A Horse Of Course...

 I've finally caught up with the commissions I received before Christmas - a bit of a slog, but worth it!  This horse will be going to Greece once we have figured out a way to get him there safely and without enormous customs/tax charges.

This is a larger than usual painting, covers my whole drawing board, and is mixed media - watercolour, Derwent Coloursoft/Drawing pencils, and a touch of acrylic - on watercolour paper.  It was quite an undertaking and I got a bit disheartened at one stage with the amount of face a horse has!  However, it went well and I am very pleased with the completed painting.

I'm now free for a while - next commission doesn't have to be done straight away, so time to do a bity of my own work.

I've also just seen the rough layout for the new Nudinits pattern book - looks very good and some very cheeky designs in there for humans, not puppets!  Watch this space for further updates.

Still Going...

 I think the attraction of these patterns by Sachiyo Ishii is that they can be completed so quickly. As they are no more than a couple of inches tall, the knitting itself is over in an hour or so and then it's just a matter of putting it all together.

I love these tiny children, made with just a few rows of different colour wool that magically becomes a little person when sewn.

 The horse is a very cute pattern too - I have not sewn the boy to the horse yet, as I am not sure whether I want him permanently attached.

I just wish I had a small person to give these to!

Heavy Horses...

In my head my paintings look very different to how they actually turn out.  I wanted this one to be loose, minimal detail, an impression if you will...
Instead it is tightly painted, every chain link & piece of tack painstakingly worked...and as for that plough...
Never mind, I'm liking it anyway!

Annie

Private commission, watercolour on watercolour paper.

Seasonal Problems...

This is the latest commission I am working on but it is slow progress.  Not only are the markings on the horse very complicated and full of subtle colours, I am struggling with the lack of daylight November brings.  Usually I can get by during dull days using a daylight lamp, but once the main electric light in the room has been turned on, the colours in my palette and on the paper are distorted with a yellowish hue.  Most of the time I can allow for this and keep on working, but I daren't with this one for fear of wrecking it totally.  So working hours are mainly in the morning  up until lunchtime, with possibly an hour after lunch if I am lucky.  Very frustrating indeed!

Hope & A Bear...

 As always happens, I think I have so much to do on a painting and then suddenly it is finished.  I completed this yesterday morning, so it is now ready to be packed up and sent to Greece.  This was done in a mixture of watercolour and coloured pencils - I started off with Derwent Drawing Pencils, but ended up using a selection of all the coloured pencils I have in order to get the depth of colour I needed.

So in the afternoon I spent an hour or so on this little watercolour of a polar bear.  I used a photo I'd taken from the Explore.org polar bear cams for inspiration.  This is now for sale in my Etsy shop, cheaper than my usual work - might make a nice Christmas present?

Hope 2

 This one is taking a long time - the horse is very dark and it is difficult to get the richness and depth of colour with just pencils.  I'm getting there - the paper is starting to feel like worked leather with the amount of pigment and hammering it is taking!  Another couple of days should do it.

We have a very small pond at the bottom of our garden - I mean it is tiny, no more than a metre across.  When we cleaned it out earlier this year, we removed 17 frogs!  (We kept them in a bucket and put them all back when we were done.)  While feeding the birds yesterday, I noticed one of them popping up to say hello.  Hello.

Currently on the needles - leafy green scarf

Hope...

I've been incredibly busy the past week or so, but unfortunately it was mainly knitting things that I can't show yet.  However, I have been painting - this is a horse called Hope, being worked in mixed media (watercolour and coloured pencil)  She is very dark so it is taking quite a bit of effort to get the colour right.  It needs a good few days yet, but progressing nicely.

Prints!

 Just got the prints back from the shop - they did a pretty good job overall.  I know the chicken painting was a hard one to replicate and there have been a few variations on the original colours, but nothing too drastic or noticeable.

 I have to do a few little extra touches on these and then they are ready to go to their new homes.

 While I was getting the chickens printed, the shop had a bit of a special offer if I bought 3 prints, so I had one done of my Wild Water Horse painting.  It came out very nicely and is now for sale in my Etsy shop - it's bigger than the original, and half the price!

It is printed on stretched canvas and ready to hang as it is or can be framed.

If you fancy having a print of one of my paintings, get in touch, we can talk!

Trawling Through The Archives...

 This week I have finally done something I had in mind for months, since giving up the day job.  I've gone through my two portfolios and sorted our various paintings that have been hidden away for far too long and I am slowly loading them up into my Etsy shop.  Perhaps there they can find homes where they will be loved and looked at!  The above is an acrylic of a coastal walk in Alderney - my friends and I hiked miles and miles along these paths as teenagers.

 A little watercolour of the apple blossom on our tree - it's nearly that time of year again, so no doubt another blossom painting will ensue.

 I love painting horses and it shows in this one - surely someone would like this on their wall?

 A lot of my paintings are a travelog - this is a watercolour of Rome after we spent a day there during a trip to Italy.

 This is a watercolour of Victorian ruins on Pigeon Island, St. Lucia - another favourite thing to paint, old stonework!

 My one and only foray into oil painting - love the effect, hate the drying time.

 A watercolour of the rainforest in St. Lucia - I used a very limited palette for this if I remember, possible only two colours, no more than three.

 A coloured pencil sketch of a saluki - you will know my soft spot for these dogs, just so beautiful.

A watercolour painting of a pair of sparrows I saw on Boston Common a few years ago.  I love to paint sparrows too - they initially look drab but once you study them, they are such pretty birds.  I love their cheeky personalities too.

So if you look in my shop, these and a few more will be making an appearance and hopefully going off leaving some room in my portfolios for more work.

Weekend Round-Up

Yes, this is finished - I went over it carefully yesterday and could find nothing left to do.  So I signed it, trimmed it down, varnished it and now it is ready to go.  Now I have to find something else to paint, preferably in splashy watercolours.

I've been knitting a couple of these - each flower is no more than a centimetre across.  They are for the animation, so of course have to be in proportion with everything else.

Also knitted this tiny little chap - using 3 ply baby yarn this time.  I like how he has turned out, fits in the palm of my hand.  Have a look and see the difference between him and the last one I made:

Same pattern, just a radical change of yarn. 

We've been having some differences of opinion with the local magpies lately.  They seem to think we need to be woken up at 5 a.m. with some ear-piercing screeching outside out bedroom window, we beg to differ.  So we initially joked that we needed a stuffed bird of prey out there to scare them off - turns out, you can buy model hawks all over the place for that very purpose.  Now we just have to figure out how to attach it to the porch roof.

If it had been in place yesterday, we wouldn't have had the little drama played out at 7a.m. in what used to be a car park.  We heard the most awful noise, every bird in the neighbourhood was squawking at the top of it's voice, magpies, crows, you name it, it was perched out there shouting.  We went to see what the commotion was about and discovered a magpie had managed to get itself wedged in the builders' wire fencing - he could have slipped through the gap, but one leg was twisted around the wires and he was gripping it for dear life.  So after failed attempts at untangling him and getting pecked badly (I was bleeding!) we got the wire cutters and a tea-towel, and cut him out.  Off he flew, unscathed, nary a thank you.  However, it was quiet out there at dawn today....

Having lost the tomato race, there isn't such a sense of urgency - but I do have one lone tomato coming. The others are flowering or getting ready to flower - we'll get there eventually!

Are We There Yet?

I think I can tentatively say that this is finished - today I can't see anything major that needs doing, but I will give it a day or two and come back to it to check that I haven't left anything out!  Acrylic portraits like these are very much hard work, but I do enjoy them so.  Although having concentrated so hard for so long, using tiny brushes and painting in every hair, I think my next painting needs to be something big and splashy!

Yesterday was glorious, so I took my daughter to pick strawberries - this is one of our favourite places to go in the summer.  Not only is is so pretty, in the middle of nowhere...

...you also get to come home with these:

I look like I've gone ten rounds with a wild cat after picking the gooseberries, but it was so worth it.  I've also eaten so many strawberries over the past fortnight it's a wonder I'm not turning red, but that's all part of the great British summer!

Currently on the needles: flowers!

Flaming June...

Did you ever have one of those months where everything just seems to go wrong?  Not in a huge way, but annoying niggles on a daily basis.  That's what I'm having at the moment and it is getting very tiresome!  However, one thing that isn't going wrong (thank goodness!) is this painting.  I've had ample opportunity this week to get on with it, despite the niggles, and have been concentrating on the horse.  As I am using a size 0 brush most of the time, it is a slow process, but I am happy with how it's going.  Painting bridles is far more difficult than any animal though!

I've also been doing plenty of knitting and sewing, some for the animation and some for the dog show next month.  This little chap is waiting for his bowl and bone.

I went to an unusual plant fair at the weekend but was hampered by forgetting to bring much ready cash - see, annoying!  However, I did have enough pennies to buy this magnificent specimen - it's called a 'pineapple flower' for obvious reasons.  It does have a proper name but that's on the tag which is currently outside, and much as I love you, I'm not going out there right now!

I Don't Know Either....

It's been a funny old week.  I've been knitting this - it was a bit worrying initially when I had what was basically a badly made grey sock, but with some folding and stitching, it did take the shape I was after. I quite like him, he has an air of resignation about him...

I've been putting in as much work as I can on this - I expect to the uninitiated there doesn't look to be much difference from the last picture I posted, but I have been painting - outer edges mainly, sleeves, horse's neck and a bit of the mane.

I've already lost the tomato race with Soggibottom blog - I can't compete with Devon climate!  My poor home-sown tomatoes have had to put up with torrential rain, chilly nights and a catastrophic hailstorm, so the fact they are still standing is a miracle.

My shop-bought plants have flowers on them at least!

We had a visit from Midge of Soggibottom this week, just a quick one.  By way of compensation she gave my daughter a birdbox her husband had kindly made.  Stacie could not wait to start painting it!  I do think any bird planning to nest in it had better have a pair of sunglasses handy though.

I have paintings on show at the Fleet Art Society exhibition being held at the Church on the Heath, Elevetham Heath, Fleet for the nexy couple of days.  It's a new location for the society and hopefully will bring in more visitors as i is right next to a large Morrisons and has a free car park.  We shall see - come along if you are in the area!

More Progress...

I've been putting in some work on the more 'boring' bits of this painting - the helmet and the sleeves.  Basically, until they are done, it's hard to concentrate on the 'interesting' bits - the girl's face and the horse. If the surrounding parts are not correct, then it will affect the focus points badly.  To be honest, I don't find any painting boring, I'm always happy with a brush in my hand! 

The only sections of this painting that I can say are complete are the horse's ears and the trees and sky - everything else will be worked on here and there until it all comes together as a whole.

I am not one to jump on a bandwagon, but was so sad to hear of the death of Rik Mayall. His People's Poet
was one of the funniest things I had ever seen when I was young and I quoted it ad infinitum for years.  Still makes me crack up after all this time.

Who Are You Looking At?

This portrait is coming along very nicely - the background is now just about done which means I am free to get on with the subjects.  Any tinkering to the trees and grass will be done at the end of the painting when I can see it all together against the horse and girl.

While this is a fairly unusual pose, I like it a lot - I think it sums up both their personalities.  It's good to be working in acrylics again - feels like a long time since I did!

I am having trouble finding time though - life has a habit of intruding into my painting hours.  Last week it was trips to A&E with my partner (he is OK) and this week we have this:

Last night there was a huge hailstorm and ther water began to pour into our living room from above the door.  This is because our gutters are blocked and we are awaiting someone to clear them which has to be coordinated with the builders as our back garden has been sealed in with this:

which means we have no access in or out.  It's been two months now.....all garden rubbish and equipment has to be carried through the house as does anything bought for the garden - 6 bags of topsoil this week, all carried through the house.  I hate this whole situation, it's turning me into such a whinger!

Looks Like Someone Wrestling a Horse...

Sometimes a remark made by someone when you are in the middle of a painting can have a serious impact on the way you look at your work, and on occasion can be quite detrimental as it echoes round in your head as you paint.  However, I think the above sums up what this painting looks like while it is in it's blocking stage. 

This is a private commission in acrylics.  It has made a good start but I may have to cover it while it is not being worked on, just in case any further remarks affect my thinking!

Currently knitting some knobbly dogs....

...and a church door.

This is the reverse side of our new garden fence.  See all that earth that has fallen?  That's because there is a huge gap between the bottom of the fence and the ground - the erosion on our side is about 10 inches in some places, exposing shrub roots and making it impossible to plant anything else.  This was done at Easter and I am still awaiting it to be shored up despite numerous broken promises by builders and housing association.  Maybe today?