Book collaboration – Backyard friends

The book collaboration which started last year is steadily moving along. Five artists from around the world each made a concertina book, chose a theme and started their book with a double page artwork. This was then posted to the next artist for her contribution. Two of us are in Australia, myself in New South Wales and Karen Bailey in Victoria, two in the US, Cathe Jacobi in Minnesota and Gale Everett Stahlke in Oregon and Rebecca Cary Anderson is in Sweden. So far I have completed my pages in 4 books (my own, see here, Karen’s, see here and Cathe’s see here) so now only Rebecca’s to go!

This book is Gale’s, and is titled ‘Backyard Friends’, the idea being that we depict the creatures we find in our backyards around the time we are making our page. For me it was summer, and the most interesting visitor to our garden is an Eastern Blue Tongue Lizard. It is shy, so we don’t often see it, but hear it rustling through the bushes. Occasionally we will surprise it basking in the sun if it thinks there is no-one about. Its reasonably large, about 45 cm long, and looks fearsome with its thick blue tongue flicking out, but is harmless, and is in fact a good friend for eating slugs and snails in the garden!

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Gale’s painting of the visitors to her backyard
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Cathe’s garden in spring
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Life in Karen’s garden
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The eastern Blue Tongue Lizard in my garden

Visit the other contributors to this project: To see the works as they progress, all of us (except Gale) are on Instagram: karenbaileystudio, cathejacobi, rebeccacaryandersonart, and me anna_warren_portfolio, Gale is at sticksstonesnpaperstew here on WordPress.

Author: anna warren portfolio

I draw, I paint, I am a printmaker. Always searching for the interesting detail in the world around me.

19 thoughts

  2. It’s amazing to see the progress of our books. I’m thrilled that you went for the lizard and good to hear about their elusive backyard nature. 😁
    Thanks for sharing the book!
    Gale

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    1. This one started over a year ago, but we all agreed at the beginning there would be no time pressure – as it has turned out I think that has been useful to us all, with work, travel, health issues and babies all making demands of one kind or another on all of us. I do hope you will show us your book when it is done! There is huge satisfaction to be had from a collaboration like this.

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  7. What a treasure. Karen’s work has a Japanese feel to it which I love. Each beautiful water colour has the artist’s personal stamp on it. I’m sorry to say that our blue tongue lizards are too often found squashed by cars in our area. I hope yours never strays far from its safe Warren garden.

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    1. Hopefully our blue tongue is sufficiently shy to stay well away from the road – although I did recently see a kookaburra had caught a small one. It was far too big for the bird to manage, it was just being greedy! I can see the Japanese feeling in Karen’s page, and even to a certain extent in Cathe’s beautiful blossom too.

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  8. Ah how really lovely Anna !
    A blue tongued lizard would be rather welcome taking up in my garden tump . All the rain recently means many slugs and snails .
    So good to see your artistic creativity and others is as bountiful as ever 😉
    Will be following along closely x

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    1. Poppy! How lovely to hear from you, I have often thought about you. I think you would enjoy having a blue tongue in your garden, it is a useful creature. We haven’t seen a lot of ours lately, but we do hear it stumping through the undergrowth at times. Now I will go and visit you! xx

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