kitten mischief

This is another old piece: unusually for me, the finished artwork is in coloured pencil. Thanks to the magic of iphoto, it now looks good on screen

assembling aoi portfolio

The boiler replacement saga continues, which has totally disrupted my flat, ho hum. Prospect of the new one being installed next Friday. In the meantime, I am scanning work, etc to put into my shiney new aoi portfolio, which means re-visiting folders I have not looked in for a while. I discovered this lovely summery rough I did for a potential job, and wanted to post it here

attempting to make links

Today has been rather a write off so far as working has been concerned, due to complete disruption in my flat to enable new fridge-freezer to be delivered and old one removed. The good news: new one is masses quieter. Only constructive thing I have achieved today creatively has been to assemble using spray mount the dummy book I am colouring on the Tube. I am pleased about this because it will make the book easier to work in.

I have also been on a bit of a mission to try to figure out how to make links to other blogs, and think I may have succeeded in making links to paula bowles and chichi parish. 'Won't know for sure until later. If the links do work, I will add some more soon.

Update on Pinkty book

Today I've been working some more on tube journeys on the colour themes for my Pinkty book: it is amazing to see how adding colour to the dummy book pages is bringing the story to life. My skills in wielding colouring pencils on the tube is improving by leaps and bounds, too.

my favourite working area

Today, so far, I have not done any drawing or painting. I thought I'd like to show a photo of my favourite working area in my flat: lovely turquoise and pink desk, complete with watercolours, Wacom and G4 laptop. Actually, when I am doing watercolour, I put a plain plywood drawing board onto the desktop, too, then set the paints up on that. Having first moved the laptop well clear! Scanner, and printer are in different parts of the room.

sketching at lunchtime

This is the result of a 20 minute sketch made at lunchtime today, after carrot and spice soup, before shopping for oatcakes!I'm pleased that I'm sneaking more drawing into my days doing housing stuff: I also worked more on the colour scheme for Pinkty book on the tube

Plans for 'the owl and the pussycat'

After mulling over the gold-green experimental watercolour I did on 1st October illustrating Edward Lear's'the owl and the pussycat' going to sea, I now want to illustrate properly the entire poem. So today I tracked it down. 'Not sure what a 'runcible spoon' is, but will find out! At the farmer's market yesterday, I actually saw quinces on sale, so will buy some next Sunday to draw.

Trialling colour schemes on the tube

Life has been somewhat stressful for the last couple of days: the lack of central heating has finally go to me, along with the saga about getting the boiler replaced. Now I know far, far more about part L of the building regs than I ever wanted to. Consequence has been not much time for drawing or painting. However, I have experimented with working on my children's book on the tube journey across London, and discovered that I can use coloured pencils and a printed out dummy to try out colour schemes. I am very pleased.

thinking about drawing a sea of tents

At lunchtime, I did a little more work on a children's book idea. The double page spread I was dreaming up today involves a sea of closely pitched tents at a music festival, which should be great fun to draw and paint in due course. As ever, I was being over-optimistic about how much could be achieved in 1 day, too!

3 french hens

Today I have begun sketching out ideas for this year's Christmas card, which will be another in the black & white series based around one of the 12 days of Christmas. Previous cards in this series have been: 2 turtle doves, 5 gold rings, 6 geese a laying, and 7 swans a swimming. This year, I want to do '3 french hens'. I need to research exactly what french hen is!

new paint colour

Yesterday I treated myself to a new watercolour: W&N's 'green gold', after it was highly recommended by Lorna and Maya. So today I have been experimenting! The urban fairies pencil doodles I started while I was ill: inspired by admiring Cicely Mary Barker's fab flower fairies, and musing about what kind of fairies would live in London. The 'owl and the pussycat' (who went to sea in a beautiful pea green boat) has been on my mind all morning, so it seemed a good plan to take that as a theme for a limited colour experiment. Only 3 colours were used: french ultramaring, permanent rose, and the green-gold. I'm liking the effect

While I've been ill I've done more on this tapestry: worked out how to do the lettering! When I have finished the other side, which is similar only without the lettering, and will have a blue border, I will make them into a small cushion.

Life has been most exciting since my last post: a private view, Sketchcrawl last Saturday, and meeting U2! I've also managed to catch a nasty virus, but on the mend now, and will be posting pictures soon - if not drawings, then photos of me at U2 book signing last week. Drawings will be appearing again before too long

Back from travels

I'm home again, after a few days in Suffolk. It's good to be home, and likely to stay in London for at least 6 weeks. I'm looking forward to focussing on work again - while I've been away, only had time to do some sketching. Next Saturday, 23rd September, is another Sketchcrawl day, so hoping to go out drawing then, too. In the meantime, here is a drawing from the last one!

I'm still finding life extremely busy, and likely to be so for another couple of weeks, so scanning work has not been top of my list of things to do! However, I did scan this last week: it is an old piece, but I still like it, and still do black and white in a similar style

I've been so busy for the past couple of weeks getting the Pinkty dummy ready to test out on small nephews and nieces that I forgot to post updates here! They all liked the book very much, so now will try it out on children who don't know me. 'Will also scan and post some new sketches tomorrow.

holiday sketch

I'm mostly focussed at the moment on making a dummy of children's book to test out on nephews and nieces. In the meantime, here is a page of sketches from my holiday last week

new banner for blog

Today I've been making a new banner for my blog, and working out how to post it!

Here is a painting I made for a compilation cd cover this week. Watercolour, and yes, I still wish I went to Womad! My friends and I are in the painting, and the band playing is Tinariwen.

At last, a post!

I've been having problems loading the 'create a post' template for several days - incredibly frustrating! However, after 8 minutes of waiting it appears to have worked. I am on holiday, so here is a drawing from Womad in 2004 of the wonderful Tinariwen warming up before a workshop on Sunday morning. Wish I'd been able to afford to go to Womad this year. 'Consoled myself by going to see the excellent Howling Bells.