Jessie Lilac Blog

My latest new paintings have definitely been inspired by the lovely spring trees that are around at the moment. I've been having fun playing with inks on paper making beautiful textures. ♥ ♥ ♥ I love the colours but I wasn't happy with the composition. It somehow didn't seem right.... ....so I turned the painting upside down!  and drew a lady wearing a beautiful dress of branches. I call her ' Blossom in the Wind '.  She's searching for a new home so if you think you might be able to help her, please click here. 😊 I love how the little twinkles of light picks up the leaves of the trees and flowers. This new painting that I've recently finished twinkles in the light too! I've used gold paint on the bird and the fern leaves. It's a mixed media painting on cradled wood panel. The leaves are dimensional, giving the surface extra interest. I've called it ' Pink Flower in my Hair '. You can see ...

I've been making some sketches with watercolour. My paintings over the past few weeks have been acrylic but I missed my watercolours. It's been a while since I drew birds too, although there was a time not so long ago that everything I did seemed to have a bird in it! I've been trying out colours that could one day be in a painting. I like the contrast of the cool blues and greens with the hot reds! And who says that a house can't have a purple roof? :) I've also started these two little canvas board paintings. These are acrylic and I'm painting them both at the same time so that when I get stuck or I need some area to dry, I can work on the other one. I wonder which one I shall finish first? Have a great weekend, let's hope that sun comes out again! xx ☼***☼

Monday morning, I hope you had a lovely weekend! Mine was filled with family visiting but now the house is once again quiet, it's time to show you what I was working on just before the weekend. Thankyou so much for your lovely comments about my beach baby painting! As I had some time left at the end of the day that I finished it, I decided to work some more on a painting that you might remember from last year? Do you remember this one? I've had it hanging up on the wall at home and so each day it would catch my eye and after time, I knew I wasn't happy with the face on the yellow vase. I felt it looked unfinished and at first I was going to put more shading in it to give it depth. Something else happened once I had my paints out! Not only did I change the face, I painted over it completely and added some birds and some more spots. (If you look closely you can see the masking fluid I put on around the edges of the vase so that I wouldn't ruin the bac...

Two Birds , mixed media  Hello, how are you on this December day? You might remember these paintings I'm about to show you when I blogged about them in the summer here and here . Since then, they've been on their adventures in exhibitions but now they're back, I've listed them for sale in my Etsy shop. :) 'Summer Breeze' , mixed media Each one measures 40 x 40cm and is painted on  3½cm deep box style canvas. (That's 16 x 16ins,  1½ins deep). ' Two Birds ' (cropped) I love the colours, so bright and warm. I have them on my wall at home at the moment to cheer up these winter days! But I'll be more than happy to sell them to a lovely new owner! :) Summer Breeze I love to paint birds. My fascination with them came originally from reading fairy tales. (I still like to read fairy tales!) They appear as other beings, having human-like attributes.  To me they convey emotions and are such a lovely shape...

 I want to say thankyou to my followers here on my blog and also to my likers on Facebook which have reached over 400 - thankyou!xx I'm going to be giving away 3 of these little watercolour paintings. YES, THREE! Each one is ACEO size and is signed and dated on the back. All you need to do is to choose which 3 you'd like to receive and be a follower here and tell me in the comment section of this post. I shall have a draw next week to see who the winner is. I'll ship to any country so don't worry if you live far away from me! :) Here are the individual paintings so you know the names... Blue Calm Green Flight Night Sky Peaceful Flight Plump Grey Bird Good luck!xx

I've finished the painting that I showed you in my last post. Above is a crop of it. Can you see the other bird on the right hand side? It looks as though that's the other bird's reflection doesn't it? As though he's looking in the mirror!  Here's another close up crop of the same painting. I made lots of layers of lovely bright pinks, blues and golds and made some scratching zig-zag patterns while the paint was still wet. Here's the whole painting. It measures 40 x 40cm, (that's 16inches square). It's hanging on my kitchen wall at the moment but it will eventually be exhibited in the summer. I'll tell you all about that another day. :) I've put a gallery on my new website, CLICK HERE to see. If you'd like to leave a comment on the guestbook page that would be lovely! :) Bye for now, have a lovely weekend. :) The sun appears to have arrived at last! xx

'Opposites Attract' acrylic on canvas I'm so behind with everything I do believe I haven't shown you this finished painting yet! It's on canvas and I've used stencils for the textures. I like the randomness of the flower design, it was great fun to do! So what next?  This is the one I started before Easter but being so busy doing other things it's been sitting on the easel waiting for me. Today I will definitely be painting today because I spent the best part of yesterday designing my website. It's got some more tweaking to do but I'm happy with how it looks for now. Would you like to see? ♥  CLICK HERE! :)  ♥ I have a guestbook page there and I'd love it if you take a moment to sign it.x My crocheted blanket is growing slowly. It's kept my knees warm on these cold evenings while I work on it. I hope I finish it before summer!

Brixham Harbour It's been a while since my last post hasn't it? It's been a very busy Easter holiday for me, lots of things to sort out and jobs to do. Today's my first day at home but there's so much catching up to do after being away I don't know where to start! So I decided to start right here and to make this blogpost :) I did manage to have some relaxing time too and one of the places we went to was  Avebury Manor.  I've been to Avebury stone circles more times than I can count but have never visited the 500 year old Manor House. Each room has been restored to a different time period to represent the different generations of people who lived there over the years. I love the handpainted wallpaper in one of the rooms, so detailed. It was difficult to choose which part to photograph there was so much amazing pattern.   It's based on   an early English chinoiserie wallpaper from around 1700. The artist Mark Sands working on t...