The Start of A New Commision

Hello All,

I am back to canvas this week and thoroughly enjoying myself. I am feeling really inspired with this latest piece which is a commission for a friend of mine. Here it is so far:

And a few details too:

I have been working with inks, acrylic and pigment powders mainly, with some mica powder and gelatos thrown in for good measure. The texture is built up using tissue paper, modelling paste and glass bead texture gel. I am really enjoying the contrast between the texture and the smooth. I already have in mind two or three other canvases combining the two again.

I have progressed really quickly with it cause I can't leave it alone and I am nearly finished, but like a good book I will be almost sorry when I do. I may have to dive straight into another!

Bye for now!

xxx

Change

Hello All,

Today I thought I would share an art journaling page I finished at the weekend. I was playing around with layers. This is in my altered book so there is already text on the page to start with. To this I added gesso then modeling paste through a stencil from stencilgirl products designed by Carolyn Dube  Once this had dried I added layer after layer of ink and paint keeping it quite wet and allowing it to drip through the modelling paste. I then drew some circles and added a layer of gesso to everything but these so that the circles really stand out.

I decided to add the butterflies and the word 'change' to reflect the changes in my life recently with my youngest finishing nursery and my eldest finishing infant school. I used stamps on tissue paper to create these and adhered them to the circles using matte medium. Lastly I brightened some areas of the background with ecoline watercolour inks.

I hope you like it! let me know what you think.

Bye for now xxx

Finding Inspiration

Hello All,

Sitting at work last week listening to music that I hadn't heard for ages and suddenly a song called 'Oh My Mama' by Alela Diane came on:

It is such a simple and beautiful song and really struck a chord with me. At the moment my eldest daughter is finishing infants and moving up to junior school and my youngest finishes nursery today and starts school in September. This week is the last week when it is just the two of us and although I am looking forward to some time to myself I also feel really sad. It is the end of a chapter and it has gone too fast, I feel I haven't been able to keep up and I will miss her a lot! This song really captures the feeling of being a mother for me.

I decided I needed my journal to channel some of these feelings:

I was also inspired by a fantastic artist called Mary Wangerin whose use of colour is fantastic! This page was done in my altered book and you can see in the top right an old fashioned image of a mother figure coming through from the original page. The text is taken from the song as is the imagery of the little bird.

I also did a quick page in my small journal:

This one is to express that feeling of time moving on relentlessly and not being able to keep up while days slip away. The text on the feather reads "days are lost to distant memories"

I will still struggle this week and in the coming months to adjust to the changes happening but journaling about it helps me to get my head around things and move forwards.

Bye for now xxx

Finished Painting

Hello All,

Just a quick post to share with you my completed 'painting from nature'

I am really pleased with how it has turned out and I think I have managed to capture the texture, patterns and colours of the stone. I think the painting and stone work best together so I will be getting them framed  side by side. This has inspired to make a series of these with different textures from nature, perhaps all stones or I could include leaves, tree bark etc.

Anyway I hope you like it. This week I am back to my altered book journal....more on this to follow.

Bye for now xxx