Despatched most of mail out for painting sale yesterday - still a few to send for people whose snail mail address I did not have. Also did a tiny amount of drawing whilst waiting for others to arrive at London Illustrators Gathering - try to flesh out idea for 'sullen' brief. Today, I have been re-arranging my diary for July, so that I can focus single-mindedly all day on being an artist on regular week days. Not drawn much today, and not scanned what I have done in, so here is another of the dragonflies

Today, did a little drawing out at a cafe in Old Street. Also, been thinking a lot about how I use collage usually I make for fun.

Today I am feeling a bit frustrated with the digital Painter - it keeps doing things which I am sure (?) I have not told it to. However, I have started the mail out for painting sale - using this dragonfly as image on the invite

Today I've not done any drawing or painting so far, but will do later. After my post yesterday, I finished The Album Leaf fantasy cd cover - coloured it in using coloured pencils in various shades of green and blue, with a touch of gold. Will have to experiment with the scanner, to see if I can scan finished drawings well enough to post

That worked! I made a link to my flickr account. The image was made entirely using Painter, mainly digital watercolour and 2B graphite colour pencil, with touches of coloured 2B pencil, and was a time-limited to 1 hour response to brief of "It came from the deep"

OK, so today I am going to make another attempt to post something I have just worked on here.

I did apply the mixture of ultramarine and raw umber very thinned to the canvas yesterday evening, so am feeling pleased with that start. Today I am planning to complete a fantasy cd sleeve I started on Monday: basic design drawn up in blue biro, and needs shades of blue and green added now, but need to decide whether to use water colour, or ink or coloured pencil. One factor is that I have not yet used wet media in this particular (nicely cd cover size and shape) sketchbook, so am not sure how the paper will react. Best plan will be to test on the page that has red marker pen bled through on to it!

Today I have been shopping for the new oil paints I need: deciding which colours to actually buy was tough, given the cost of pigments like cadmium red and viridian. Now looking forward to doing the mid-tone mix of raw umber and ultramarine. May even do this evening, given it is a nice, sunny day, so can have the windows open.

Not been organised so far at keeping this blog up to date. Aiming now to post every day, with latest on my work. Today, I had planned to tone down the glarey white canvas for the cat portraits by painting with a mixture of ultramarine and raw umber. Discovered that the lid is firmly stuck on the ultramarine, and various other colours, so instead making a shopping list! Also not worked out how to size images so they will upload here - more to find out.