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.

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.

Down In The Hole

The studio purge continues. It's slow work as I don't think I'd truly realised the amount of stuff I had lying around just waiting to be dealt with. So I clear a bit then work a bit. Yesterday I made these aceos because I unearthed my watercolours and of course had to use them right away! Oh I do love colour. The sunset one was inspired by the Iron Men that stretch along the shore at Formby. As they rust and are colonised by barnacles they become more and more beautiful in my eyes. There is something profoundly moving about decaying structures and landscapes, or perhaps that's just me.

Meanwhile, in other news, the third season of The Wire has just started on BBC2. So that's my late night viewing taken care of for the foreseeable future.

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.

White City

I'm still obsessed by architecture and planning more paintings, in truth far more than I can ever do. This is a little piece I did the other day with watercolours and watercolour pencils, in my Etsy shop at the moment.

South of the Border, Down Penwortham Way

I've always had a fascination with architecture and landscape and buildings made from mud are right up there amongst my favourite things. This little art card of an adobe house is a study I did whilst thinking about a much larger piece and speculating on how much more interesting our vernacular architecture could be if we hadn't given in to the twin gods of planning and executive homes.

Personally I'd love to live in an organic, hand-built house which owed nothing to the kind of fake modernist-retro 'new builds' which I see everywhere now, but would I get planning permission for a wattle and daub, straw bale house - even assuming I could afford to buy the land to build it on? I think not. Perhaps I should move to Mexico.

Oh, and it used to be all fields round here, y'know...

Storm Warning

I want to live by the sea. I miss its constant voice and the smell of the ozone. Every so often I cycle back round to this realisation and then I have to create something by way of compensation, or re-read Tove Jansson's wonderful story The Fillyjonk Who Believed In Disasters, or both.

North Star and Hababa Sunset

I love my watercolours. There's such a wonderful depth of colour combined with lightness of application about them. I love the way they move around the paper when I'm working wet-in-wet and the suprising effects that sometimes produces.

The first of these pieces, North Star also uses acrylics which I've laid on in glazes of transparent colour. My friend Amy describes it as a kind of interior landscape and I couldn't have put it better myself. The other piece, Hababa Sunset was inspired by various photos of the beautiful medieval city of Hababa in Yemen.

You can see both of them currently in my Etsy store - just click on the title of this post to go there.

Walk in the Park - Finished!

So here is the drawing painted with watercolours. I like to redo the inked lines too after I've added colour, just for emphasis.

Tall Poppies

Yesterday I was feeling unwell with some sort of bug and I wanted to make something pretty so I dug out my watercolours and did this. I have a fondness for Welsh poppies, they look so bright and so fragile, and I'm always sorry to see them battered by the rain (of which we get a lot here in the north-west!). So I painted them with a stormy sky in the background, shining out cheerfully.

For sale here

Queen of the Night

I am making a conscious effort to do some bigger pieces of work, well bigger for me anyway. My normal size range doesn't go beyond about 4x3 usually so it's something of a challenge to do. This is 6x4. Ok, not a lot bigger I know but it makes a change.

So, this is the fairy queen in her garden. She didn't start off as a fairy, but part way through painting her she whispered to me that that's what she was and you can't very well ignore royalty now can you? The flowers in the picture are a night-blooming proteus named Queen of the Night, which also happens to be my favourite Mozart aria too.

For sale on Ebay here

Marbles

A bit of still life. I am trying out painting glass and finding it quite fascinating to do. This is a little 3"x3" piece.

For sale on Ebay here

Sleeping Dog

Always let them lie!

I recently took the plunge into a bit of realism type painting, completely new territory for me and a real challenge! This is one I had my lovely boy Samuel pose for. He's sleeping on my bed in the sun.

Mist On The Mountain

Well no sooner did I get back to my blog than my computer decided to go into meltdown *sigh*! I've spent the last four days trying to retrieve 12 months of artwork and get everything running again, but I think it's finally coming together. It isn't 'til they go wonky that you realise just how much you rely on them.

Anyway here's a collograph I made shortly before it all went kablooey. If you're interested in the process there's more pictures and a brief explanation in the listing - please take a look!

Sunday In The Park

So busy at the moment with stuff art and non-art related, there are too few hours in the day! So this is just a quick fly-by and I hope things get back to normal soon. A relaxing stroll in the park would be good right about now.

For sale on Ebay here

Moonbathing

I have a bunch of new paints - Holbein Irodori Antique watercolours and they are just gorgeous, very vivid and unusual colours. This piece is painted with them mainly. Three little fish bathing in the light of the moon.


For sale on Ebay here

Dia de Los Muertos

Here's the Fiddle Player, part of a collaboration between members of the Art2 group on ebay. We each did an original piece of art based on a Day of the Dead theme and we had a great time with it. Most of the artists are selling their originals on ebay and there's also a giclee print of all 18 pieces which I think looks really great!

The Fiddle Player for sale on Ebay here

The Comet

Meanwhile, in another part of the valley...
This is kind of a companion piece to Moonrise At The Observatory. I almost feel like there's a whole story going on in the background with these pieces, like they want to be a book or something.

For sale on Ebay here

The Castle

I think this was inspired a bit by Gaudi, oh I love Gaudi's architecture, all those organic forms are so beautiful. Anyway the castle reminds me ever so slightly of the Sagrada Familia.

For sale on Ebay here

Moonrise At The Observatory

I love painting the moon and the night sky, it's a very meditative experience for me. I have some indigo paint which is so lovely to drop water and salt onto as it creates spectacular patterns which look kind of star like.

For sale on Ebay here