Sunday 30 April 2017

Exhibitions and birds


Hello again,

It's been a lovely weekend and tomorrow is bank holiday, hooray!  I'm looking forward to a day full of drawing and painting which makes me very happy indeed.
Just lately I've been continuing drawing birds, particularly the ones I see regularly where I live, so lots of Crows and Magpies.  I've been pulling out all my supplies (I end up working on a tiny area of my desk surrounded by lots of art materials!) and mixing up all the media which I love doing.  I've also brought out pastels which I haven't used for a long time, it's been great fun working with them (and making a lot of mess of course).  I'm working on another one now but below are a couple I completed.


I've also been to some wonderful exhibitions.  Two of the highlights were Lisa Brice's wonderful blue gouache paintings at the Stephen Friedman Gallery which has now closed, and today I went to see Josef Frank at the Fashion and Textile Museum.  I'd been wanting to see this for ages and it was a wonderful colourful treat, it closes next weekend I think so I'd recommend visiting if you can.  Here's some of my favourites from both exhibitions.

Lisa Brice

Josef Frank

How gorgeous are they?  Just lovely.  I hope you have a great week, I'm off to continue painting into the night yay!

Sunday 9 April 2017

Hello there,

The weather here this weekend has been absolutely gorgeous and I have taken some time to walk about a bit, it feels so good to feel the sunshine!  I've also been working on a personal piece that I started a while back inspired by things I see everyday.  I'm very lucky in that where I live I overlook the lovely garden which I share with the other flats.  Pretty much anytime I look out of the window I see crows going about their business and they fascinate me, so I really wanted to draw some.  I also haven't made any larger scale work for some time now and I've been itching to do something.  This isn't that large really, between A1 and A0, but it's bigger than I've done for a while.  So, I've been getting stuck into making large marks with lovely big brushes and scraping around with my palette knives, lovely!  It's also a great excuse to spread out all over the floor and make a mess, (I am incapable of being neat and tidy as I work, today I ended up with paint on my leg.....I still don't know how that happened!)
Below is how it looks now, I want it to feel very rhythmic and I'm working with a reduced palette.  I'll post the finished piece when I'm done.


I've also recently completed some editorial commissions which I'll post once they've been published.  They've been lovely jobs :).
I'll be back soon.  I hope the weather is as lovely where you are, I really love this time of year.
Here's some sunbathing daisies from the weekend.  Now I'm off to have a cuppa and do some scanning :).  Have a great week!