Jane Davenport

Spring in My Step © Jane Davenport - to purchase, click on image

How I wish this were the case. It feels as if spring had arrived! So i can make myself feel warm by looking at sunny summer memories….the ladybirds will be here soon….

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

I Give You Butterflies ©Jane Davenport. Love it? It's available in my store!

Sophisticated Ladies © JAne Davenport

It’s been a full-on week! I have had some BIG creative projects to kick of, which always take herculean strength to get rolling. Of course once the ball is on the go, it’s easy to pick up the pace, slow down a little, alter course or change direction! But I feel as if I have been trying to shape all my creative energy into the actual ball itself. Scattered energy,  Aaaaaargh!

So at the end of my mental gymnastics week, I got ‘told off’ by an associate. I could hear in the person’s voice and the chaotic background that they were under pressure, and our conversation just kept on esculating until the person became aggressive. When I say ‘our’ conversation I am being generous, as I didn’t get to chime in…yes, we had a problem to sort out, but I was addressed as if I was a naughty child. It’s been a looong time since I have been spoken to in that tone. I was too shocked/tired/scared(!) to stand up for myself, explain or state my version of events, so I took on all the venting and finger wagging and slung away with my tail between my legs. I wonder how long I will be mentally hiding under the bed from this person!

I was worried that the situation would totally derail me from my other projects, because I felt really bad about the way I had been spoken to, and why I would not ‘fight back’.  I am just not good at confrontation and I will go a long way to avoid it. It freaks me out. I need time to think about things. I like to ponder all the angles. I take everything personally. Blech!

Anyway! pretty pink saved me from fingernail biting. I didn’t have time to worry about it all day yesterday, as I was in my Byron Bay gallery. It doesn’t happen often, but I enjoy it when I am working there! Seeing my work on the gallery walls, chatting to people, seeing what they like, what images people linger in front of,  answering curious questions about my artwork. Helping people make selections is fun!

And maybe because I was still feeling a bit shakey in the back of my brain, I was really attracted to the soft pinks and greys of, the above images “I Give You Butterflies’ and ‘Sophisticated Ladies’ hanging in the gallery. They comforted me. I am feeling a whole new level of love for these images – some of my most popular. They reminded me how lucky I am to do what I love and how hard I have worked to achieve a level of technical proficiency that allows me to get to an image I see in my head! I feel the need to create some friends for these two. Yes its winter, so finding bugjects will be a challenge, but where there is a will there is a way, right?! So after my lovely Gallery day and this chat on my blog, I am feeling all better now! Yay!

I hope you are having a lovely weekend (and nobody gives you a ticking off!)

Choose Happiness,

x Jane

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….

Nesting-Instinct © Jane Davenport

Here is a little preview of the story I am creating with my photography at the moment….

( A cosy little nest must feel like a boat on a wild ocean when its windy.)

Choose Happiness

x Jane

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!

The drive home from Sydney to Byron Bay can be a real drag…time is measured out in coffee stops and toilet breaks. So any excitement along the way is always welcome, especially if it is of a close encounter with a giant bug!

As we passed a new sushi roadside diner at Coffs Harbour, my eyes clamped on a HUGE insect sitting on the lime green wall. Can you imagine how BIG it was to see it from the road? So I commando rolled out of the moving vehicle to dash over and have a close-up look…I split with excitement when I saw her huge pregnant belly, flourescent green eyes, and splashes of emerald down her wings. A magnificent site. And my mind started racing over the photo opps as I darted back to the now safely stationary car to grab my camera. And then I remembered…my camera was in Canon hospital getting repaired (the lens had locked with the camera body!). OK, not to worry, I will take her home. A quick google check (love my iphone!) revealed she was a species that lives in my area as well, so I could relocate her without guilt.

Now what to put her in? Well it just so happens that I never travel without a bug house in the car. Oh, right, it’s full of baby  stick insects ( a gift from one of my art collectors in Sydney – really!) and the mantis will definitely polish them off. So into a rinsed-out drink container she goes. I could hear her scrachety-scratching for the rest of the journey.

The next day, safe and sound in her own bug house, the mantis layed her eggs (told you she was preggers) and looked at me hungrily. I have been hunting grasshoppers for her ever since. And managed  to find a rocket frog, damselflies and a plethora of other little critters for lots of photographic fun over the long weekend!

Tenodera australasiae – aka: The Australian Mantid or Purple Winged mantid

As you can imagine, I have been very careful with my large guest and I prepared the studio carefully for her photo-session. I planned the images I wanted before picking up the camera (which arrived back safely – thanks Canon!).

I have been watching the hordes of people at the Sydney Royal Easter Flower and Garden Show taking photos of the competition flowers on display.

99% of people must have their point-and-shoot camera set on full auto and just poke it at the Grand Champion rose, BANG! flash goes off, on to the next flower. I really do pity whoever would be shown all the bleached out, non-composed snap shots…Boring!
What would make those shots so much better straight away would be for people to line up a non- distracting background. If you are going to the trouble of snapping something, why not make it fairly clear what you where trying to take a picture of!
2nd, make sure you select the ‘Macro’ mode ( usually represented by a tulip logo).
3rd – check your flash mode. Judging by all the flashes going off around me all day ( I am getting to know how Britney feels!), most of those little cameras are in. ‘forced flash’ mode- that means the flash will fire- no matter what! “Experiment with your other flash modes people!” is what I feel like calling out…a little fill flash, 2nd curtain sync, or no flash at all may give better or more interesting results.

Get rid of that ugly camera strap that your camera came with. Especially the type that have your cameras brand on it! They may say “Canon/Nikon/etc Digital Camera” but they also shout “oooh, look, person with expensive, new camera. Come steal me”.
I have tried the techno, load bearing neoprene-type straps, but the tend to bounce around and I found them more annoying than shoulder saving.

A few years ago, I saw a young lady with a GORGEOUS camera strap. My antennae went wild! She directed me to Etsy.. and a search later, I had my own customised camera straps being made and sent from the USA. Ladybirds on one (of course), and red with white polka dots on the other – with a ribbon corsage! I got mine from shabby straps.

Go to Etsy here and search for ‘Camera Strap dslr’. Or you can opt for a padded strap cover. I noticed at Sewtamz you can have your initials embroidered on the straps. You can also get a strap for your point-and-shoot camera. Lots of delectable delights!

The added bonus of this splash of individuality, is that your camera is very easily recognisable, and less likely to disappear in a crowded situation. Have fun!

Here is the continuation of my essential kit:

5. little flash – Canon Speedlite 270EX
This small and light flash is a cracker!  If I need to pop just a little bit more light into some shadowy recess of the universe, I can. It has a diffuser and I can angle the head to bounce the light from another surface and on to my subject. I wish my fancy macro flashes were more portable, like this one. I usually only take them with me if I have a string of sherpas to help hump them up the mountain…! I am hoping that this is the next area to get some technological advance. Smaller, lighter flash technology is needed for naughty, hand-held photogs like me!

6. Cleaning cloths:
i have a nifty souvenir microfibre glass cleaning cloth with a map of New York on it for the back of the camera and a little pack of lens cleaning tissues.

8. Water in  spray bottle:
i can drink the water, spray it on my face if it’s hot and spray it on a surface/ flower to deepen its colour if I want. Sometimes spraying a beetle will also prevent it from flying off as they like their wings to be dry before heading off into the wild blue yonder!

7. Headache pills:
Looking through a little viewfinder with one eye open and the other scrunched up for hours on end and not drinking any water is a sure-fire recipe for massive headache. I often don’t even realise how much pain I am actually in, until I resurface into the real world from hours spent gazing at my magnified view of ladybirds and flowers.  Nurofen has saved me many times!

9. Spare film:
Sandisk Xtreme series IV 16GB card in the camera and 2 x 8GB cards in the bag – just in case…

10. iphone:
I can play music, set a timer ( I lose all sense of time when I have found an engaging bugject), and call in an emergency.

There! my top 10 essentials! Actually there is one last – A good camera bag, but this deserves its own post!

The Macro Workshop in my Byron Bay studio was a cram-packed day! I set-up all the shots, but I did not get a chance to take any photos on the day….and when I saw the images my students had made…well!..I was just so inspired to get my own take on each ‘set’. So I recreated them all again the next day and then I let my beautiful subjects bugjects go.

Of course, I couldn’t re-magic the shots we found outside, but I did have a few lovely hours outside with the dragonflies. Which was lucky as it turned out, because the next day the council came and did some major works on dredging the waterway…and wrecked my dragonfly hunting grounds! : (““

Oh, how I love my new studio stand-block-thingy. I have been cooking up this contraption in my head for a good long while..and finally in a burst of sub-concious and concious colliding, I was able to jot down what I had in mind. This innocuous looking block looks innocent enough, sculptural even…but its simple form allows me to turn it to  4 different  positions and a myriad uses.

The ever-delightful and increasingly carpenter-ish Angus, turned my scribbled ideas into a real-world thing – my studio block…actually that has a nice solid ring to it  that deserves to be capitalised: Studio Block. maybe even all caps and exclamations : STUDIO BLOCK!!!

Ok, so, my Studio Block is designed so I can

1. Low and wide for tableaux that I want to shoot from above. I can stand on my Studio Block to shoot from above, or
2. In the same position I can place my light Cube from Japan on it – and voila, the perfect space for photographing flying insects! It is wide enough at the bottom, so that my bugjects can’t escape.
   If I need more light, the flash heads can be placed right up against it. In this position I sit on the floor and can give my bugjects space, so they are not stressed and I get the images I love.
3. Next I can place my infinity board stand on it, and it is at a perfect height for creating still life compositions (which I am really doing alot of at the moment). My Infinity board stand is a great piece of equipment, but rarely utilised because it is a weird height.  Too low on the ground, too high on a table…but just right on my Studio Block.
4. I roll my Studio Block (loving its name!) to its medium height for creating compositions that I want to shoot from the front.  It is the perfect height for shooting from a chair. This is life-changing stuff! As I can now sit comfortably, and rearrange compositions to my finnicky hearts content. I can roll a block of shelf things I got at Ikea (and have hated and tried to throw out for three years, but it just kept on being useful…and now, well I love it) right next to me. The load the ikea thing up with the props I might like to use, and then just tinker. Bliss. If I want to shoot the composition from above, I just stand on a chair.
5. The high side of my Studio Block comes up to my waist and it is a great height for small things. I have been photographing all the new jewellery for the Institute of Cute and it really is a great height.

Do you want to see it?

Yay the Birdwing butterflies ‘hatched’ from their giant chrysalis yesterday! And I have been in hot pursuit of them ever since…

This morning I went on a Butterfly watching walk with Kath Vail, an environmental campaigner and butterfly expert in the Byron Shire. The weather has been unsettled for the past few days and is still very humid – perfect for butterflies! I learned that many butterflies are attracted to hilltops and males wage heated territorial battles. So while wandering amongst the zooming butterflies was utter magic, trying to capture a pic was like trying to remember a dream, always just a little bit out of  reach.

Blue Triangle butterflies in a territorial dispute....

I was surprised to find I managed to capture anything at all, because the butterflies were just SO fast and unpredictable. This image prompted me to look through my vast collection of butterfly images looking for pics I had taken of them in full flight.

I was surprised at how long I have been struggling with this unrealised mission and how much film (both roll and digital) I have dedicated towards it. I have many, many pics of movement blurred butterflies tearing along garden paths, above tree-tops and across skies.

For example, I visited the extraordinary Chicago Botanic Gardens a few years ago, and after hours and hours of enjoying the gardens and all the bugs in them, spotted two large butterflies playing tag across the carpark (which was an arboretum in itself).

I love these images because they remind me of magnificent days spent in sunshine with time to admire nature and marvel at the world. They aren’t magic images to anyone except me. They inspire me to keep experimenting and trying to overcome the impossible and capture an image that fully conveys the beauty I am witnessing and joy I feel when butterfly watching.