So digressing from the Christmas theme for the 3D Miniature Theatre card images, I also thought some other themes for cards would be good  - summer, gardening, dogs and having tea!! The last set of sketches is from my set of stories of Little Heart : it's the lady who grows from a tree and her little dog Bianco ( the lady doesn't have a name yet! ) The last coloured pic is of ideas for labels for jars and tins, based on Little Heart stories, The Maid and the Wolf, and Buttons and Just-Be!

I've always loved the Silly Symphony cartoons from the 20's and 30's. I am just crazy for the silly and creative ideas of the miniature and secret worlds of characters of all sorts: animals, insects, candy land characters, fairy and all! I started with an idea of having three main characters and setting up a 3D miniature theater scene to photograph for cards. This is Buttons the Mouse, first semi-final sketch, and his two friends Just-Be and Cheery Bird. Buttons is now a composite of these two original ideas.

 My first idea was to create a Christmas scene of these characters carrying their Christmas tree home, in front of their Junk Yard Town. These semi-final drawings were done first, then the town. I realized later that they needed to have winter clothes on - they are still in my original idea of summer clothing! Also, I tried colouring in the clothes, and town, but I still like the style of touches of colour instead. Junk Yard Town is in two pics, as it extends onto two pieces of paper.

So continuing with the idea of the Miniature Animal Acrobats, I thought they might need toys to play with! I like the idea of different materials that toys are made of - cloth, wood and tin.

Who knows where this imagery comes from? Somehow, my Handless Maiden imagery, inspired me to draw other pen/ink and pencil crayon images, and as I love the miniature and had some ideas floating around in my head about cartoons and toys, these images were drawn out - my love of maps and charts, armillaries and polyhedrons included!!!

After my Illustration course, I went back through my sketchbooks and took another look at my loose sketches for acrylic paintings, based on my imagery from the "Handless Maiden" tale. I decided to make semi-final drawings in pen and ink and pencil crayon as an alternate medium to painting. I have been working in my sketch book with my art group.

Who knew that Theoretical Math had 3D models? These are fantastic as inspiration!! The top image is of a Klein bottle, that theoretically has only one surface. The next image was inspired by the idea of "non-dominance", where there is no beginning separate from the end, like the Klein bottle. I joined an art group where, at the time, we were choosing a word for our next artistic explorations.

So, somewhere in my travels on the Internet, I came across 3D polygons, and inspired by an illustration by Moebius of a crystal, decided to try my hand at both!