Sleeping Beauty Day 13

Here is the latest in the "Sleeping Beauty" story - the king thinks he can avert the evil spell by having all the spinning wheels burnt:


I added more paint to this dragonclef because when I had the earlier version printed, it came up very insipid:

Finally, yesterday I went to see the fabulous exhibition "The Age of Enchantment": http://www.dulwichpicturegallery.org.uk/exhibitions/default.aspx. Highly reccommended! I was so excited to see more original illustrations by Kay Nielsen, Edmund Dulac and Aubrey Beardsley.

Sleeping Beauty Day 12

The twelfth fairy softens the wicked fairy's spell. It felt right for the queen to be holding her baby for this one - protection.

Sleeping Beauty Day 11

alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5159083635715740914"

Here is the wicked gift!

I've also been painting dragonclefs again - here is one:

Sleeping Beauty Day 10

Oh dear, I am somewhat behing with this story. It has been a trying couple of days, and today I am under the weather physically - all my own fault for eating something yesterday that I know I shouldn't. Also, I lost my sketchbook in central London on Sunday, so have been forced to try to remember all the rest of the images I had planned for Sleeping Beauty, and noting them down in my brand new sketchbook.

Anyhow, this image has been completed for a day or so, and I am working on the next one. Depicting the wicked fairy part of the story is proving an interesting challenge - it is very rare for me to paint anything other than happy pictures!

Sleeping Beauty Day 9

Here is today's : )

Sleeping Beauty Day

A dastardly migraine kept me away from my paints for a few days. Fortunately, I am much better now, so here is the next in the Sleeping Beauty series.

Sleeping Beauty Day 7

Fairy gift number two : )

Sleeping Beauty Day 6

The first of the fairy godmother gifts for the princess : ). This week is going to be such good practice of drawing fairies!

Sleeping Beauty Day 5

Something else I am working on at the moment: I think it would make a nice greetings card, possibly for Valentine's day. It is also playing around with an idea I have for a later Sleeping Beauty illustration.

Here is today's image for The Sleeping Beauty: a golden place setting for a fairy : )

Sleeping Beauty Day 4

Painting today's image has been a real challenge! Getting a recognisable party into 1.5 square inches.. Otherwise today i have begun playing around with ideas for Valentine's cards, and reviewing my portfolios.

Sleeping Beauty Day 3

Sending out invitations for the party to celebrate the birth of the princess.

Sleeping Beauty Day 2

Here is the new baby princess

First painting of 2008: Sleeping Beauty

I LOVED painting the advent calendar each day so much that I have been thinking about how to do something similar for January, and naturally my mind turned to children's stories! "Sleeping Beauty" resonates a lot for me at the moment, so here is the first illo - 'hope you enjoy ; )

Happy New Year

Happy New Year!

I am still on holiday, and being delightfully indolent - no painting yet this year! Pen and pencil have found their way into my hands, and I am dreaming up a Sleeping Beauty idea, so watch this space.

Also planning to go to this exhibition, which looks fab: http://www.dulwichpicturegallery.org.uk/exhibitions/default.aspx

Society of Secret Fairies Twelve Days of Christmas

Here is the delightful package I received from secret fairy MaryBeth (http://marybeth494.blogspot.com/)! The perfect gifts suggest she has been delving into my blog, and her garden themed re-write of "the twelve days of christmas" is a really imaginative idea. Impossible to pick a favourite - the cheeky little frog, lucky ladybird, Mrs Tiggywinkle and the gorgeous dragonflies will all be found homes in my flat when the Christmas decorations come down on January 6th.

Thank you so much, MaryBeth : )

Advent Calendar 24

The last image in my calendar. Happy Christmas, Everyone : )

Advent Calendar 23

I'm looking forward to a mince pie later on, when I have done the travelling : )

Advent Calendar 22

Time for some present wrapping, whilst the Christmas puddings are steaming : )

Advent Calendar 21

My thoughts are now turning to food shopping. Brussels sprouts are a personal winter fave, along with yummy roast parsnips. My mum always liked to have a fresh pineapple at Xmas, hence the one in this box.

Advent Calendar 20

A little romance under the mistletoe before last minute xmas shopping!

Advent Calendar 19

The xmas tree is not indoors yet, but here is one of the pink glass heart baubles imagined hanging from it!

Advent Calendar 18

Bringing my tree indoors, and decorating it is one of the things I hope to do later on today : ) I love xmas trees, and always enjoy looking through the decorations box and remembering the histories of the baubles. This year I have some lovely pink glass hearts to add, too.

Advent Calendar 17

I've painted these angel chimes from memory, and I've not seen the real things for 8 years!

Advent Calendar 16

I deliberately waited today for it to become dark outside: it did not feel right to attempt the pretty xmas street lights during daylight hours! These were inspired by the lights in Highgate Village : ). A real challenge to paint in watercolour, and that is probably a very good thing about making this advent calendar - I dreamed up the ideas for each day without thinking how easy or otherwise the images would be to paint!

Advent Calendar 15

Xmas shopping has been today's main activity so far - present giving is something I really enjoy: ). Oh yes, and I did find some mistletoe on my travels!

Advent Calendar 14

Today's advent painting: a reindeer eating a carrot. Last night on the local news I saw a feature about a pet reindeer, including her really eating a carrot, as well as travelling on trains, going to the pub etc!

Advent Calendar 13

Mistletoe for 13th day of my advent calendar : ). Usually, I have bought a bunch of mistletoe by now, but so far this year I have not seen any - I wonder whether the rain this year has affected it's growth? Anyway, it made it hard to be sure I'd chosen exactly the right shade of green for the leaves!

Advent Calendar 12

The mittens on the carol singers were inspired by today's very cold weather!

Advent Calendar 11

The idea for today was originally a snowman, then I got to thinking about how my young nieces would dress a snowperson, so here is the snowgirl!

Advent Calendar 10

Another very late in the day post! A glass of mulled wine is very xmassy, and not the easiest thing to paint; )

Advent Calendar 9

We do make Santa lists in my family, so that is what inspired today's advent painting : )

advent Calendar 8

Today's painting is a robin! I love to watch birds in my garden, and there is often a robin : )

Advent Calendar 7

Today's image was inspired by a very old Christmas decoration I own, which I suspect is Victorian: brass bells and paper holly with wax holly berries: )

Advent Calendar 6

Day 6 of my advent caendar paintings! Last posting date by second class post to UK addresses is 17th December it seems.

Advent Calendar 5

Rather late today, but here is my fifth advent calendar image : )

Advent Calendar 4

Here is today's picture. I usually make Xmas puddings towards the end of November, but have not done so yet! Maybe if I dig out the recipe I use and post it here, I will be inspired to start stirring myself; )

Advent Calendar 3

Here is today's advent image : ). As well as having fun with the painting, I'm also learning a lot about scanning: the images are painted on the same block of water colour paper, so I have to isolate the the right part to make into a jpeg!

Advent Calendar 2

Here is today's advent illustration. I'm experimenting to try to get the image to display here more like it's real size, instead of enlarged!

Advent Calendar 1

It was fun painting this holly: )

More painting

It has been a trying week, so I'm pleased to have still completed some paintings! Here it the completed Xmas kitten fairy, and another Xmas tree. I'm looking forward to starting a watercolour advent calendar tomorrow : )

Society of Secret Fairies Trick or Treat

A fab halloween parcel arrived last week: my Secret Fairy had sent me a delightful little crossstitched pumpkin cushion, along with a wonderful rubber bat (I love bats!), some tasty australian gummy bear sweets, and plastic spiders and skelington, and a great halloween card. Thank you so much www://mayagoodness.typepad.com : )

Christmas Fairy kitten?

This is an experiment: I've not tried doing anything like this before, so thought I'd show the Christmas fairy kitten here (even though not quite finished the painting) and see what you think.

christmas tree

A tad early, but here is my first Christmas tree for this year! I love Christmas trees, so am planning to paint a few more between now and December 24th. 'Also thinking of doing an advent calendar of a tiny painting a day, inspired by the wonderful one by Lorna Brown, last year I think.

Pumpkins illustration

Here is the cd sleeve I made for a compilation of tracks, loosely themed around the idea of "changes". I took the seasonal theme of pumpkins, and painted a growing one for one side, then a pumpkin lantern for the other side! 'Having got a bit carried away, and ending up with a double album, the track listings ended up inside, in a kind of gate-fold arrangement.

Scenery update

Thank you for the kind comments on the design! 'Seeing the scenery under stage lighting at the dress rehearsal, I realised it looks too clean and new, so I am plotting ways to tone down the new paintness, and make it look a bit grubby. The setting is meant to be a slightly neglected, village train station waiting room. Cold tea, and some dust is probably the way forward, plus one of the actors suggested some graffiti..

preview of the scenery

I'm still working on the scenery (the dress rehearsal is on Friday!), and this is the top right hand panel. In the photo, it is lying on the floor, which is the only way I can paint it - too unstable upright, plus there could be a problem with paint running. It is an interesting challenge form a technical perspective: the panel is recycled, so it is the rough textured back of hardboard which you can see, plus on the right hand side there is a whole row of short strips of tape, which I have to paint over!

An especially busy week or so!

I'm having a very busy couple of week, so not found time to post on my blog. Last weekend I was away visiting family. This week is an especially busy time of year in the housing development world, with funding bids deadline looming, plus I am painting some scenery for a play! Photographs will appear here soon..

Illustration friday: Open

Here is my idea for this week's topic of "Open". I currently have more than a bit of an obsession with "The Owl and The Pussy-cat", who seem to be lending themselves well to playing around with ideas - thoughts about what else they do, apart from sailing away with honey, and dining on quince with a runcible spoon! "Missed the deadline to draw up and post in time for Illustration Friday, but I did rough out an idea for the Owl and Pussycat juggling, too. It's a good idea, and gives me useful practice with Wacom pen and Painter, so will make the image and post it here soon.

And then there were three

Today I have been wielding pencil and paintbrush again, hoorah! Also had a revelation about myself, which is that I get acute performance anxiety when I am doing a "proper" drawing - for my portfolio or a client - which at is worst results in me being too nervous to draw, and best that I draw very stiffly, and lose the freshness from my work. 'No idea yet how to change this. So, this morning, I downed pencil and picked up paintbrush, and finished off this loose rough of "cat with stars". I'm liking the colour direction this idea is going in now, so will print out another outline for my next bout of artistic anxiety; )

Here is new humpty, Sorbet, with her friends!

New pictures tomorrow

Well, I've been a bit, or rather, very slack over the past week or so, and not posted anything new here! The best explanation is that I've been very focussed on admin tasks like my tax return. There is a new humpty, and another almost completed, so I'll post at least one of them here tomorrow.