Waiting

A long time ago I bought a box of 6"x6" canvases and promptly forgot about them as other stuff got in the way. Well, I found them again a week or two ago and realised it's been ages since I worked on canvas. 

Paper or board is often an easier option for the sort of heavily textured and layered pieces I like to make now because it doesn't have that natural give to it that a stretched canvas does and I find it easier to print or stamp or collage on. So a challenge for myself here, to see what I can do!

New Video - A Series of Postcards

Finally, I managed to get a new video filmed and edited. I'm working on a series of small postcard sized pieces here. I find that working on several pieces at the same time is helpful for quieting the inner critic and allows me to work more quickly and intuitively so it's something I like to do regularly if I can. Hope you enjoy the video!

Back To Nature

It looks as though we are finally having a bit of proper summer weather here this weekend and I have all the windows open to let the scent of roses into the house. Someone asked me the other day where I get the ideas for some of the more abstract work I do and the answer has to be, more often than not, nature. In my garden, on walks I take with Sam, I can't help but be fascinated by the songs of the birds, the way grasses move in the breeze, the colours and textures of leaves, trees and the landscape in general.

All this feeds into what I make and makes life so much more enjoyable too. When did you last spend time at rest in your garden or the local park? Do it today if you can, even if only for fifteen minutes or so. Just sit in a chair, lie on the grass, or shelter under a tree if it's raining, and pay attention to the sights, sounds and scents around you. I promise you'll feel all the better for it!

Gellis Again!

So, I have been finding other things to do with my stash of Gelli prints and one thing I decided to do was add paint and collage to an 'unfinished' print. Follow along with me here as I show you what I did!

Neon Psycho-delia

A strange confluence of things going on here. I'm still battling with labyrinthitis which is affecting my balance quite badly and making me dizzy-woozy so I haven't got a lot of new stuff to show you. The doc gave me medication for it which helps but hasn't got rid of it. 

However, when I got round to reading the leaflet that comes with the pills I discovered that as well as being a treatment for seasickness and inner ear problems they're also an anti-psychotic used to treat schizophrenia and anxiety! Now I have suffered from anxiety for many years but not, as far as I'm aware, schizophrenia. So maybe if they don't fix my ears they'll stop the panic attacks huh?

Anyway, I digress slightly. I got meself a cool new stencil from Crafters' Workshop. Reminds me somewhat of a Bridget Riley painting. I tried it out on top of a background of neon pink and orange combined with some chalky lilac and baby pink craft paints. I think I'm on a mission to make things which once looked at will burn themselves onto your retinas in perpetuity!

I partnered it with a little tag which has a somewhat quieter feel and uses the negative imprint of the stencil, this time in distress inks. And bees - love this little bee stamp and I think the whole thing fairly buzzes so it seems quite appropriate.

Whirlygig

Just found this painting I did a while back amongst a pile of background papers. I love drawing flowers and leaves, should do it more often really. This was done over layers of brayered acrylics which make an interesting base to work on top of and I used gold ink sprayed over some of the flowers so it gleams. Think I might make prints available of this soon.

Journalling Again

Another page which is the other side of the spread from the previous post and carries on the sunflower theme I'm playing with. This journal I'm working in at the minute has 8"x8" pages but I'm thinking of making one with a larger area to mess about on.

In case you're interested here's what I used for this page:

Materials

• vintage book pages and sheet music
• commercial scrapbook papers
• acrylic paints - Liquitex and Golden
• various stencils
• Faber drawing pens
• Hybrid gel pen
• bee stamp with Stazon ink

More Journalling Fun

Another journal spread using some of my favourite colours and techniques but combined in ways I haven't necessarily done before. It's very freeing just to play with materials and see what happens without there needing to be 'art' at the end of it!

Red Lands

Another 6-inch canvas today from the group I showed you in the previous post. This one got worked and reworked as I went through the hating-how-it's-going stage which always happens before it turns a corner and starts to look like something. 

It's available here, along with a few more views of it.

SOLD

Tiree

Neither of my parents ever went to sea but I grew up with the Shipping Forecast on the radio. Dad in particular always listened carefully to it so I would listen too. And I was transported to a mysterious world of places I had never heard of: Viking, Forth, Tyne, Dogger, North Utsire, South Utsire, the list rolled through my childhood like a mantra and I am still listening to this day and trying to capture that magic in paint and ink.

Tiree is an island in the Hebrides, away off the coast of Scotland.

This piece was created with oil pastels, a medium with similar properties to oil paint, on heavy paper.

Little Landscapes WIP

One of my favourite supports to work on is a chunky, small canvas. When I recently got a whole box full of six inch square ones I decided to prep a few in one go as I always find it easier to work on something which has had the 'newness' taken out of it. So I got out the modelling and texture mediums and applied some of those, followed by some almost random patches of colour.

I can thoroughly recommend this approach if you either have that 'blank page' discomfort or perhaps simply don't yet know what you want to paint. The canvas which ended up being The Inlet started out as the green and white one you can see in the other pics. I had a vague idea of the landscape I wanted to paint but it evolved as I was working on it into something different and, I feel, better.

Often the hardest job when creating something is just getting out of my own way and letting it happen.

Another Red House

I used to dream about living in a red house when I was a little girl. Sometimes it was in the forest and sometimes it was on the seashore but wherever it was there was always a feeling of magic about it and adventures would surely follow.
 

Creative Colour Challenge #2

This week's Creative Colour Challenge is Red and this is my submission. It's painted with my lovely Holbein Irodori watercolours in Antique Red plus some inks. See what everybody's come up with here.

Chuff Chuff, Busy Busy, Work Work, Bang Bang

And for anyone who doesn't remember that old Penguin biscuit ad today's title will make absolutely no sense whatsoever, so, moving on...

I am very busy at the moment, hence the lack of blog love lately. Sorry. This is the kind of stuff I'm up to though. A new cushion cover - I adore the colours in this one - and a print of the painting I showed a couple of weeks ago which I finally got round to finishing. As a friend commented on Facebook: redheads and silver birches, my favourite things.

This week has been spent creating more greetings cards and notecards for PAD and I think I'm going to do some for my Etsy shop too. Better get back to it then!
 

A Little Perspective

 

I wanted to share a little trick with you today, something which, if you haven't already tried it, may well surprise you with its usefulness.

A long time ago, when I first began to make quilts, I discovered that it was nigh on impossible to get a good view of how work on my design wall looked. My studio, although spacious by some standards, is still a small room in a small house and I found that I couldn't get enough physical distance between me and the quilt to tell if the colour placement was balanced or if any areas needed obvious correction. Then one day I found one of those little spyhole devices - you know, the ones you put in your front door so you can see who's there - and I realised that by looking through it at my wall I could miraculously see the whole quilt as if from a good distance away!

Nowadays I use my digital camera for the same purpose and not only for textile work but also for collage and paintings. Maybe you've had experience of staring so long at something you're working on that you can no longer 'see' it? Well, I find it very worthwhile to stop and take a few pictures at such moments so that I can look at them on the computer and get my sense of 'distance' back. Often this will be enough to decide what needs doing next or to isolate things which I feel aren't working. It can also show me that sometimes a painting I've been fussing with is actually finished.

So, here is a canvas I'm working on at the moment. It's not quite there yet but I thought you might enjoy seeing the process.

Encaustic Love

 

It's been a busy week, lots of new encaustics and I'm so in love with making them! Have had to slow down a bit the last couple of days though thanks to a stinky cold which is wiping me out. So many ideas buzzing round my head and not enough energy to do them. Soon, soon.

Burn, Baby, Burn

 

One of my resolutions for this year is to get back into encaustic painting, something which I love doing but haven't really touched for about eighteen months now. Encaustic simply means 'burnt in'. When applied to art it refers to painting with hot melted wax as a medium. Additives are often mixed in to change the colour and hardness of the medium but at its simplest, as here, it can be done with natural beeswax which looks and smells wonderful and imparts a subtle golden glow to the work.

These two small pieces are on birch panels and are comprised of a number of layers of collaged papers and hot wax. The layers are built up gradually and fused together to produce paintings with lots of depth and subtle effects which show up far better 'in the flesh' than they do in photographs!

Patience, My Love, For Spring Will Surely Come

I haven't painted anything in a while. Often, ideas for work will come to me in that borderland between waking and sleep; unfortunately, the next day I frequently can't remember them, which is why I really should keep a notebook by the bed.

This watercolour started life with a bird who spoke to me, everything else followed from there. When do you get your best ideas? I'd love to know.

A Little Pick-Me-Up

I realised the other day that what's missing in my winter (emotional and literal) landscape is colour. I don't do grey, which is kind of hard at this time of year, so as an escape route I've been painting with all the most saturated colours I can manage to find.

There now, that's better.

Riga

More architecture today. I was watching a programme on tv a while back which was about Hansa cities and the wonderful building styles they generated and became fascinated with how they look.

The Hanseatic League was formed in the middle ages as a mercantile association based initially along the Salt Route and it grew to encompass most of Northern Europe, and I'd never heard of it before. Once again I am reminded of the huge chasms in my knowledge of things which are practically on my doorstep! If you'd like to know more about the Hansa, there's a good overview here.