Hippopottermiss

Happy new year everyone
I made this specially for all my friends and fans, and enjoyed playing about doing it.

Here in France we wish people Happy New Year rather than Happy Christmas and we have up until the end of January to do it, which suits me fine because I'm always so busy in the run up to Christmas.

So what's been going on recently? The weather this winter hasn't been very cold but it's been wet, wet, and more wet. Yesterday the sun shone but today it's back to raining. I took a lovely photo of my neighbour Emile one morning when the road by my house was flooded. He and my dog Tila were playing in the water.

Since I bought my house in 1999 the river has only flooded over the road five times - three of them this winter!

Work is still being slowed down by my wrist which is still slowly getting better. I can do a lot more with it now but not everything, and it hates the cold weather I have made myself some woolly wrist-warmers from an old pair of woollen tights and I wear one almost constantly, including at night. It is helping, so I'll just have to keep wearing one until things eventually get back to normal.

My eyes are misbehaving again. Last week I developed some more black spotty bits in my left eye and have lost a bit more sight. It scares me a lot and I wish they would stop it! Since there's no treatment I'll just have to put up with it and do my best to slow it down. I'm seeing the ophthalmologist again in February.

I had the good luck to be able to go to The USA again in October, to the annual Hippolotofus reunion in Branson MO. Hippolotofus is the international hippo collectors group. This year's reunion will be in Portland OR so with a bit of luck I'll be able to tack on a few days on the Oregon coast and paddle in the Pacific Ocean. I've done the Atlantic and Indian oceans, the North Sea, and the Baltic, but never the Pacific. The coastline looks really nice. Hippos are still my biggest sellers and I still have lots of ideas for new ones

My favourite new thing from last year is my badger design. First I did some black, white and grey ones, then I tried them in colour. I have lots more experimenting to do with them yet.


I'll have some for sale soon at my next show, which will be at the "Festival Natur'Armor", a regional nature and environment festival here in Brittany in France. The theme is local biodiversity so I will only have local wild species on show.

Welcome to all my new watchers that add themselves a few here, a few there I hope you continue to enjoy what I post. I'm amazed and pleased that there are so many of you that like my work. I continue to enjoy visiting your pages when I have the time.

Love and big hugs to everyone - the world is a better place with hugs in it

And now I'm going to shamelessly indulge my everlasting passion for spirals and pretty colours

















 

It's about time I uploaded some photos of my latest work. I'm back to modelling a little but intermittently and not for long at a time.

So where does the ability to incorporate that "aww" factor into my work come from? I have no idea. How come cuteness oozes from my animals? It must be something to do with my silly, naive view on the world, and my very visual brain. My world is peopled by shapes and colours, harmonies and contrasts. The small details in life can delight me more than the bigger picture. Other people can make fierce-looking warrior-like creatures but I think I would be incapable of that, and must admit to not really wanting to try. The trick lies in extracting the essential essence of an animal, and what is essential varies a lot from one species to another. Once you've done that you can do almost anything with the parts that aren't essential. ferocious or funny they all have the same essentials. Who would have thought round, fat, stripey giraffes with little conical legs would work, but they do. Oh well, I'm just  thankful that I seem to be able to do it, and that you all seem to like the result There aren't enough smiles in this big bad world and it pleases me enormously to be able to give you some.

Yes, another DD yesterday, for my trio of giraffes:

Firdtly I'd like to thank for suggesting them
and for featuring them

Yesterday must have been giraffe day in DD land. There was another really nice one in yesterday's DDs too:
by 
I find his gallery delightful.

A big welcome to all my new watchers. I hope whatever I add next will be to your liking. I try to visit the galleries of all my watchers but I have to admit to failing miserably lately. I will do my best though. I'd like to say thank you to all the 1872 people (so far) who have put it into their favourites I won't have time to thank you all individually but I do appreciate every single one of you.

I've not been posting much lately as I still can't work properly because of my wrist injury. It is slowly getting better but I have to be careful to not set it back by doing things it doesn't like. The good news is that my eyes seem to be behaving a bit better. I'll never regain the lost bits of retina but if I can stop them getting worse it has to be good. I have stacks of new ideas I'd like to work on so there will be some coming sometime. Fortunately the people who are waiting for orders are being very kind and patient. It's really frustrating being mostly out of action.

Anyway, here's a little selection of very nice things from amandas-sketches and Talty to say thank you.
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Well I never! - a journal from Jen at last

Where have I been? Oh, nowhere in particular. I was a bit down a dark slimy hole for part of the winter and have been having difficulty crawling back up the other side. I think the rather spiteful crop-up monster that has been living at the bottom of my garden has been having fun making nasty things happen to me again
Two things have hit me hard:
1) My eyes have been playing up again. More black spots & streaking lights, but in the right eye this time. One episode in February then another in May. Lots of tests later the conclusion is that I have patches of retina that decide to curl up their toes and die. No obvious explanation apart from age and being short-sighted. They say that nothing can be done but monitor it and any changes in my vision. I'm taking various supplements to boost the circulation in my eyes and I'm being careful not to do too much heavy lifting, that's all there is Yes it's likely to progress and my sight will get worse but nobody can say at what speed. Keep your fingers crossed for me that it goes super slow and doesn't get too bad before I'm 90 years old. It scares the s*** out of me.
2) I tripped on a curbstone in a car park in March and sprawled flat on my face. At first I thought I'd just sprained my wrist and got some bruises and scrapes but the bruises faded and the scrapes healed, the swelling in my wrist went down but it was still painful. Doctor's verdict - I have a cracked scaphoid bone in my wrist. It'll get better slowly, very slowly. Unfortunately that's rather messing up my work and I'm having to do a lot of things differently and slowly, very slowly too.

So what have I been very slowly doing? I've been experimenting with my new stoneware kiln, trying out different clays and ideas. The advantage of making stoneware animals is that they can go outside all year round because stoneware is non-porous and doesn't suffer from freezing. I've made some new hippos specially for gardens. They're all rounded and a lot like stones, except that of course they're more fun. I've got a new giraffe design too One of the things I'm NOT doing at the moment is dipping things in buckets of glaze because grasping things is really painful that means I'm making stuff that I can decorate by hand. Quite interesting really. It's called "making the most of things". Bad for the bank balance but good for the creativity, and a whole lot better than just sitting around saying "I can't do any work because..."

I thought I'd change my name to Hippopottermiss because it suits better than Jenzanimo which dates from a long ago era. I have my Hippopottermiss page on facebook and am known as that by my hippo collectors club friends. When I have the time !! I'll be creating my new Hippopottermiss website as a complimentary site to my jen-robinson one because I want to put a lot more things "hippo" on it than fit comfortably in with the rest.

OK - I've got an exhibition coming up this weekend. Back to work (slowly and carefully).

Oh by the way - I've always resisted using watermarks or links on my photos but with the advent of Pinterest, where people change comments and often don't respect the source of the photo I decided I'd just have to do it. I found a few of my pieces on there with no source information at all and one that was circulating was even distorted! Grrr! I'll still try to keep the writing off the animals themselves.

OOH LOOK! a pretty journal At least I get to feature some of your lovely things again.
You see - I won the November Artisan Crafts theme challenge with my dragon.

I used the resulting points, along with dA's current "two for one" offer to get myself another subbie

So how are you all this festive season? I hope you're well and happy and enjoying the idea that we're past the shortest day (in the Northern Hemisphere anyway).
We won't talk about the economy. It has disgraced itself and doesn't deserve any presents this year.
To cheer myself up I set myself a personal challenge - make the tiniest hippo, full featured and glazed. I intend to beat this one but, for starters...



Get anything nice under the tree this morning? Well does it really matter? I've been given some really nice things recently that were nothing to do with Christmas, and I think they count so much more than what's under the tree I'm really in two minds about the commercialization of Christmas. On the one hand I profit from it because us professional artists sell a lot at this time of the year and on the other hand I hate it! The mad buying frenzy and feeling obliged to spend more than you can afford on presents and food. Well I'm not into all that. I'm into giving love and happiness, but in other ways than overspending and stuffing yourself.

That's enough rambling I'm not a rancid old scrooge. I enjoy Christmas and the fun side of things so I hope you're having a nice time with family and friends.

Thanks to all my new and not so new watchers, and the people who put my work in their favourites, and comment, and send notes. I appreciate all of you I just don't often have the time to thank you individually.

I'm going to celebrate the return of my pretty journal by featuring some nice things from my latest watchers and from my inbox. Sit back and feast your eyes



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