleskine journal  to test making a gesso transfer (fun!) and painted her all pretty. I have no idea what will go in next to her, but she will wait until she is just the perfect background for some written thoughts.

I am just ENJOYING drawing and painting so, so, so much. My Art Journal is full of sketches and painting experiments, and that is why I started making my own journals as well- so I could include different papers to play around with. I love combining it with my photography. While the paint is drying  I flit over to my camera and set up  a scenario to shoot…flit back to the canvas…draw, mix paint, make marks…delicious stuff.

Choose happiness
x Jane

P.s. Also! I found an echidna in my driveway at the studio! After a bit of gentle persuasion, we coaxed the little guy into a box and returned him to the bush! Pics coming….

Why does working on a Sunday feel so great? I feel as if I am ‘catching up’ and ‘getting ahead’ ..which is so weird really, because I work for myself, and I can only get ahead of me!

So It has been a super-productive day (to make up for my super-UN-productive day yesterday. I went shopping at my favourite paper crafts store – oh, it was awesome and I came back with such a haul of goodies. Why do art supplies make me so happy?). I have been drawing all morning, and finishing the BEST drawing of my life (I’ll wait to show you it until I’ve painted it…)…plus a few other drawings spilled out (see below). I really like drawing in my Daler Rowney A4 sketchbook. The creeeeeeeamy pages WANT to be stroked with my pencil and petted with my kneaded eraser…

Reading in the Grass. Illustration © Jane Davenport

And then I had to photograph lots of my bigger artworks. I like to record each piece at various stages of completion. I find that recording the painting frees me up mentally to fling paint with wild abandon (or thoughtful posturing – depends on my mood du jour!) because I have a backup point. It must be from all my years of using Photoshop. Works for me!

And I also started work (finally) on an idea that has been RATTLING around in my mind for a while. So I was very fixated on carrying the concept over into reality ….so when my photographic studio lights weren’t bending themselves to my will with ESP and telekinesis (oh, how I wish I had those skills!) … le freaking out… And just as I was teetering on the Brink of Tantrum…I stepped away and saw this email:

” Hi, hope fully this email will reach Jane!

I just have to say after a recent visit to the Perth Zoo, I am absolutely blown away with the displays provided by you.

I am a professional photographer, and can only say that you have an amazing gift – I can honestly say that I (and my kids of course!) absolutely loved the photos as we travelled through the zoo.

Please keep up the good work as it is appreciated very much!

Chris

CK Images
www.ckimages.com.au”

aaaaawww, cool stuff. So that bad tanty Jane instantly dissolved and smiling happy Jane, emailed to and fro with Chris and then I easily rethought the lights and moved on with resolving my project (it’s all secret, hush-hush for now… let me marinate it some more, cook it a little, simmer, bubble, sautee.)

Choose happiness

x Jane

art journal page by Jane Davenport - "Why Bugs?"

I really enjoyed posting some of my journal pages a few days ago! I carry mine with me everywhere I go. I catch ideas and pin them down before they flit away again….sort of like a flower pressing book. Anyway, I liberated some insect pages from an old World Book Encyclopedia (remember those?!!) and made a collage a while back. Played with some bright colour and shapes (messy and scrumptious).  And that was it for the time being.

Someone asked me “Why bugs” the other day…and when I was manically flipping through my journal in the attempt to distract myself  on the ROUGH flight home last night from Sydney (we didn’t hit any stray tornadoes though! Wild and weird weather…hope the Lennox Head tornado was a one off – NOT a sign of things to come!), the answers to why I just love wrangling insects for my art practice flowed on to the uncannily prepared surface.

i love these moment when ‘things’ just flow…

Choose happiness,

x Jane

Angus and I are venturing to Sydney tomorrow for a very important meeting with my favourite creative cohorts. I will be approving calendars, diaries and other exciting developments. And we are going to squeeze in a plethora of other things and meander around the exciting city.

I have to admit that I would never even consider leaving Byron Bay even just for a few days, if the weather had not finally turned to winter. It has been just so delightful…a chilly evening here and there, maybe…but love lovely loveliness….

Winter page from my art journal

But the rain has arrived, the slippers and doona are out of the cupboard!

Oh yeah! the journal! I started keeping one this year. I did a workshop with fellow Byron Bay artist Zom from pinchmetoseeifyouaredreaming. And I love the process of filling a book with drawings, thoughts, things. I sit on the beach and sketch, ponder, write lists, scribble in and tickle my cute art journals. They have become so precious and I delight in the time I spend working in them.

For some reason I decided to test every pen, pencil paint and marker. I filled many, many pages and it was a delicious experiment!

Here are a few…I just loooooove looking at the colours…rainbows

So every now and then I might share a page with you…

It feels like the year has only just started (yes, I know we are nearly halfway through! Time flies when you are having FUN!) and here I am showing you 2011 calendars…but I was so excited when they arrived from the USA today! I work with Leap Year Publishing, and have 4 titles with them for 2011..

In the Magic Garden

Love & DevOcean

The Sea Party

LadybirDelicious!

The WONDERFUL and EXCITING thing about having my work in calendars each year is that the images are reproduced in full blazing colour in a lovely large and juicy format. Delicious!

When my Australian calendars with OzCorp Publishing are ready to show off, I will let you know!

Paper Kite Butterfly

the beautiful Paper Kite butterfly

Scientific name: Idea leuconoe

This large, striking, black-and-white butterfly flits and floats in the air, like a piece of paper drifting in the wind. Its huge 9 to 10cm wingspan is accentuated by spectacular pattern. It is also known as the Rice Paper butterfly and Large Tree Nymph.

This GORGEOUS tropical butterfly has managed to spread its wings all over the world, simply by being beautiful. You may not have seen it in the wild (I haven’t yet!), but chances are if you have been to a butterfly house, then you have witnessed its loveliness. As you can see, it is attracted to red flowers, so wear a red top or hat if you want one to land on you!

It is a popular butterfly to have in captivity at Butterfly houses because of its size and slower flying pattern. I have photographed them in butterfly houses in Germany, all across the USA, in Australia, Thailand and South Africa. I created these images at ‘That Butterfly Place’ in Branson, Missouri.

In the wild it is found from India through Malaysia and SE Asia.  It is bred commercially in the Phillipines and Malaysia and each chrysalis carefully packed and sent to new butterfly houses around the world.

The chrysalis and newly emerged Paper kite butterflies

The chrysalis is just as beautiful as the butterfly in my opinion. They are yellow with metallic gold and black markings as in the above images. You can see the empty chrysalis with the emerged adult butterflies stretching their newly freed wings.

As caterpillars they eat plants with bitter-tasting alkaloids, which in turn give them a bitter taste and protect them from predation even as butterflies. I look forward to photographing the caterpillars one day…

I had to share this with you, my first Guest Book!

I work with Ozcorp Card and Stationery Co in Australia for my stationery range. I have cards, journals, writing pads, diaries, address books, calendars and even sticky notes featuring my artwork with them!  You can see some of the range on my shop website : here and here. I love it when I am at a meeting or new friend’s house, and I see one of my creations in use. I get very excited when I walk into a nice store or papershop and see a display of my stationery, where I am known to do a little girl jig, and then rearrange and tidy everything!

The image  on the guestbook is called Tropic Love.  I created it in a Plumeria grove in Hawaii. When I look at it I can still feel the bliss of that day…the thrill of discovering such a beautiful place…warm tropical sunshine on my back… the heady, delicious fragrance from thousands of flowers…and plenty of time to relax into making photos…what a dreamy day it was…

Well I have had some superduper-garycooper feedback from some inspiration fairies and I am now organising two regular features for this blog…

1. ‘Sects in the City!

It gives me great pleasure to start writing about bugs in a regular way again! I started ‘Sects in the City as a column published in Burke’s Backyard Magazine and had a lovely page there in every issue for 5 years.  It was a very popular regular feature. Look out for it on Mondays! I am writing about an exciting creature I found and photographed yesterday for the first column!

2. ArtoMology : Shutterbug tips with Jane Davenport

Just in time for the weekend, I will share a few of my photography tricks with you!

And! I just sorted Feedburner out – so if you would like these posts delivered straight in to your email box, why not subscribe to the blog (go on…you know you want to…!).

Leave a few comments on what kind of things you would like to learn…

i am just feeling a bit nudie with my painting exposed in the last Post… so I need to run under the skirts of the familiar for a moment! I created some still-life vignettes (love that word)…for my DevOcean series. It was the first major shoot working with my new Studio Block (see post below – i don’t know how to link to my own posts – cripes!)…and with the AM.AaaaY. ZING weather in Byron Bay the last few whiles…well, being inspired in a beachified manner came as no surprise…

I was tinkering and shooting for hours and hours and hours a day. I will use the images for signed prints, and I shot them off to some of my art licensing partners and they fainted all over the place and demanded hi-res versions..so excitingness on many levels!

I was just searching for something else, and I came across this little piece about one of my books on the Inside Out Magazine blog. A little thrilling really!

I love the line “once more with feelers”!

I am waiting for 6 butterfly chrysalis’s to hatch today , and I just know that I will be thinking of this line all the while. If one of the images turns out, or if it develops into a series, I will probably have to name them “once more with feelers”.

I LOVE the word, ‘Feelers’! Sounds SO much more descriptive than antennae…

When I am amongst entomological or proper scientific company (which does happen on occasion!) a word like feelers or even worse, ‘antlers’, will pop out of my mouth…and heads all swing my way with the puzzled, slightly embarrassed for me expressions…lol!

Must go and check my butterflies and see if their feelers have popped out and they are ready to ‘hatch’!

x Jane

Grazia magazine story

I just received a copy of the Grazia issue where some of my images from Sabah appeared in a story about the fashion shoot I did up there. It was a huge shoot and very challenging. Thankfully, the models were not just beautiful, but super-professional and fun to work with.One of our locations was a Butterfly Garden and thanks to our very thorough make-up artist, I was able to sneak in extra time to photograph bizarre caterpillars, huge butterflies giant stag beetles. (more pics in the Sabah gallery.)

I have been helping with the brand new ‘Institute of Cute’ Website and it is finally finished!

Institute of Cute website Screen Capture