Pointy Pix

I think I'm a rabbit...

2012-02-02T20:44:00.001Z

You know how I've been studying for a diploma in animal care? Well, we spent the first term learning about animal behaviour and how, if only we could learn to listen, every single creature on this planet is communicating with us all the time.

We learnt how predators (such as dogs and cats) will howl and cry and let us know if they've hurt themselves whereas prey (such as rabbits and guinea pigs) will mask any pain they might be in for fear that it will attract the wrong sort of attention. Prey will try to make themselves invisible and keep to themselves if at all possible, often preferring the dark as it's safer for avoiding predators.

Well, the other day I was waiting for the train home at 5.00pm and I noticed that it was still light (I don't know why this takes me by surprise every January/February but somehow it always does!) Anyway, it hit me then that I actually prefer the dark mornings and evenings as it makes me feel less conspicuous. I know, strange, right? But for some reason I like walking the dogs in the mornings when it's pitch black, as if it gives me a cloak of invisibility, and I would rather stand amongst all the other commuters on the platform (just not too close - I like my personal space) when it's dark and I've got my hat pulled down low and my scarf pulled up high and once I've got my Ipod in then it's like I can block out the rest of the world completely.

So that made me think that if humans were divided into predators and prey (instead of all the other crazy groups that we've chosen to create for ourselves) then I would be one of the prey crowd, possibly a rabbit - if I stand still in the dark with my hat on then I can't be seen and the crowds of familiar strangers at the train station won't bother me. (Or perhaps I'm just becoming more and more misanthropic the older I get!)

Anyway, that's my random thought of the week.

Onto the art then, this is one of the dog portraits that I was asked to do before Christmas. It's taken me a really long time because I got distracted over Christmas with one thing and another and then I was waiting for photographs to work from and Max is a skittish wee fella who doesn't much like getting his photo taken. As you can see, his human had to hold his head still for the photo, so I worked from that initially and then I needed to get another photo to see the fur markings on his neck so I could finish it off.

Anyway, I finally finished the portrait on Sunday last, so here he is:

Max, French Bull Dog, watercolour pointillism 12 x 9 inches

The other portrait I was asked to do was for Maegan, the human mum of LeRoy, the French Bull Dog I did in pen and ink back here; she'd said she'd like one of her Pug, BeBop as well. I'm just waiting to get some close up head shots of BeBop, who is yet another adorable wee thing, and I'll get cracking on his portrait right after our trip to Krakow (I may have mentioned it once or a trillion times but we're off to Poland on Sunday for a 5 day mini-break!).

Anyway, happy Paint Party Friday, I'll try to get round as many as I can before we head off but apologies in advance if I don't get a chance to visit - the party's getting so big!

A bridge over troubled water...

2012-01-29T19:01:00.000Z

In my last post I bored you all with the details of our photography workshop and the photos I took on the day. I mentioned that my camera had a problem with the thumbwheel (which was clearly the only reason why I wasn't producing the amazing photographs I pictured in my head). S took it to a camera shop and they advised that, as cameras go, what with new technology meaning they update approximately every 5 seconds, my camera was quite old and that it might be pretty expensive to send it away for repair with no guarantee that it would actually work at the end of it.

So, one night last week, I came home from work and S said that he had a surprise for me which he'd give me after dinner. He'd only gone and got me a brand spanking new FujiFilm bridge camera - the one that is more than just a compact digital but not quite an SLR. (A couple of the men on our photo workshop had these bridge cameras and I had commented on how clear their photos were and how nice and neat the cameras were compared to the quite unwieldy SLR I had and S, being S, had stored the information way for a later date!) He explained that it's an early birthday present (it's not til 9 February) but that I needed it now so I could learn how to work it before Krakow next week.

I've spent the last few days trying to master the shallow depth of field/blurry background thing and the rainy window thing but let's just say it's still a work in progress!!

It was all just a blur...

2012-01-22T21:04:00.000Z

Yesterday we went on our photography workshop. It ran from 10am to 4pm and took place at Mountstweart, a National Trust building on the Ards Peninsula about half an hour from where we live. We got up early to walk the dogs before we went and left them with Kong toys stuffed with treats and promises to be back soon (I hate leaving them so it was with both excitement at our impending camera mastery and a feeling of guilt at leaving them alone on a weekend that we set off).

There were 12 of us on the course and it covered the basics of SLR and Bridge cameras and what all the different functions do. As with most courses these days, it started with that horribly embarrassing bit where we all have to say who we are and why we're there. 'Hello, I'm Nicola and I'm an artist who wants to learn how to take my own photographs that I can then use as a reference source for my paintings'. I did manage to pass one of my cards out to a girl on the course with a Boxer dog who said she'd love a painting of him so you never know!

Now, I certainly didn't come away from the course as the next David Bailey (or whoever the latest photographic genius is these days). The bits where we have to checks ISOs against shutter speeds and aperture size still confuses me somewhat but I got the gist of it (and S understood it all so he can explain it to me again and again) The most important thing though, the thing I most wanted to learn - how to take a shallow depth of field with the subject in focus and the background blurred - well, I learnt how to do it! Whether I can actually put what I learnt into practice is an entirely different matter but at least I know how to do it in theory.

We spent the first part of the course listening to a presentation and then practising the different functions of the camera and then after lunch we were let loose in the grounds of Mountstewart with our cameras and check list of things to photograph to show the tutor we had been listening. Then we had to hand over our SD cards and he put them up on his computer so we could each see what we'd done right and find out what we'd done wrong. I did have to admit that once we reached the lake with the ducks and swans I completely forgot all I'd learnt and reverted to point and shoot on automatic all over again!

Anyway, here are some of the photos I took on the day, unedited and in all their amateur glory!!

The trunk at the front was supposed to be in sharp focus - oops.

I think this is my favourite of the day.

Even the swan looked impatient with how long I was taking to get the shot!

It was quite ironic that the most important thing I learnt on the day was that the thumbwheel on my camera for increasing and reducing certain levels isn't working properly and using all the functions properly is causing my batteries to drain completely flat within 20 minutes (I changed batteries 3 times during the day!) I'd never have known that if I'd kept on just using the automatic point and shoot settings so I now need to leave it in to a camera repair shop before our trip to Krakow next month.

A farewell, a no show and some orange eyes...

2012-01-19T22:52:00.000Z

I can't believe it's Friday again already. Last Saturday saw me up at 6am for my early morning flight to England to for my friend’s farewell party in St. Albans. There were 11 of us staying over at her house so it was pretty hectic getting ready. Everyone else spent the afternoon getting spray tans, gel nails, their hair curled and professionally applied make up in preparation for the party. I, er, didn’t. Well, I had painted my own nails and used a wee bit of Lavera tanning cream (vegan friendly and the best I’ve ever tried, by the way!) a couple of days beforehand and as my hair's in a short bob there isn’t much of it to get curled! Also, call me old-fashioned (or tight) but I’ve been applying my own make up for 25 years so I’m not about to pay someone else to do it for me at this late stage and figured that a party frock and some heels were plenty of effort for someone more at home in wellies and jeans covered in muddy paw prints!! So, it would seem that actually, in the scheme of things, I’m pretty low maintenance after all (although S may beg to differ!)

I had hoped to show you some photos of the party but it turns out that my new phone isn’t so good for taking photos because no one seems able to hold it steady so all the photos are a tad on the blurry side (In fact they look much like most of my photos from the 80s and 90s before the dawn of digital and HD etc!) So, you'll have to take my word for it - everyone else looked fabulous and I scrubbed up not too badly!

Like all my art, it looks better if you squint or look from a distance!!

So, in other news, my night class in animal care was supposed to start back this week but the tutor phoned in sick (which she also did the week before Christmas). I get the impression that she isn’t really interested in teaching our small class of adults as I guess she thinks it isn’t exactly going to lead on to new careers for any of us, being an entry level qualification and us all being so middle-aged! Her attitude has kind of dampened my enthusiasm, to be honest, but I’ll finish the course and get my qualification and even if it means I just know a bit more about animal behaviour than I did before then it won’t be a waste of time.

Anyway, back to the art, this is a portrait in acrylics of one of the most beautiful birds on this planet, the owl. I used a photo from the Paint my Photo website as inspiration. I mentioned millions of times before what a great resource it is for artists as people post photos on it that artists are free to use as inspiration without the worry of copyright. Anyway, as coincidence would have it there is always a monthly challenge on Paint my Photo and January’s was to paint any photo on the site pertaining to wild animals – so this week, I’m linking to both Paint Party Friday and Paint my Photo!

This is the first of my canvasses for the Windows to the Soul series. The previous ones I did were small watercolours sketches but my aim for this year is to do a whole series of different sized large canvasses and wooden surfaces which I’m then going to try to get a gallery to accept (in my head anyway!)

It's not that I've developed a strange thing for including my hand in the photos
but I wanted to show that this one is bigger than teeny tiny!

Tomorrow, S and I are off to our one day photography course so we can learn how to get the best out of our SLR cameras and hopefully after that I’ll be able to take much better photos of exactly the subject matter I want to eventually paint. Apologies in advance if I don't get round every one at PPF but I will try over the weekend!

Evolve...

2012-01-12T22:46:00.000Z

I know that most folk who attend the online fiesta that is Paint Party Friday did this last week or even the week before so I’m a little late, but seeing what other people chose got me thinking...

Basically Kristin and Eva asked what one word we would choose as our word of the year; something that means something for where we are in our own personal journeys, or to aspire to, or to serve as a reminder of what we want to achieve in 2012.

Initially I had thought I would choose Carpe Diem (‘seize the day’ in Latin) even though technically it’s two words, as it’s sort of mine and S’s motto and one that we got tattooed onto our persons instead of engraving our wedding rings when we got married to serve as a reminder to us that we should seize every moment of every day in our married lives together. (Sometimes, with the groundhog day of real life getting in the way it’s a tall order to remember to seize anything other than a few snatched daydreams of the life we wish we were living if only the bills didn’t have to be paid!)

Anyway, I was in my studio last night working on a new painting of an owl for my Windows to the Soul series and the word just came to me – EVOLVE.

I read a book recently called The Naked Ape written by a zoologist about how humans evolved from fruit-picking, tree-dwelling primates to what we are today. A fascinating read, by the way as he discusses human behaviours in the same way he would discuss any other animal, which is after all what we are. I’ve also been reading about why man invented all the different religions which have ever existed and which still exist today. Anyway, suffice to say that I've seen the light, to use a religious term, although not in the usual meaning of the phrase.

So basically, over the last year I have evolved quite a lot. Bringing the dogs into our family made me more thoughtful about animals as a whole, which resulted in me becoming vegetarian. That lead me to educate myself even more about how mankind treats the animals used for their milk, eggs, wool and hide which led to me becoming vegan. This in turn had me questioning how a god of whatever denomination could sit back and allow such suffering to continue in the world he allegedly created. So, as a result, my beliefs have evolved and are still evolving and with that evolution the things I am inspired to paint have also evolved.

Ultimately mankind is a mere blip in the timeline of the universe (just like the dinosaurs) and some day we’ll probably be the authors of our own extinction (that or a giant meteor!). However, while we are still here, I intend to keep on evolving!

Anyway, I think I have used my word of the year and derivatives thereof, enough times for one post so, to get back to the whole art part of the art blog, here’s another itty bitty teeny weeny canvas from the Nature’s Magic series – rainy windows - where nature takes manmade stuff and makes it pretty!! (As before, it helps to squint a little when looking at it!)

Final glazed version

Nature's magic...

2012-01-05T20:40:00.000Z

I mentioned in my last post about the photography course that S has booked us both on. One of the things I really want to learn is how to take good photos through rain streaked windows. I am always bewitched by photos that manage to make lights go all blurry, sparkly and twinkly (Google image 'rainy windows' and you'll see what I mean) Either by focussing on the foreground and making the background go blurry or by capturing light through a rainy windscreen or window – they just seems to make an otherwise ordinary scene look a little big magical.

I found a gorgeous photo depicting this very thing online a while ago on a desktop wallpaper website but I've since learned that apparently these sites just grab photos from other websites and use them willy nilly with no regard for copyright issues. It’s something I’m always very paranoid about especially if I hope to sell the derivative artwork so I’ve tried to find out who actually took the photo but haven't been able to. Every time I Google it, it brings me to wallpaper sites. So unfortunately, I can't give credit where it's due for the inspiration for this particular painting.

Anyway, S saw these teeny tiny wee canvasses (9cm x 7cm) on equally teeny tiny easels for an absolute steal in a bookshop recently and got me 10 of them! I spent ages trying to decide what to paint on them – I dismissed doing more Twisty Towns as the larger (but still mini) canvasses I did for the craft fair haven’t all sold yet so I wasn't inspired to do more. Then I started out attempting a whimsical girl’s head which then morphed into a cat sitting on a fence with a twisty house in the background before deciding it was rubbish and painting over it all in black. I then, quite by chance came across the aforementioned photo of the rainy reflections and decided to give it a go in acrylics painting over the now black canvass.

This is the result and I’m really quite pleased with how it turned out. It’s a little bit pointy, a little bit abstract and a little bit impressionist all rolled into one, I think (or it’s just a mass of coloured blobs but either way I like it!) I think it helps to squint a little when looking at it!

Just to put the actual size into context!

This was the final glazed piece - hard to photograph without getting glare of the glaze!

So, now I want to do a series of rainy reflections (working title – Nature’s Magic because nature can make functional manmade objects look pretty and magical) but I need to find photos that I can use for inspiration until I can learn to take them myself. With that in mind, if anyone reading this has any photos for which they have copyright and that they wouldn’t mind emailing to a fellow artist to use as inspiration (with a view to creating a mini-exhibition!), I’d be immensely grateful!

Anyway, this is my contribution to the first Paint Party Friday of 2012 (which in now in its 43rd week altogether!)

Time Flies...

2012-01-03T20:07:00.001Z

Happy New Year. I hope that Christmas passed off peacefully for everyone, without too much drama. We had a lovely, relaxed Christmas day, as we always do, starting with our annual viewing of the Polar Express on Christmas Eve with a mug of mulled wine - it's the perfect Christmas movie and never fails to get my inner child all nostalgic for the days when I really did believe! Then on Christmas day we lounge around in our PJs most of the morning, opening our presents before going for a big walk on the beach with the dogs and then back home to light the fire and put nibbles in the oven.

We decided when we first moved in together that we didn't want to make a full on Christmas dinner as it was only going to be the two of us and so instead every year, we stock up on frozen party food, you know, Chinese selection, Indian selection etc. This year I had to make sure mine was all vegan but other than that, it was the same as it always was. We cook enough for a small army, set it out on platters on the coffee table along with our mulled wine and spiced rum and coke and nibble our way through the afternoon in front of the TV. It doesn't get much more relaxing and chilled than that. I love it!

We spent a few days up with my folks and met up with my old school friends in our old local (which has undergone several face lifts and name changes since we first started going there at, ahem, 18!) The pub, that is, not us. Not yet anyway! One of my friends (the one I did the portrait of for her 40th last June) is moving to Shanghai, China for 3 years with work and is having a leaving party in St. Albans in England on 14 January. I didn't think I could go as its so close and money isn't in abundance post-Christmas but my lovely S booked me a flight so I just need to buy a new party frock in the sales and I'm good to go!

I didn't spend as much time in my new art studio as I would've liked over the holidays. Even though we were off for 10 days what with going up home for a few days and then S's wee boy coming over for New Year, I just didn't seem to find the time to get as creative as I had hoped. That, and the lure of the roaring fire and our lush new reclining sofas!! I did spend a few hours over the weekend locked away there with the wee heater keeping me warm and my iPod docking station keeping me company and I loved it!

Anyway, I promised photos of the inside of the studio now that it's finished, so here it is:

My worktop with the glow of the wee halogen heater underneath keeping me warm!

In other news, S also surprised me with a day's photography course for both of us on 21 January so we can learn how to use the fancy DSLR cameras we have. At the moment I can just about point and shoot so hopefully after this course I'll know a bit more about how to set it up to get better shots. Which will come in handy for our trip to Krakow in February!

That's about all my news from the festive period. No resolutions as such, other than to try to dedicate more time to art in 2012 (and finally, finally get enough work together to try to persuade a gallery to let me exhibit!)

It's beginning to look...not a lot like Christmas actually!

2011-12-22T23:02:00.000Z

So, for some strange reason, despite having snow by late October last year, this year we're going through a bizarre mild snap - last night I even had to lose the bed socks, it was that warm! Unfortunately the skies are still grey and overcast and we still have wind and rain but Jack Frost is nowhere to be seen.

Anyway, those of you in the UK might have been watching David Attenborough's Frozen Planet and despite the polar bear debacle (where they filmed baby bears being born underground but it was apparently in a special zoo enclosure instead of the arctic), he's still my hero!

Well, the penguins of the South Pole are my favourites and they inspired one more Christmas illustration which I thought I would post today as a holiday card to my lovely readers and fellow Paint Party Friday-ers! So, in lieu of actual snow, here's some antarctic snow instead!

In other news, S has finished the inside of my studio and I love it! I just need to get some wee curtains for the windows and I'll post photos of it when I come back in the New Year. Not that I'm actually going away anywhere other than 80 miles up the road to visit my parents for Boxing Day but I'll be taking a blogging break for the holiday period. I wish everyone a peaceful and magical Christmas and New Year. See you in 2012!

Paint Party Friday...the dog's whatsits...

2011-12-16T07:08:00.000Z

So, a while ago I got two dog portrait commissions and after getting distracted with trips away and Christmas fairs, not to mention night class assignments, I'm only now able to start them. Actually one I still don’t have a photograph for so I cant start it yet anyway and the other, I got several photos but unfortunately due to a combination of it being taken with a mobile phone camera and the dog in question being very skittish and not terribly good at posing for a mug shot, the result meant that none of the photos really captured the detail required to do a good pen and ink pointy portrait. I've asked for clearer photos but, in the meantime, having completed the pointy portrait of Steve Buscemi last week I decided to have a go at doing the dog portrait in watercolour instead of ink.

Here’s a sneaky peek of what I've done so far, hopefully it'll turn out okay:

In other news, today myself and another secretary are being taken out for lunch, by two of the solicitors we work for, to Nando's (a restaurant specialising in Chicken Piri Piri dishes!!) However I did check the menu and they actually have a vegan wrap so I'll not starve! Then tonight we have our Christmas party and in the spirit of make do and mend I'm recycling a dress I bought for a winter wedding a couple of years ago and only wore that one time.

Anyway, I'll do my best to get round as many blogs via Paint Party Friday as I can over the weekend. I always really appreciate the comments folk leave here and I do try to return the favour but for some reason there are some blogs that just won't let me leave a comment - so please don't think I don't visit you because I really do, it just sometimes has to be a silent visit because of Blogger glitches!!

A painted pointy portrait and the lovely surprise revealed...

2011-12-08T21:44:00.000Z

One of my favourite shows is Boardwalk Empire. I love Steve Buscemi as an actor. He’s got a fabulous face – all craggy and baggy and full of character. After watching Saturday’s episode I got a notion to try a pointy portrait of him but this time I decided to try it with watercolour instead of Indian ink probably because I've been loving doing it on the Christmas cards designs I did recently.

I'm quite pleased with it apart from his nose which I think I made look a little flattened. I'm going to try more of these painted portraits though as they are fun to do and not nearly as time consuming as the pen and ink ones. Here’s how it turned out:

Pointy portrait of Steve Buscemi

So, those of you who read my last post on our trip to Achill will be wondering what the lovely surprise was. Well…S had only gone and had a wee wooden art studio built, as an anniversary present, in our back garden while we were away!!

My wee art studio!

We had talked about this in the abstract a while ago with me saying how much I’d love somewhere to paint so that I didn't take over the kitchen table with all my art (especially true when I painted my brother-in-law’s birthday present in oils earlier this year – it was sitting on the table drying between sessions for about 2 months and we had to eat round it!)

It was one of those things that was on the long finger though. Or at least that’s what S led me to believe! While we were away he had a local company who make bespoke sheds and summer houses come round and fit it into an odd shaped area that used to be a rockery. I love it.

These are the photos of it outside so far but at the weekend S took me to IKEA for bits and bobs to kit it out inside. He insulated it last night and is going to plasterboard over that then paint it inside and run electric through to it and put up work surfaces with storage drawers underneath. We got some black and white tile effect linoleum for the floor and he found a brand new floor standing easel for sale on Gumtree (a website a bit like Craigslist) reduced to £15!! We even got some wooden blinds for the windows! I can’t wait until it’s all finished inside and I definitely won’t have any excuse for not trying some bigger pieces now that I’ll have more room and somewhere for them to dry!

From this side it looks like an old fashioned outdoors WC!!

Brodie posing outside.

The inside is a work in progress

At the moment, it's a work in progress but I’ll be sure to post photos as soon as its finished inside. I really do have a very thoughtful husband!

This is my contribution to Paint Party Friday this week. Don’t forget to pop over and visit some of the other wonderful artists who participate.

A road trip, a cottage and a lovely surprise....

2011-12-04T11:42:00.000Z

Sound Cottage

Well, we've been back from our trip to Achill Island for a couple of weeks now but our internet router problems prevented me blogging about it sooner. First things first – I did take my art stuff with me but I didn’t however take so much as a pencil out of its bag once the whole time we were there. I had great intentions of coming back from a long walk with rosy cheeks and settling down at the table to spend a few hours working on a pointy portrait before curling up in front of the fire with S and the dogs to watch one of the many DVDs we brought with us.

So, why did I not do any art while we were on holiday? Well, what actually happened was that there was no table in the cottage. Seriously. I mean there was a small side table in the tiny kitchen but not one you could actually sit down at. And there was a coffee table in the living room but it was really more for putting our drinks and/or our feet on rather than doing any art (maybe if I was 5 years old my joints could withstand kneeling at a table for more than 5 minutes but being a tad older than that it just wasn’t a comfortable option!)

So, that’s my excuses for not doing any art out of the way. Now let me tell you about Achill Island and how much we loved it.

We set off after work on Wednesday evening so that we wouldn’t waste Thursday in the car. We actually made good time and arrived at the cottage at around 9pm. Thank feck for Sat Nav as I think we’d have spent a bit of time trying to find it otherwise! It was right down a long narrow dirt track near the shore of Achill Sound looking across over to the mainland of Ireland (it is technically an island although it is joined to the mainland by a bridge and you could probably swim across as it really isn’t that far!) Beside the cottage we stayed in (which is 80 years old) was the ruin of the original stone cottage owned by the family who rent it out.

The original Sound Cottage

The cottage was quaint and quirky. Not 5 star but that isn't what floats our boat – it was full of character and pretty lived in which was perfect for us not having to worry too much about two mucky pups on the furniture! (We didn’t let them on the sofa while they were mucky, just to clarify, but you know what I mean!). The location was fantastic - miles from anywhere with only two other (empty) houses on the same road.

Thursday was Ireland in all its glory – gale force 9 winds and torrential rain – which lasted the whole entire day! We ventured out only to stock up on peat and logs for the fire, managed a miserable walk up and down the main street of the village for the dogs who were more than happy to return to the warmth of the cottage and sleep the day through (as were we!) It was actually lovely to have a legitimate excuse to just put on comfy clothes and lounge around the cottage all day.

The weather outside the cottage window!

Friday was a better day and we headed off to explore the island. We drove to Trawmore beach, one of 5 blue flag beaches on the island. We went to the wrong end though (we only discovered on the Sunday) as it was all stones and shingle. We still had a good old walk though and the dogs loved it.

I was studying a sheep half way up the hill - trying to work out if it was stuck (it wasn't!)

Fort at Trawmore Beach

It was actually really small!

Saturday was really nice and sunny and we went to the deserted village at the bottom of Slievemore Mountain. It was so strange to see all these ruined cottages, many of them still standing against the elements pretty well. It used to be booley settlement when families lived somewhere different in summer and winter to allow cattle to graze on summer pasture. This would’ve been their summer dwelling. Now they’re home only to the sheep who graze nearby and who kindly stood still and gazed at us with curiosity as we snapped their photos.

My wee family at the Deserted Village

The locals were friendly

Part of Atlantic drive - before the cliff edges!

After that we followed the Atlantic Drive along a cliff top route. I'm not great with heights and so the feeling that we might veer off the road and plunge to our deaths in the Atlantic ocean did leave me with white knuckles. We drove down to Keem beach look out point before going on round the coast to a gorgeous wee beach at Dugort where we had another good walk before heading back to the cottage for another afternoon/evening of chilling out and falling asleep before the end of movies!

Dugort Beach

Mount Slievemore behind Dugort Beach

Dogs exploring the beach

Flying Brodie

So warm we had to take our coats off!

Reuben just looking adorable!

The dogs at their happiest

Saturday night was perfectly clear skied and being so far from civilisation we were able to see so many stars - we think we saw the milky way as well but despite our best attempts our night time photography skills left something to be desired! However we stood outside for ages staring at the stars with the lights twinkling in the distance from across the bay, just listening to cattle lowing and some kind of bird I'd never heard before singing in the dark. It was perfect and right at that moment I totally wished we never had to leave.

Not a very good photo but it the best we could capture of a very starry night

On Sunday we headed off to the top of the island and then back to Trawmore beach where we discovered the proper sandy part and after another long walk up and back down it, we headed back to the cottage for yet more movie watching (at this stage S had convinced me to give The Lord of the Rings a try as I’d never seen any of the three parts and I ended up pretty hooked!)

Monday morning we packed up and headed off by 10am for the five hour drive back home. On our actual anniversary on Friday S had given me a card with money and apologised for the lack of imagination but that he had ordered me something online and it hadn’t turned up in time but it should be there when we got home.

When we got home, I discovered that this was a little ruse of a story to throw me off the scent as what he’d actually done was.... tune in next time to discover what my thoughtful husband had gone and done without me knowing!

A Christmas Fair...

2011-12-02T09:32:00.001Z

Well, we finally got a new router for our internet connection at home but I didn't get a chance to post about Achill or my wonderful surprise yet. I don't know if it's the dark nights but I just don't seem to have enough time for anything these days.

Anyway, last night was the Christmas Fair in Ballynahinch (about 40 miles away from our town). It was being held in a church hall, but a very modern one. We decided in the end to bring the dogs and S popped in and out the whole evening to walk them and make sure they were okay tucked up in their blankets in the car. We figured they'd rather wait in the car for us than have to stay home alone.

Now, when I was told about the fair I had imagined a festive scene straight from a Hollywood movie, twinkling lights, tasteful decorations, carols playing softly in the background and the smell of mulled wine and Christmas in the air in a massive room with loads of wonderful crafts and bits and bobs. In reality, when we arrived we were shown up to an upstairs room with 3 other stalls in it (2 jewellery and 1 knitted scarves and hats). There was another small room beside ours with a few stalls in and then the main room downstairs where the bulk of the fair was being held. I felt a wee bit put out that we were upstairs away from the main activity and there wasn't so much as a bit of tinsel to be seen in our room!

There was a really good turn out (as I saw when I left S manning the stall and went to have a look about downstairs where it was all happening!) The main room was jammed with folk milling about looking at all the goods on offer. Our room seemed to go through waves of activity as if a horde of people were directed up to us and all came in at once, swept around after a brief look around, before heading back out again. Then there would be another lull until the next group of folk appeared.

Still, the stall was free of charge so all it cost was the petrol to drive there and a few hours of our time (and I did, as always, really appreciate S driving me and sitting with me when he would so rather have been sitting watching sport on TV in front of the fire!)

I managed to forget a couple of boxes - we were so busy putting coats on the dogs that I left them sitting on the kitchen table. One had the little wooden stands for my cards and one had the gorgeous wee cross-stitched Christmas scenes that my mum had spent time making (I'm so sorry mum, I've a head and so has a pin as well you know! I'll put them up on my Folksy and Etsy shops and sell them that way instead!)

I did remember to bring my two pointy portraits of Reuben and Brodie though and a few people did seem interested in how they were created and if I worked from photographs. They took business cards so fingers crossed (although folk took a load at the last fair and I never had one follow up, so I won't get too excited just yet!).

Anyway, all told it wasn't a complete waste of time. I sold about 20 cards and another twisty town. The rest are still for sale in my Etsy shop if anyone is interested!

So, not really a work in progress as such and I hope Eva and Kristin won't mind me crashing the Paint Party Friday with my post but I promise I'll be having a weekend of art and will have some new work for next week!

Joy to the world...

2011-11-24T15:43:00.000Z

Well, we got back from our trip to Achill Island on Monday and I had planned to bore you all with a travelogue and lots of photos but, in our absence, our internet router has given up the ghost and so I haven't been able to get online at home. We're waiting for a new one which should come in the next few days hopefully. I can still use my smart tab to view other blogs thankfully so I'll be able to pay a visit to the many talented creatives joining in Paint Party Friday.

This is another Christmas Card design that I did before we went away. I've got the Christmas fair on 1 December so I'll be spending the weekend printing off cards and making sure I've got enough stock (being ever optimistic that I'll actually sell stuff this time!)

Joy to the world - Pointy Christmas Card

I started off with the Robin and wasn't sure about the background initially. I had thought I'd do a more traditional snowy village but then, perhaps because I'd been thinking of this time last year in New York , I got the urge to draw a more modern skyline instead. I wanted to still use words from a Christmas Carol and 'Joy to the world' seemed appropriate!

For anyone who might like to read about Achill (in case you ever fancy a visit there) I'll be blogging about our trip just as soon as I get online at home again and also about a wonderful arty anniversary present that the very lovely S surprised me with.

Don't forget to pop over to Paint Party Friday to see all the great works in progress in blogland this week.

Paint Party Friday....Christmas cards, animals and anniversaries...

2011-11-10T23:22:00.000Z

Here are two more Christmas card designs...

which was about all the actual art I had time for this week because…

We had our first assignment for the night class I’m doing in animal care and it was pretty chunky – 6 tasks, each with various parts to them, and we had to do a couple of PowerPoint presentations in front of the class too. I’d forgotten what it was like to do homework, and coupled with working full time and trying to find time for art, not to mention S and the dogs, I won’t lie, it’s been a tad full on!

Back many moons ago when I was at school we found all the answers in books, now though it’s all about surfing the internet for information. This, as I’m sure you know, is a bit of a double-edged sword. There is so much useful information out there, if you know the correct keywords to search under but there is also soooo much crap to wade through to get to it! People can tell you anything in cyber space so trying to find out what’s true and what isn’t when it comes to animal behaviour is a bit of a minefield – good job I watch so much Discovery Channel!

Anyway, in other news, Maegan, LeRoy’s human, loved his portrait so much that she wanted to buy it!! You might remember I had just asked her if I could use one of her photos as I’d never done a French Bull Dog before so it wasn’t originally a commissioned piece. Now however she wants me to do a portrait of her wee pug, Bebop as well! I’ll hopefully get a start on that this week.

I got a photo of the other French Bull Dog, Max, that my old college friend asked for a portrait of, so I’ll be busy enough with doggy portraits for a wee while!

I finally got Brodie’s portrait framed and it’s now hanging up beside Reuben’s in our bedroom:

Next Friday 18 November is our 6th date-iversary & 1st wedding anniversary (sort of like an American address - meet me on the corner of 6th & 1st!) So we have booked a lovely wee traditional Irish cottage on Achill Island in County Mayo for 5 days from Thursday. We’re really limited with destination choices flying directly out of Northern Ireland so we figured we’d stay in Ireland and that way we can include the dogs in our romantic anniversary getaway!

all photos credit: Imagine Ireland

So, I won’t be around next week but I will be taking my art supplies with me and I plan to make use of my very neglected camera so I'll hopefully come back with some new art and some new arty inspiration. For now though, make sure you pop over to say hi to the ever increasing amount of creative party-goers at Paint Party Friday, hosted as always by Kristin and Eva.

Paint Party Friday...Ooh La LeRoy (Le petit dude from California)

2011-11-03T23:09:00.000Z

It seems like aeons ago that I first started the pointy portrait of LeRoy. It was just under a month ago, in fact but I started and finished other bits and pieces in the meantime so it seems like longer. Anyway, the little French Bull Dog from L.A is finally finished:

This may well be the shortest post I've ever written.

Oh, in other doggy news, Lennox has a court date of 11/11/11 for the latest appeal against his death sentence. The wee guy and his family are not giving up so please keep the good vibes winging their way to him.

That's it. That's all I'm saying this week. About anything. Seriously - a really short post!

Oh, one more thing - don't forget about the Party, you know, the Paint Party that happens every Friday. You can meet the other party-goers right over here.

I'm really done now.

The Neverending Story.... part 6...

2011-10-30T20:26:00.001Z

This is my contribution to Amy's never ending story. You can read the previous parts if you click on the button at the bottom of this post.

The girl with the blue scarf put the thought of the girl with the golden locks who lost her head out of her mind. She needed to find out if that blue horse with the magical white wings was actually her little dog, the one who she used to keep in her blue scarf way back when.

She looked up into the sky which had turned as golden as the hair of the girl who lost her head. She could just make out the silhouette of the flying horse but wait, where was the man? He wasn’t on the horse’s back any longer.

Suddenly she felt a cold breath on her neck. The man with no face (which was actually really creepy because he literally had no face) stood right behind her holding the symbols of greed in his hands. She gasped at his fetid breath as the man with no face whispered in her ear:

‘Don’t scream beautiful red haired girl, I represent the money-hungry, faceless capitalist giants who are taking over the world and ruining it with our commercialised greed. I would never have believed that such a wonder as a flying blue horse existed if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes. He led me right to you and I think that you and your eternal optimism and artistic creativity may be something else that we can capitalise on. I think you may have imagined him into existence and I won’t be happy until we’ve hunted him down and hung his head on our trophy wall. ‘

The girl was aghast. ‘But why would you want to destroy something so beautiful’.

‘Oh, because we can’ said the man with no face, nonchalantly.

He went on to tell her that he wanted her to work for him creating mystical, mythical creatures that he could then hunt into extinction. The privilege of working for the man would be payment enough, he arrogantly summed up.

It turned out that the girl with the blue scarf and the red hair had a fiery temper to match her fiery locks (must be the fighting Irish in her blood) and she mustered up all her karate moves (which in truth were only two) stomped on the man with no face’s foot, spun round and punched him squarely where his nose would’ve been, had he had a face.

As he squealed and cursed and rolled around on the ground like an overdramatic football (soccer for the American readers) player looking for a free kick, the girl with the blue scarf ran for her life into the nearby pumpkin forest (who knew there were actual pumpkin trees?). As she raced through the pumpkin trees with their heavy fruit already carved for Halloween which was the next hugely commercialised holiday that the corporate giants would cash in on, she saw up ahead, in a clearing, her beautiful blue winged horse that used to be a dog, pawing at the ground and waiting for her. She jumped on his back and they rose up into the air and flew far, far away from the man with no face into a night sky with a million, squillion stars twinkling all around them, off on their next adventure...

Because there's a tenuous Halloween link in my part of the story, I'm also linking to Natasha May's Halloween blog party here:

and the Butterfly Effect's Surreal theme here:

Paint Party Friday...Vegan Cupcakes and Fiat 500s...

2011-10-27T19:39:00.000+01:00

The final version which turned out not to be the final version

I mentioned last week that I had bid on a job on People Per Hour to design a logo for a vegan bakery. This was my first ever commission for something that wasn’t a dog portrait or a caricature.

The client gave a clear brief of what she wanted which was a girly, whimsical and quirky illustration of a fiat 500 Old Timer with a cupcake on the door. The bakery is called Babette’s Bakery and Babette is the car! The client wanted it to look like it was zipping through town with deliveries of delicious vegan goodies.

Initially I submitted a bid with a sample of my walkies illustrations – the walk n roll one with the dachshund and 50s petticoats. Lucky for me, this was exactly the style of illustration she wanted and asked me to submit a rough draft sketch of a design based on her brief.

I submitted this:

That got me the job and the client then advised things she would like tweaked and changed. She also asked if it would be a vector file which made me panic – I’m not a graphic designer and actually didn’t even know what a vector file was! I had to Google it! It turned out that she would be able to get my drawings converted to vector files so that she could then get the cupcake made into a decal for her car door.

I came up with 6 rough variations on a cupcake and then the client advised which bits of each she liked to make up the final cupcake.

I then drew the cupcake on its own and scanned both black and white and colour versions:

Next I set about re-drawing the car design incorporating the changes the client had asked for. I scanned the black and white version and then added colour – this was the part I was most nervous about as one slip of the brush or blob of paint in the wrong place and it would have been back to the drawing board.

I actually ended up adding colour to the original sketch first as a sort of test run and once I was happy with that I completed the design. However, it turned out that the girl’s profile was different in the second design and the client preferred the original face so, as I had painted both, I sent both images so she could decide which she preferred to use on her business stationery.

The original sketch with a few minor amendments turned out to be the preferred final version

I enjoyed doing this – it was really different from any commission I’ve done before for a dog portrait for example, because then the client is essentially leaving it entirely up to me to come up with a likeness of their dog from a photograph and they don't have any input in how it is progressing.

With this I was working completely to the client’s requirements and had to remember that my preferences didn’t come into it – so even though I might have preferred a different style of cupcake, it wasn’t up to me! That was quite a new thing as mostly artists draw what they want and please themselves whereas with this I contacted the client each time I did a new draft to make sure it was in keeping with the brief. It was really quite nervewracking, hoping that I came up with a design that matched the client’s vision and so, it was really satisfying when the job was completed and the client was happy with the design.

I’ve asked if she will let me see the business cards and car decal once they have been ‘vectorised’ as I’m curious to see how much that will change my original illustration and also it’ll be exciting to see my work on someone’s business card! It's just a pity that the bakery is in Switzerland so I won't get to try out any of the vegan cupcakes!

I'm going to try to get round everyone at Paint Party Friday over the weekend. I do pop in to blogs at ~~work~~ er, lunch break but for some reason my work computer won't let me leave comments on some of them - I think it might be to do with the word capture thingy. So apologies if I didn't leave a comment last week - I probably did try to!

Twisty Manger...

2011-10-23T18:25:00.000+01:00

So, I wanted to design a few more Christmas cards to take along to the Christmas Fair at the start of December and this is the first of them.

Twisty Manger

Although I can't claim to be very religious at all, (I'm currently going through an agnostic phase after a lifetime of just accepting that God existed despite the overwhelming evidence of millions of years of evolution) I do think that it seems every year we seem to get further and further away from what Christmas actually means and what we are supposed to be celebrating.

Commercialism is alive and well at Christmas more than any other time of the year, it would seem, and so with that in mind, I wanted to create Christmas card designs that actually relate to what Christmas traditionally means incorporating my usual Twisty Towns (and with the inclusion of cute animals of course!)

And in other news....

2011-10-20T22:49:00.003+01:00

Well, it’s been an eventful week in my world of art. Here’s what’s been happening:

• I got a message on Facebook from an old college friend looking for a commissioned pointy pet portrait of his girlfriend’s dog. Funny enough, it’s another wee French Bull Dog! I’m just waiting for some photos and then I can get started on it.

• I restocked my Etsy and Folksy shops last Saturday and the same evening got an email via Etsy inviting me to take a stall at a Christmas fair being organised by a woman’s group in a town about 40 minutes away from where I live. There’s no charge for the stall and there’s no admission on the door so it should hopefully attract a lot of interest.

It’s on a Thursday evening at the start of December so I’ll need to get out of work early but S has kindly resigned himself to taking me there and helping me set up! The hall will be decorated with Christmas music playing and after the stalls finish selling there’ll be Christmas carollers so I’m really looking forward to that as I do love a good Christmas atmosphere! I’ll need to get working on a few more Christmas card designs and S is going to make some more of his wee wooden candle holders and wooden apple tree decorations to sell. (Did I mention before that he's turned his hand to woodturning and is creating all sorts of lovely wee wooden bits and bobs?)

• I got a bid accepted on People Per Hour for the very first time!! This is a website where people who need work done can post an advert and then freelancers (artists, secretaries, IT Professionals, etc) bid for the jobs they are interested in. I’ve bid for a few before but never been successful. This one is to design a logo for a vegan bakery (I know, it’s like serendipity!) I’ve been given a brief of what the logo should include and I’ve been working on drafts all week with the client. I'm hoping to get the design completed today and I’ll blog the design once she’s happy with the work.

As for work in progress this week, I’m still working on Le Roy – he’s had to take a bit of a back seat while I got on with the bakery logo but I don’t have too much more to do on him. I’ve also started a couple of new oil paintings. I wanted to do something completely different subject-wise and so re-visited my favourite photo resource website, Paint my Photo, which I used many times when I was doing the sketchbook project last year. I found two photos I really liked:

Credit: Alun Davies - Paintmyphoto.ning.com

Credit: Robyn Lovelock - Paintmyphoto.ning.com

I spent about 20 minutes searching our (admittedly untidy) computer den where I currently store all my art supplies looking for two long thin canvasses that I knew I had. It was only when I went into our bedroom and noticed them hanging above our bed that I remembered I’d already used them!

All was not lost however as, during my search, I discovered 3 similarly shaped canvasses that I could use instead. We’d been given them as a gift several years ago and they already had an abstract print on them but, as we’d changed our décor, they no longer went in our hallway and so had been relegated to gathering dust on top of the wardrobe. Wanting to do my bit for the whole reduce, recycle, reuse movement, I decided to see if I could paint over them. As the material isn’t canvas but more like a sort of nylon/plastic type material I wasn’t sure if it would work but so far so good.

I started them both at the same time as I remembered just how long it takes oil to dry between each coat. One week later and one of them was still wet, although that’s possibly because I applied the paint in thick blobs of colour. Anyway, I haven’t managed to work any further on it just yet but this is the work in progress so far:

Step 1 - black and grey 'undercoat' and the original print I've painted over

Step 1

Step 2 - and now taking forever to dry .

The second one is a night time cityscape in Tasmania, Australia. The first week I just outlined the basic shapes in black and grey tones and then last week I started adding some colour. I’m just experimenting with the application process at the moment. I really want to master pointillism and as such I am using colour straight from the tube without mixing it first. I’m not sure I’ll be giving Monsieur Seurat a run for his money just yet but I’m enjoying just messing about with it. The only downside is I can only get so far before I have to leave it for another week or so or else I just end up blurring all the colours together into a muddy mess!

The prints I painted over and my step 1

Step 1 - black and grey tones to loosely mark in the buildings

Step 2 - adding some colour (with the rubber 'smudger' on the end of an eyeliner pencil!)

Anyway, sorry it’s a bit of a long post but it’s been such an eventful week and I’ve never been much good at making a long story short! Happy Paint Party Friday to you all and don't forget to pop over there to see the ever increasing abundance of artistic talent joining in the fiesta!

Oh, and best news of all, it seems that Lennox may have had a stay of execution as his family did manage to lodge a fresh appeal last week!! It might not be over just yet after all!

Paint Party Friday...the rainbow bridge...

2011-10-14T06:51:00.001+01:00

It's been a while since I added to my Walkies series of ACEOs and I thought I would do one of Lennox, who, regular readers of my blog will know, has become the unfortunate poster dog for all that is wrong with Breed Specific Legislation.

Lennox

He lost his fight against Belfast City Council's decision to put him down for 'looking' like a pit bull. Today was the last day his family could lodge a fresh appeal based on an error in law. At this point, I don't know if they've been able to, but I wanted to mark this day with a tribute to this wee dog and the love he has inspired in people all over the world.

I wanted to depict him running free outdoors where he hasn't been in over 18 months. There is a poem called The Rainbow Bridge which inspired the background to this painting, although even now, at the last chance saloon, I am hoping for a miracle for this wee dog and that he won't be waiting at the Rainbow Bridge just yet.

I'm linking to Paint Party Friday as always - my favourite group of artists and creatives online.

Paint Party Friday...watchoo lookin at?

2011-10-06T20:56:00.002+01:00

Le Roy, French Bull Dog

I quite like Twitter. Not so much Facebook (especially because they keep changing the layout and telling me what my top stories are. Er, I'll decide what I want to see for myself actually Facebook) Anyway, Twitter -I like that, apart from my sister and my husband, every other person I follow and who follows me is someone I know only in the virtual world of the interweb. I like that I can follow people with the same interests as me. That's artists, animal lovers/welfare folk/charities, doggy folk and vegans, for the most part, although I am still partial to following the odd celebrity, wedding and lifestyle blogger.

One such person is Maegan from Love Maegan. She wears fabulous clothes and accessories, blogs about fashion, home and lifestyle, works part time in an art gallery as a graphic designer and she often posts photos on Twitter of her adorable dogs, Le Roy, a French Bull Dog and Bebop who is a pug. They're immensely cute and so I asked Meagan if she would mind if I used one of her photos as part of my windows to the soul series and she kindly said yes.

This is the gorgeous photo I am using:

Credit: Meagan at http://www.lovemeagan.com/

How adorable is he?! Anyway, I planned to just do a watercolour painting of the eye. But then I decided that as Le Roy is just too cute I'd have to do his whole entire portrait instead. So, I started a pointy portrait which is a work in progress as we speak. I still wanted to paint his eyes though so instead of drawing them from scratch I sort of cheated and scanned what I'd done of the pointy portrait at the time and printed it out on sketchbook paper and added a bit of watercolour to it. It only took me about 20 minutes but I quite liked it. Until I added some more black dots around the nose and above the eye because I hadn't completed those bits on the actual pointy portrait. I kinda ruined it right there. Hey ho.

Here's a sneaky peek of the pointy portrait:

Watchoo lookin at? - Le Roy the adorable French Bull Dog - Pen and Ink, Stippled.

Hope everyone has a happy Friday and I'll be sure to make my way round all the other Paint Party Friday party-goers over the weekend!

A time for Karma...

2011-09-30T19:36:00.002+01:00

I have no art today. I'm not really in an arty mood. In fact, I've spent most of the day sitting at my desk at work, trying not to cry. It's with the heaviest of hearts that I am writing this post. I had hoped to be able to tell you that the Judge reviewed the overwhelming evidence in favour of Lennox and had the good sense to let him return to his family and kick the lying dog warden into touch at the same time. Unfortunately, it would seem that the powers that be stick together and the Judge found in favour of Belfast City Council and dismissed the appeal to save his life.

The Judge said that he couldn't be satisfied that Lennox wasn't a danger to the public. Belfast City Council said that they believed if Lennox was released back to his family, he posed a serious risk to the public and "in the event of Lennox being involved in attacking or injuring a person, the council would be found to be at fault".

Surely by that rationale all dogs should just be put down now 'just in case' they ever attack someone? In that case then we should surely execute all paedophiles, rapists or murderers instead of releasing them back into the community (some after woefully short sentences) 'just in case' they carry out another attack (which, by the way, going by news reports on repeat offenders is much more likely to happen). I don't know about you but I'd much rather take my chances with a dog than most of the feral kids running riot round the streets these days - they're more likely to attack you than any dog is.

The only possible chance of an 11th hour reprieve now is if his family launch an appeal based on an error in law. It is a subtle distinction but means that any appeal must come about because of the decision being incompatible with the law. A new website has been set up to try to find legal experts willing to help in this regard. I've already written today to my MLA in Stormont and an MP in Westminster responsible for animal welfare.

Even if this turns out to be just spitting in the rain (I no longer have any faith in the justice system in this country to actually do the right thing by the victim/innocent party) if there's the slightest possible chance of saving this one dog's life and getting the government to realise that BSL is wrong, then we can't give up.

In the meantime, I hope karma pays a visit to everyone involved in setting a wee dog up for the death sentence.

Paint Party Friday...An ending, a beginning and hopefully a happy ever after...

2011-09-22T23:18:00.001+01:00

Brodie - Portrait in stippled pen and ink

An ending

I thought the day would never come, but at last, finally, joyously, I’ve finished the pointy portrait of Brodie. I’ve been working on this on and off over the last couple of months with it being neglected completely in favour of getting enough stock together for the fair last month. Then last week saw me doing a couple of eye paintings in my new Windows to the Soul series. I added a cat one to last week's dog, here.

I did this portrait to hang alongside the one I did of my other dog, Reuben. His portrait was a close up that filled most of the page. Reuben is recognisable by the fact that his ears failed to stick up in the proper Westie manner and instead flop around and give him a sweet and unique character. Coupled with his perpetually worried face – this is a little dog who looks, to all intents and purposes, like he has the weight of the world on his shoulders!

Brodie on the other hand has a smaller head with the typical pointy westie ears which, together with her usually defiant and slightly vacant expression are what makes her, her! So, in order to capture her essence I needed to use a photo reference which included her ears. This resulted in a smaller total headshot than Reuben's which in turn resulted in more background than was visible in his portrait.

However, (and I promise, I’m getting to the point right now!) because I wanted them to be the same style I had to colour the background black the same as I did in Reuben’s portrait. Only there was so much of it which, when you’re doing it one dot of ink at a time, takes a reaaaaaalllly long time! Eventually, tonight with the bottom half still to complete in black, I just threw my head up and painted the ink on with a brush and then added some dots with the ink pen to give it texture (which seeing it on the computer screen is blatantly apparent and I will need to go over that before I get it framed!) I am annoyed at myself for wasting so much time stippling the top half of the background and then just painting the bottom half but, if nothing else, I’ve learnt not to colour the background solid black in future portraits!

A beginning

In other tenuously linked animal news, I started a new night class on Tuesday - Small animal care. I have a career crush on my tutor who has a doctorate in zoology and as well as teaching people like me about animal care, she trains dogs and is an animal behaviourist - what an amazing career! This will give me a basic qualification in animal care including grooming and behaviour and maybe might lead on to more qualifications and perhaps a mid-life change in career - how wonderful if I could end up grooming dogs as well as painting them!!

A happy ever after?

Friday 23 September is going to be another day of following Twitter fervently, waiting for updates of Lennox's appeal hearing which ran on too long last Friday and was adjourned until today. If there is any justice in this world, then today will see the Court order that Lennox can go home to his family and begin to enjoy his wee doggie life again. Fingers and toes crossed once again.

Here's hoping it really will be a Happy Paint Party Friday.

**Update
I've just learned that Lennox's appeal hearing has been adjourned for the second time as it ran on too long today also. The Judge is apparently to definitely make a decision next week. I can only hope this is a good thing and the evidence has given him pause for thought as well as the fact that over 100,000 people have now signed the petition to save Lennox. Poor wee fella has to stay in dog jail for another week.

Windows to the Soul...cruel reflections

2011-09-18T17:51:00.000+01:00

Cruel Reflections - Cat's eye in watercolour

This is the second in my windows to the soul series. As this series was inspired by mankind's cruelty to animals, I Googled cats' eyes and found inspiration on a free wallpaper site here, then used some artistic licence with it to show the cruelty reflected back at us.

As for Lennox, thanks to the modern wonder of Twitter, I was able to keep up with what was happening all throughout the day on Friday. For those who asked for an update, the appeal lasted the whole day and was eventually adjourned as they ran out of time on Friday. This means it will continue next Friday, 23 September. Of course, it also means that poor Lennox spends another week away from his family but hopefully it's a good thing it took so long as surely it must mean the Judge is really listening to all the evidence and not just going through the motions before upholding the original decision to put Lennox down? My heart goes out to his family who have another week of waiting and worrying before Court resumes again on Friday but please God/the Cosmos/fate/whatever you believe in, it'll be worth the wait and the wee dog will finally be allowed to come home.

Paint Party Friday...a very important date...

2011-09-16T00:03:00.001+01:00

'I trust you' - Dog's eye in watercolour

I've had an idea in my mind for a while of a series of paintings of eyes or more specifically the eyes of animals, that I’ve given the working title ‘Windows to the Soul’. This is the first one which I did as a small sketch in watercolour. I’d like to try to do these much bigger in oil on canvas but thought I’d start small and see how I get on. When you look into the trusting eyes of a dog, you can really understand why eyes are described as the windows to the soul.

In other news, today is a hugely important day for one wee dog and his very worried family. Do you remember way back here when I told you the story of Lennox, the dog who’d been taken by Belfast City Council on the grounds that he ‘looked’ like a pit bull which is classed as a dangerous dog and therefore not allowed in Northern Ireland under Breed Specific Legislation. Regardless that Lennox is actually NOT a pit bull and the same Council had happily accepted the money for his licence every year for 5 years before deciding he was in fact a menace to society and locked him up in May 2010. Today is the appeal hearing to hopefully have the original ruling to have Lennox put down quashed and hopefully prove to me and many others that sometimes the law is actually not an ass.

It’s even come to light that the Dog Warden who previously stood up in Court and swore that she was afraid of Lennox and his uncontrollable, aggressive behaviour blatantly lied as photos which you can see here have come to light showing Lennox licking her face, sitting at her feet while she patted his head and with his paw on her knee – hardly the actions of a dangerous, uncontrollable dog!

Every finger and toe I possess is crossed in anticipation of a favourable outcome for poor Lennox and his family. His case has garnered worldwide attention with even the Queen of dog behaviour, Victoria Stilwell, getting involved on his behalf. Please send good luck vibes from wherever you are to Belfast High Court so that finally Lennox can come home to the family that love and miss him desperately.

Happy Paint Party Friday and big thanks to Kristin and Eva who continue to host it so wonderfully every week!

Paint Party Friday... just vegging...

2011-09-08T21:12:00.003+01:00

So the last week I've been anything but productive. I've got so many ideas running through my head of things I want to try painting but none that have made it from my brain to the page via my left hand!

I have done a little more on the portrait of Brodie that I started a few weeks ago. Work on this was interrupted by the rush to get all the stuff finished for the style fair but now I have nothing else in the pipeline I really don't have an excuse not to have finished it already.

A work in progress - got a way to go yet.

To be honest, my mind has been consumed with all things vegan, animal welfare and anti-vivisection over the last month or so. Ask S and he will tell you (with a ma-hoosive rolling of the eyes) that recently every other sentence I utter starts with "is it vegan friendly?".

You see, about a month ago I made the mistake of Googling stuff. Stuff about animal testing on beauty products, stuff about how the dog meat trade is huge in the Far East, stuff about how being a vegetarian really isn't enough because by wearing leather and wool and consuming dairy products and anything else with animal by-products in them (which I've come to learn is practically everything man-made whether edible or not) I was still contributing to the suffering of mass farmed animals and lab caged creatures the world over. Even free range hens aren't actually the happy hens I'd been led to believe by the marketing men.

I visited website after website and ordered copies of the Compassionate Shopping Guide and the Animal Free Shopper not to mention Viva's L-PLate Vegan, and it was at this point that S's eyes rolled round in his head so much they nearly got stuck and my head imploded with all the infinite possibilities and intricacies of how manufacturers sneak animal by-products into our lives and how convoluted my future trips to the supermarket are going to be until I become a vegan expert!

If it isn't bad enough that I need to double-check the packaging on every morsel of food I want to eat (even salt & vinegar crisps have milk powder in them, for frig's sake!), I was even more gutted to realise that something I use on a near daily basis also has sneaky animal by-products in them.

What could it be, I hear you cry? Yup, you gesso'd it - even my art supplies! (I swear I nearly cried when I discovered by beloved Indian Ink contains Shellac (some kind of insect gunk) and I've no way of knowing if it is made from actual insects or a synthetic version!) Watercolour paper too can be sized with gelatin although I was relieved to discover my Windsor Newton pads are sized with gum arabic - phew!

Anyway, this isn't meant to be some fanatical diatribe about the vegan way of life - I just wanted to share what's being going on in my head and my life this last month. I'm not about to start on a huge vegan preachy rant trying to convert all the meat eaters amongst you - I firmly believe that everyone has free choice; it's just that the animals don't get those same choices and so I've decided to choose to eat and use only those things that are vegan friendly. Of course, not being one of the Hilton Sisters/some other obscenely rich person, the best I can do is replace each thing (leather boots included) as they wear out or run out with vegan-friendly alternatives. I did find a wonderful post on a Veganomaly which perfectly sums up the very reasons I realised I had to become vegan, if anyone does want to learn more.

Sorry this is a bit of a heavy post this week and only slightly related to art, but I kind of needed to write about it and, as I say, it has inspired a seed of an idea that I hope to start working on this weekend. Happy Paint Party Friday, folks, make mine a vegan-friendly wine spritzer please and I'll bring along the meat-free sausages!

Paint Party Friday - does redecorating the bedroom count?

2011-09-01T21:55:00.000+01:00

I'm joking. Well, I'm not actually - we did take a few days off work last week to repaint our bedroom and our living room but I did actually do some art that I can bring to the party and which is now hanging in said newly redecorated rooms!!

You may remember a while ago I wanted to repaint the living room just to match the portrait I did of our dog, Reuben? Well, in the end up I discovered this gorgeous bedding by Lisa Strickley on the Debenhams website and, as we just so happened to still have a gift voucher that we’d received as a wedding present, I went ahead and got it. As the colours were aqua, white and black, Reuben’s wee black and white portrait goes very nicely up on the wall and will soon be joined by one of his sister, Brodie (if I can ever motivate myself to finish it!)

I just love the old typewriter font all over the quilted throw and it inspired me to come up with something for the wall above our bed.

I wasn't exactly sure what I would end up with when I started out but I just sort of went with it. I began by painting two canvasses with the paint we used on the wall – an off white colour called Timeless. Then I used the same font as on my blog header (Harting, if you want to know) and simply typed up all the places that meant something special to us in New York.

I ripped the words out of the pages to leave the edges all ragged and stuck them onto the canvasses. I then messed around on the computer with some of our wedding photos (taken by Brian Freedman of B-Freed photography) using the antique and diffuse glow settings to make them look old and grainy.

Once I had glued these on (I just used the stage 1 of the crackle glaze as glue) I then put the crackle glaze all over to add to the old shabby theme. I'm not sure if this constitutes mixed media or collage or a mixture of both? Either way it's the first time I've done something like this and I think I'll do more!

Close up of the words on ripped paper

S and I are really pleased with how they turned out and they fit in with the rest of our bedroom perfectly. I can only apologise for the rubbish quality of my photography - it's just easier to take photos on my tab and email them straight to myself so I can get them straight to the computer but I really should learn how to use one of the bells and whistles cameras S has!

Then we redecorated the living room – we kept the main walls the same cream and repainted the feature fire place wall. It was a lovely warm red and its now a lovely cool sage/olive green. S isn’t too sure about it as he loved how warm the red made the room feel especially with the fire lit but I love it – it looks really nice against the dark wood fireplace and furniture.

Of course I took the photo at night so you can't
really tell it's a lovely sage/olive colour!

With our lovely Betsy Jarvis cushions!

Anyway, I needed some new wall art and so being all enamoured of how my bedroom pieces had turned out, I had a go at photo-shopping two of my pointy landscapes – they used to look like this:

Alleyways of Girona

Queensferry Arch

And after changing the hue and adding a bit of graininess they now look like this:

I did the same to a photo S took of a view over the lake at Hernshead in Central Park – it used to look like this:

It now looks like this:

That’s my artistic lot for the week – oh but in other news – a massive thanks to Eva who bought 5 of my Twisty towns in my Etsy shop this week!! She’s now the proud owner of the set of 3 ‘Building Bridges, the 'Twisted Rain' one and a print of one called ‘Feeling Blue’. I’m delighted she liked them enough to buy and can’t wait to see them hanging up in their new home (Oh and thanks to Eva I can now also say I’ve sold my art internationally!!)

I’m home alone this weekend and so will definitely be able to visit the other Paint Party- goers before the middle of next week this time!!

The fatal flaw in my liberation attempt...

2011-08-31T21:26:00.000+01:00

You might remember a couple of months ago I signed up to take part in Kat Sloma’s Liberate your Art project where each participant sent off 5 postcards to Kat and once she had received them all she then sent out 5 at random to each participant along with one of her own so that in total we would each receive 6 postcards from anywhere and everywhere.

Well, I was super pleased that I had printed my postcards off (albeit slightly upside down depending on which way you turned the card over to see the writing on the other side!) and got them posted off to Kat in America before the deadline of 15 July 2011. I had decided to write an art quote on each of the cards and was equally pleased I’d done that without any spelling mistakes!

The one thing I overlooked and which only became apparent on receipt of the first postcard in the swap was that I had completely forgotten to include any details of who I am or where my blog can be found!! D’oh – as far as sending my art out into the world goes in a bid to reach new as yet unknown fellow bloggers and artists, it was, as my stepson would say, an epic fail! Not much point in trying to promote my artwork around the world if I don’t bother to mention who I actually am!

So, once all the cards had been posted by Kat and received by the participants, Kat invited us all to blog link to her website Kat Eye View so that we could each learn more about who we sent art to and who we in turn received art from. This was to be done over the weekend of 26-28 August – another failure on my part as I am only getting round to doing it now.

I have a good excuse in that I was bopping away to Bjorn Again – an amazing Abba Tribute band in the gardens of Hampton Court Palace in England where we were over visiting my sister for the weekend. Look - photographic evidence!

My sister and me enjoying a nice pear cider!

Abba Tribute band, Bjorn Again

Bjorn Again - they were fab!

Also to date I have received 4 cards and the 1 that Kat herself sent so I was sort of waiting until I received all 6 before blogging about the project. I'm guessing that the last 1 got lost in the post however and so, with many huge apologies, I am adding this very late post to the blog link (if it isn't too late!).

Just to recap - and for anyone who might read this who received one of my cards so that you know who sent it after all - these are the cards I sent out into the world via Kat:-

And these are the lovely cards I received:-

http://www.joslittlepictures.wordpress.com

http://www.sloanesolanto.com

http://www.thestudio56.com

Kathy - Flickr/sightspecific

http://www.kateyestudio.com

I also went through all the blogs who’ve linked up about the project so far but only came across 2 who’ve received my postcards – I wanted to leave a comment to let them know I'm the absentminded artist who sent the anonymous postcards! Maybe the others haven’t gotten round to blogging yet either which may mean I’m not the last to the party after all!

Anyway, huge thanks to Kat who undertook a big old job as there were:-

1020 pieces of art in total

By 170 participants

From 37 US states

And 13 countries

That’s a lot of sorting out and all while she was packing up to move from Italy back to Oregon!

Paint Party Friday...Fair's fair...

2011-08-26T08:10:00.000+01:00

So, the Style Fair. Well, it was interesting and it was a definite learning experience. What it wasn't, unfortunately, was a roaring success as far as sales go. I did make back the cost of taking a stall plus a bit besides, so I wasn't out of pocket and now anything I didn't sell (which was most of it!) has gone on sale in my Etsy shop so it wasn't a waste of time.

The things I learnt:

Style Fair's mainly attract folk who want to buy clothes. Therefore, next time I will take a stall at a fair specifically for arts & crafts.
Lots of folk will compliment your work, pick it up and ooh and aah over it, then just walk off without buying anything.
People don't necessarily want to 'engage' with the stall holder - many folk just like to be left alone to browse (I am one of those people - nothing puts me off more than a pushy sales pitch).
It is very difficult not to engage with folk whilst simultaneously being engaging. You don't want to sit reading or talking to S in case it appears rude to folk who may want to engage but equally you don't want to sit staring at them willing them to look at you. Very off-putting, I imagine.
Subsequently it is very difficult to adopt a smiley, happy expression so you don't look like a grump at the same time as not making eye contact. The result is sort of staring into the middle distance with an inane grin.
It is best to have a float of loose coins to bring with you as folk never seem to have the right change.
It is best not to browse round the other stalls whilst leaving S in charge as it is likely all the money you do make will be spent on lovely things you just have to have before someone else snaps them up.
See No. 7 above - I bought a lovely scarf (which is for a present so doesn't count!) and resisted buying a lovely sweater, a lovely necklace and some lovely cushion covers!
It is necessary to have or very quickly develop a thick skin - folk seem oblivious to the fact that you are standing right there when they are making derogatory comments about the stuff on your stall!!
The items you think will be popular may in fact be the things that don't sell, whilst the things you brought just to bulk up your stock may actually sell out - different strokes for different folks.

Funny story to illustrate point 9 above - I only sold one Twisty Town (ironically the first one I did so I could maybe not have bothered with the other 14!) The lady who bought it came to my stall and stood for ages deliberating about which one - she was lovely and said she thought they were great and would definitely be back to get one. Her mum stood beside her with her face screwed up and said 'You aren't seriously going to get one of those are you?' I'm standing there with that inane grin on my chops thinking, 'I'm standing RIGHT HERE! I can HEAR YOU!'.

Off they went, but sure enough the lady came back later and eventually selected the one she wanted. Her mum was looking at me with an incredulous expression on her face while her daughter tried to decide. She then kept looking at her daughter, back to me then back to the Twisty Towns as if she just couldn't believe she was going to part with her cash until eventually her daughter said, 'Mum, that's the artist you're doing that to, don't be so rude!' I just keep on smiling inanely. Still, at least I sold one!

I genuinely thought that the note cards with the Walkies and Purrfect Nostalgia series on would be more popular. However, it turned out to be a card that I almost brought as an afterthought that sold the most that day. I put out 5 of each design and all 5 of this one sold (I even had a couple of spares which sold too). It just shows that different things appeal to different people. It was this one:

On the upside, I did meet a lovely lady who is a stylist and has a style studio. She is a huge dog lover and said that she would be interested in stocking my greeting cards in her studio. She took my business card so fingers crossed something might come from that.

I also met a woman who was interested in commissioning me to do a Twisty Town on a much larger canvas. She said it would go perfectly in her newly decorated living room but she would have to run it by her husband first. Hopefully, he'll agree and I'll hear back from her.

Anyway, I know this isn't strictly me bringing a work in progress to Paint Party Friday but I thought you might like some feedback from the fair and also I decided to have a week off from art after working so hard getting all the Twisty Towns finished. So, this week we have mostly been painting our bedroom and our living room. Not art but it has inspired me to work on some new things to hang on the walls. I've started something for our bedroom which, if it works, could look really nice. It's something I've never tried before so equally it could go horribly wrong! Stay tuned for the results!

Paint Party Friday...ménage à trois...

2011-08-18T21:51:00.000+01:00

So, the Twisty Town journey is almost complete. I say almost because Saturday will be the true test, as it's then that they will take up (temporary) residence on a table in a hall in Newtownabbey (a town I've never visited before!) before hopefully going on to live full and happy lives on the walls of discerning art lovers the length and bredth of the province (or maybe that's only in my dreams!). I am hugely excited and very nervous.

I've spent this week printing off greetings cards, handstamping the boarders of each card, packing them up in their little cello bags and then designing and printing off signs for my stall as well as little pricing postcards. I've also printed off copies of some of my pointy portraits to display just in case I could drum up some future commissions that way.

I've deliberated over how much I should charge for each of the Twisty Towns. S thought I was charging too little and should increase it a bit, based on the fact that once I take into account the canvas, the paints, the crackle glaze and the time it took me to do them I'd probably make about 5p profit! So, just in case, I've printed off a few different pricing postcards and if they don't sell for the higher price I can reduce it as the day goes on . Mind you, any that don't sell will be going into my Etsy and Folksy shops so it's not like I'll be giving them away at rock bottom prices at the fair!

Anyway, these were the last three canvasses and I was feeling a little out of ideas when S suggested that I do a triptych - he didn't use that word but I vaguely remembered reading it somewhere once and googled it to see if it was an actual thing - and it is - so I decided to use it so it sounds like I know what I'm talking about!

So, I came up with this scenario loosely based on the new Peace Bridge recently opened across the River Foyle in my hometown of Derry, or Londonderry if you prefer (you can see why we might need a 'peace' bridge!).

I don't actually like the design of the real bridge very much - the big spikey things don't appeal to me and I kind of object to them spending £14 million to build it. I mean seriously, we've already got two perfectly good road bridges going over the river so I'm not altogether sure why we needed to build a foot bridge that will only make it easier for the little yobs from either side of the city to terrorise anyone trying to walk across it. In fact the link I attached here depressingly details how vandals attacked the bridge only two weeks after it was opened. Is it any wonder I feel the need to create quirky, pretty, little imaginary towns when the real life ones we live in are so full of doom and gloom?

Anyway, on a lighter note, that's all 15 canvasses finished, about 100 cards printed and I'm pretty much all set for my first experience in trying to sell my art in a real live venue (and am also looking forward very much to having a nosy round all the other vintage, retro clothing stalls and hand made jewellery). I will of course take my camera with me to record the day and will no doubt bore you all with the minutae of the event in due course!

Oh and the title of these paintings isn't really ménage à trois, it's 'Bridging the Gap' but I figured the title might intrigue folk to pop over here (even though they'll obviously be very disappointed when they get here!!)

Happy Paint Party Friday - apologies in advance if I don't get a chance to visit many folk this weekend but I'll get there next week!

Green, green grass of home....

2011-08-17T22:36:00.000+01:00

Of course, that's a song about Wales and I've never been there (apart from a work training course in Cardiff back in 1993 which was anything but green, if I remember correctly) but I couldn't think of another title, sorry!

This is Twisty Town number 12 of 15. Phew, we're nearly there. Now, I've just got to try and sell the wee blighters on Saturday!

This is similar in style to the original twisty town that I did in the Sketchbook Project 2011 but this time I decided to do it in green. I planned on sticking to the one colour palette for all of the canvasses but then once I did a couple of the multi-coloured ones it seemed that folk preferred them so it will be interesting (and nerve-wracking) to see which, if any, are the first to sell at the fair. I suppose I was thinking that if people have a specific colour scheme in their home they might like a painting in that colour but, equally, I guess folk might like the multi-coloured one just to brighten up a neutral room. I can but hope!

Peachy Keen, Jellybean...

2011-08-14T17:37:00.000+01:00

The title of today's post just happens to be my favourite line from Grease (one of my favourite movies) and Rizzo, who said it, was my favourite character. It just seemed appropriate for this particular Twisty Town.

Paint Party Friday...Rainy reflections...

2011-08-11T21:40:00.001+01:00

Rainy Reflections

So, back to the Twisty Towns. I've still got another 6 to blog about and this is one of them! I think this is my favourite so far just because I love lights reflected in rain. I adore photographs where car headlights are reflected on a rainy street and blur almost into globes of colour.

Anyway, I thought I would try my hand at a bit of reflection on a grey rain soaked street - this was also based on the colourful villages in Kerry but with the more typical Irish weather included! I know it seems that I've been banging on about the weather a lot recently - sorry - I really do have other things to think about most of the time. But I find that, as my English literature teacher used to say about Wuthering Heights, the weather really does make for a sympathetic background to the plot. And so it is for my art inspiration at the moment!

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend and you can get it started with a wee party hosted, as always, by Kirstin and Eve over on Paint Party Friday.

Time for a new season...

2011-08-08T19:43:00.000+01:00

Winter Blues

I don't know about anyone else but I am officially over summer, or what passes for summer around these parts. I long to live somewhere with distinct seasons - where come June I can put my boots and sweaters away until at least the end of September.

We can't plan for any outdoors activity here with any real hope that the weather will play ball. Just the other day I phoned S from the train station in Belfast to see if he wanted to meet me at the park with the dogs because the sun was out and the sky was blue only to arrive in Bangor 30 minutes later to be greeted with grey skies and rain!! The unpredictable appearance of the sun here necessitates me bringing both umbrella and sunglasses everywhere I go - just in case. I could leave my coat at home some days only for the heavens to open 20 minutes later. Aggh. Of course, the other side of the whinging coin is that while we Irish complain non-stop about our rubbish weather at least we don't need to worry about our homes being hit by tornadoes, hurricanes or earthquakes. Yes, we're pretty safe from weather extremes, I suppose.

Anyway, I've noticed a definite shortening to the days already and I can't help but look forward to winter when at least I can leave my sunglasses at home and replace them with gloves instead. With that in mind, this Twisty Town seemed appropriate - I did this a while ago just after Rosy Reflections which was all about summer heat and this made me nostalgic for the cold, frosty winter breaks S and I have take for the last few years. Roll on winter, I say, you know where you are with an Irish winter and I for one am looking forward to complaining about the snow instead!

Paint Party Friday....it's like free money...

2011-08-04T22:30:00.000+01:00

Close up of the eye

Brodie - work in progress - pen and ink stippled.

Brodie posing!

So, first things first - This is my contribution to Paint Party Friday this week - You might remember how I did the pointy portrait of our boy dog, Reuben, a while back? Well, I couldn't not also do one of our girl dog, Brodie, and after umpteen attempts to get just the right photograph to work from, I started it this week (a half hour here and there during my lunchbreak at work). It's a work in progress obviously, but although I've finished a few more Twisty Towns, this seemed appropriate for what I really wanted to talk about this week which is this...

Money for nothing (sort of!)

As anyone who is a regular visitor to my blog will no doubt know, animals are the thing I get most fired up about - more specifically the never ending catalogue of horrific things that humans (with the alleged superior intelligence) inflict upon the creatures that we share this planet with. Anyway, it's for that reason that if I ever sign a petition or donate to charity then more often than not, it will be in support of one of the planet's creatures or another. For me it's animals, for you it might be children, the elderly or a cancer charity - we all have something that affects us personally or just means a lot to us for one reason or another.

Recently, I discovered Easyfundraising - a website set up specifically to help those of us who regularly shop online (and let's face it, credit crunch or not, who doesn't shop online these days?). It couldn't be easier - you register your email address and choose the charity you'd like to donate to then each time you plan on treating yourself to something online, instead of going directly to the retailer's website you simply go via Easyfundraising's website and the retailer will automatically donate a percentage of what you spend.

It doesn't actually cost you a penny but you are helping the charity of your choice everytime you indulge in a spot of online retail therapy -what's not to love!

Easyfundraising email you to confirm that a donation has been made and then every couple of months they let you know how much has been raised for your chosen charity. I have two using two different email addresses - Dog's Trust which is a well known UK charity and Assisi Animal Sanctuary which is a small animal refuge in my home town. I got an email about both of these letting me know how much was being sent to them this month. Unfortunately, even though Assisi has a lot of local support, only 3 people are registered with Easyfundraising and so we didn't raise enough to warrant sending a cheque this time around (It has to be over £15). This is why I felt compelled to write this post - it seems crazy to me that more people wouldn't register - it's the easiest possible way to raise money for the charity of your choice!

Although Easyfundraising is for UK charities, I'm sure if any folk reading this from anywhere else in the world wanted to help raise funds for a charity that means something to them, they could still register and shop (E.g Amazon, Ebay) via Easyfundraising anyway. It is, after all, the charitable thing to do :0)

Happy Paint Party Friday!

It was a right cliffhanger...

2011-07-31T09:13:00.001+01:00

The cliffhanger

This was another Twisty Town that was inspired by our trip to Kerry. This may be the shortest post ever as I have nothing to add to that!! Just another 4 mini-canvasses to go and I'll have painted an entire Twisty World!

Paint Party Friday...Purrfectly confused!

2011-07-28T21:48:00.002+01:00

Purrfect Bliss!

Well, this summer we've had approximately 7 sunny days (just not all consecutive or even in the same month!). It hasn't stopped the flowers from growing though (although that's more S's domain what with him being a tree surgeon/gardener!)

These are two more in the Purrfect Nostalgia series. The first is based on a similar one I painted many years ago and which is framed on my parents' bedroom wall (I mentioned it here a while ago). I drew the outline during our week in the Kerry and then painted it last week.

The second is actually one of the original ones from 1997 which I found lurking in a drawer when I had a long overdue clear out recently. The colour had faded a lot over the years, but rather than throw it away I decided to give it a fresh lick of paint and recycle it!

Purrfect Petal.

Now, I'm not an expert when it comes to the names of all things arty - the techniques, the proper name for the paints or brushes or even the type of paper so forgive me for making up my own words as I try to describe it - the paper on the Purrfect Bliss painting is Winsor & Newton Cotman cold pressed/not (140lbs/300gsm) and, when I looked at it in the shop, seemed to be the most 'bumpy', for want of the correct term, but it was when I was re-painting the Purrfect Petal cat picture that I realised the paper I use now is very different to the paper I used back then which seems to lend itself much better to watercolour paint and is much more bumpy or textured - so much so that you can still see that texture when the painting is scanned.

If you look at these two paintings maybe you can see what I mean - the bizarre thing is that it is exactly the same weight and type of paper (albeit a different brand - Daler Rowney) so if anyone can explain to me why they look so different I'd be very grateful!

Anyway, this is my 'bring your own' for this week's Paint Party Friday. Don't forget to pop over to the blog that Kristin and Eva kindly keep facilitating, to see all the other art bloggers who participate each week.

Rosy Reflections...

2011-07-26T19:58:00.000+01:00

Rosy Reflections

I did this Twisty Town before our trip to Kerry but actually it wasn't unlike some of the scenery we saw while we were there (albeit not in shades of red!). I thought I'd try something a wee bit different with this one, hence the lake with the house reflected. Am not entirely sure if it worked or not but, sure, we have to keep experimenting.

I keep seeing other bloggers posting art for Summer of Colour which is a project run by Kristin from Twinkle Twinkle and always wanted to join in but haven't quite managed to and typically when I checked it out to see what the colour was for this week, I saw that I just missed the red week which finished on Sunday! It's purple this week, by the way but dang it, if I didn't already post my Purple Haze twisty town last week! If only I'd checked it out sooner I would've had the right colours by happy coincidence! There are only 3 weeks left of Summer of Colour so I may not get to join in with it now after all but I'll keep a better eye out for the next project!

Paint Party Friday...Inspired by Kerry...

2011-07-22T00:09:00.000+01:00

I missed last week's Paint Party Friday for the first time since it started, due to us being in the Republic of Ireland and the extortionate data roaming charges that my mobile phone company charges (despite it being the same company both North and South of the border!!)

Anyway, we had a fantastic time (which you can read about and see photos of here, if you so desire!) and the stunning scenery and landscape in County Kerry inspired three more Twisty Town paintings which I drew the outlines of while we were away and then painted the colour onto during the last week.

This is the first of them. Anyone who's seen all my Twisty Towns will know that normally there is a specific colour palette for each one. This one however was inspired by all the gorgeous quaint little villages, with each shop front or house painted a different bright colour all set amongst the splendour of the lush Cork and Kerry countryside. I don't actually have a name for it which is most unlike me as I am a fan of my cheesy pun-filled titles, so if anyone has any suggestions, I'd love to hear them!

Anyway, I'm sorry to have left Kerry behind but I am glad to be back to attend the Paint Party Friday (and I discovered that it seems to be my work computer which doesn't allow me to leave comments on blogs so no more trying to visit them all ~~during work~~ at lunchtime *cough*). It'll just take me that bit longer to get round them all as there are so many more each week.

By the way - have you linked up to Artsee Blogger yet - if you pop over there now you can find out how Geri and her husband have kindly set this new site up for people like us who get creative and then like to blog about it! Imagine - all of us under one roof!

As I was going over the Cork and Kerry Mountains...

2011-07-18T21:32:00.001+01:00

Well, despite having been born and bred in Northern Ireland and having lived most of my life here, I can finally see why Ireland is called the Emerald Isle after spending a week down south in County Kerry! It is definitely the most beautiful part of this island that I've been to so far. So much of the scenery actually looks just like one of my twisty town paintings and I got a heap more inspiration for the mini canvasses I'm working on.

We set off with the caravan in tow at 5.00am Saturday morning and finally arrived at our campsite for the week, Creveen Lodge, some 8 hours later. I suspect the reason it took so long was the fact that once you come off the motorway past Cork the roads get smaller and smaller and more and more twisty. That, coupled with the fact that our Sat Nav decided to take us a 'shorter' route over the mountain (single track roads) instead of the longer but slightly wider route we should have taken. Seriously - the road was only just wide enough to get the caravan down - at one point we had to go over a small hump back bridge and it was touch and go! All I can say is we were really lucky we didn't meet anything coming the opposite way as there was no way we could've reversed or passed them by!

Actual road S navigated the caravan down!

The Sat Nav's shortcut!

The campsite was literally in the middle of nowhere - no such thing as 'nipping out to the shop for a bar of chocolate' - it was a 30 minute drive each way to the nearest village! It was perfect for us - the dogs didn't have to stay on leads so had the run of the place and other than camper vans coming and going for a night or two, we pretty much had the place to ourselves.

Home, sweet home for a week

View out the side windows

view out the front window

Sunset at Creveen Lodge Campsite

Day 1 - we toured right round the Ring of Beara which was the peninsula we were staying on. This is half in County Kerry and half in County Cork and is the most beautiful, lush, rugged, spectacular place. Even the hedgerows were a riot of colour and different, exotic looking plantlife - not the overgrown grass and weeds that we're used to up North!

The houses are amazing and the gardens so well kept - honestly I kept imagining it was some kind of Hollywood film set (like the Truman Show where it's all too good to be true) and any minute we'd come across the seedy back streets and dodgy areas hidden behind the picture perfect facade of multi-coloured cottages, quaint shop fronts and colourful gardens but we didn't see one area that wasn't simply gorgeous. They must repaint their homes every 6 months or something!

S in Bantry Bay, Co. Cork

Bantry Bay

Castletownbere

Cute and quirky everywhere!

On the Ring of Beara

Castletownbere

Ring of Beara

Love old cars - this was a beaut!

How I wish this was where we lived!

Ballydonegan

Castletownbere

Day 2 - we headed to Killarney National Park and spent a wonderful few hours hiking right round a massive lake. Although the sky was overcast to start - the sun did put in an appearance and I even acquired a light sun burn on my shoulders!

Killarney National Park

Hot dogs!

Day 3 - today the sun was splitting the sky - it actually looked like summer and we drove right round the next peninsula - the Ring of Kerry. This is more beachy than the Ring of Beara and is the more popular tourist destination out of the two (although I was glad we stayed on Beara). It was certainly busier but nowhere like we expected - I guess the recession has hit tourism too. We discovered the most amazing beach and overlooking it was a house in the shape of a ship - fabulous! A long day doing a lot of driving (well S did all the driving, I just pointed at stuff and sucked on boiled sweets!) but so glad we saw it all.

Would you believe this was Ireland?

Gratuitous cute dog photo!

Amazing boat shaped house!

Bridge to Valentia Island

Colourful houses everywhere!

Ring of Kerry

Day 4 - Another glorious day and we contemplated just sitting out on the sunbeds by the caravan for the day but decided it would be a waste of a day and inevitably I'd just end up red and covered in prickly heat! Instead we drove to Kenmare - one of many picturesque villages in and around Kerry for some more supplies (coke for the spiced rum and more crisps!) and then we headed off to Gleninchaquin - a mahoosive area owned by a local family. For a small fee you can do one of several walks depending on how energetic you were feeling - there was a 7 hour walk around the entire park!

We settled on the middle ground and did the waterfall walk which took just under 2 hours (a lot of it up hill, mind!) The waterfall wasn't very gushy (a technical term) due to the unusual lack of rain that week and was more of a trickle than a fall but the land itself was simply stunning and despite moaning about the vertical-ness (another technical term) of the initial climb, I was very glad we did it and loved the whole downhill part!

Gleninchaquin

Gleninchaquin waterfall - more of a trickle the day we saw it!

At the top

View from the top

A family portrait - Brodie chose that exact moment for a pee!

Me doing 'jumble sale' chic!!

Day 5 & 6 - it was business as usual rainy Irish days for the last two days of our holiday which curtailed our walking plans a bit. We did have waterproofs with us but just couldn't face the inevitable mud, and constant drizzle, not to mention how mucky the pups would've ended up so instead on Thursday we drove down the Healy Pass - possibly the most twisty road ever - and did a wee bit more sight seeing from the comfort of the inside of the car. Friday we had a completely lazy caravan day - apart from needing milk which as mentioned above involved a 30 minute each way drive to the nearest shop!

The Healy Pass (Actual Twisty Roads!) and the way to the nearest shop!

We didn't make it as far round as the Dingle Peninsula this time - would've been just too long a day in the car when we already had done so much driving so hopefully we'll get back down there another time.

Day 7 - We left County Kerry on Saturday morning for another epic drive back to County Down finally getting home about 6pm, back to the reality of Northern Ireland. It was a brilliant week, with the weather mostly playing ball (those of you lucky enough to live somewhere with actual seasons may never be able to comprehend the weather that we get here - no discernable seasons, just slightly warmer with rain and then colder with rain!) so to have 5 out of 7 dry days on an Irish camping holiday is no mean feat!

Purple Haze...

2011-07-12T08:00:00.010+01:00

So, clearly the scheduled post button on Blogger doesn't work as I had scheduled this to post on Tuesday last while we were away in Kerry and far removed from mobile phones, wifi, internet access and blogging! Obviously, it didn't, so as we've just arrived home after an 8 hour journey back from possibly the most beautiful part of Ireland and I'm looking forward to an evening of vegging on the sofa with S and the dogs, I thought I'd post this now seeing as it was already written and ready to go! I got sooo much Twisty Town inspiration in Kerry, by the way - the whole county seems to be made up of impossibly quirky and cute little villages set amongst amazing hills and mountains - but don't worry I'll be boring you with all the photos later in the week!

So, this time I thought I'd do a lonesome Twisty House all on its own. It started off in shades of pink, travelled through some blues and ended up purple before I was finally happy with it. The neon pinky bits are a happy accident - no idea how they came to be but I kinda like them!

I missed my own blogaversary!!!!

2011-07-06T23:40:00.004+01:00

Purrfect Nostalgia - before computers!

** Update - as I spent most of Thursday evening packing for our trip to Kerry tomorrow (and will spend most of this evening grocery shopping and getting an early night as we're up at 5am Saturday morning), I didn't have time to put together a whole new post so this is going to be my contribution to Paint Party Friday - apologies to those lovely folk who have already commented for rehashing this post but needs must! Plus, I figured there might be a collective rolling of the eyes if I brought yet another Twisty Town to the party this week so here's something different!! **
I knew it was nearly a year since I first started this blog and for some reason I had it in my head that the exact date was 15th July. We're heading off to County Kerry waaaay down the South West of Ireland on Saturday for a week with our touring caravan and, not wanting to get charged a fortune for roaming charges by using my mobile internet as happened when we went to Donegal at Easter, I thought I'd be super efficient and get my blog written and scheduled to post automatically while we were away.

So I logged on at lunch time today to prepare my special one year blogaversary post, thinking I was being all early and organised, when I clicked on the first post to doublecheck the date and realised that it was actually 5 July and so, instead of being early, I'd actually missed my own blogaversary by a day!!

I had even planned to create a new illustration to use for this momentous post occasion again thinking I had a few days to do it. Instead, I was ~~forced~~ delighted to miss the gym tonight (having already snoozed my way through my failed early morning attempt to get up and go before work!) so that I could whip up a little sumin sumin specifically. Although actually, the illustration I did doesn't really scream 'Congrats on your blogaversary' it is another one in the Purrfect Nostalgia series and the tenuous link to blogging is that the old fashioned telephone and pen and ink were the way to communicate way back in the mists of time before all this here technology!

I'm sure had I written the post in time for my actual blogaversary it would have been full of profound, insightful, witty ruminations about how my journey back into the world of art has progressed over the last year but as I've managed to catch myself very much on the back foot, I can't think of a single thing!

Of course, I could sit here and tell you that since starting my blog a year ago, I've been so inundated with requests for portraits and commissioned paintings that I've had to give up the 9-5 and become a full time artist. Yes, I could tell you that... but I'd be lying. In fact, most of what I've done artistically over the last year has cost me money rather earnt me money and more than a few of my paintings have been given away as presents and, as I didn't officially become self-employed until May of this year, I haven't really done anything much in the way of promoting myself online or in real life.

That's not to say it's been a waste of time. Thanks to starting my blog I've found some great online art friends who say lovely things about my work, encouraging me to keep on keeping on, and who inspire me to try new things because of the amazing work that they produce. I've taken part in projects and competitions, I've tried oils and acrylics for the first time, I've created a series of Twisty Towns and Walkies which I'm really proud of, I've got a couple of online shops (even if I haven't actually sold anything yet!), I have had a couple of commissioned pet portraits, I've even been inspired to create two designs which I've then had tattooed on my back and shoulder (but that's a whole separate post!) and I'm about to have my first ever stall at my first ever fair - none of which would have come about if I hadn't started to blog. I may not be able to make a living from my dream job just yet but hopefully I'm a little bit closer than I was this time last year!

That's me off on holiday for a week. I have scheduled a couple of posts to automatically post themselves over the next week but I've no idea if they'll work or not so, if not, I'll see you in a a week or so!

**Further update - I am having real problems with Blogger letting me comment on other blogs - it seems to be the ones with the captcha word thingy - so apologies to everyone who I haven't managed to comment on, I have visited you but Blogger is being a bugger!!

Ice Creamy Sunday...

2011-07-03T12:58:00.001+01:00

Well, it is a definite diary moment as the Sun Is Actually Shining And The Sky Is Blue - so momentous an occasion here that I felt the whole phrase deserved to be in bold with capital letters!

So as it's a Sunday and it's finally sunny and warm, this Twisty Town seemed entirely appropriate. This one was inspired by an ice cream sundae - the round scoops of vanilla and chocolate ice cream, with chocolate and raspberry sauce dripping down over fresh strawberries and raspberries and of course the chocolate flake and round wafer stuck in the top!

Ice Cream Sundays

I should be outside enjoying the sunshine while it's here but these Twisty Towns won't paint themselves so I'll make do with open windows to allow a fresh breeze (and a squillion flies!) into the house instead!

Twisty Tides...

2011-07-01T06:52:00.001+01:00

This is the next in the Twisty Town series - I don't know why, but I got the urge to include a twisty boat this time - I haven't been near the ocean since Easter, far less seen any boats, but this scene came to me in work the other day (during a tea break, obviously!) so I doodled it onto a post-it note and then sketched it up when I got home that day.

Given the total lack of anything resembling a summer here this year, it's very possible that it's my subconscious wishing I was somewhere sunny and blue-skied beside the sea!

Twisty Tides

This is my submission for Paint Party Friday which by the way is becoming less like a small gathering and more like a full on festival of wonderful artwork! And I'd like to give a special mention and thank you to Hybrid J for giving me some very helpful tips on her photography techniques so that I can get better shots of my work!

Oh, a wee update on the crackle glaze - I've applied it to each of these wee canvasses after photographing them (in case the glaze is too reflective) and have had varying degrees of success. Mostly you can't see any cracks at all but I tried adding a thicker layer and this one actually ended up looking a bit cracked (although I'm now worried folk at the style fair won't realise it is deliberate and just think that I've had these lying around so long they've gone cracked with age!!)

Liberate your Art ...update

2011-06-26T19:40:00.000+01:00

You may remember a while back I discovered that Kat from Kat Eye View blog was running a project called Liberate Your Art which involved sending off 5 postcards with prints of our own original artwork on them. Well, they need to be posted to Kat to reach her by 15 July and as I don't know how long things take to get to America these days, I thought I had better get them sent off now to allow a good couple of weeks postage.

Kat had asked each participant to write something on the back of the postcard - this could be a greeting, a quote or perhaps some words of encouragement. As this was an art project I decided to see if I could find some art quotes to put on mine and once again Google came up trumps (what did we do when we wanted to learn stuff before the invention of the internet? ah yes, good old Encyclopaedia Britannica!)

My handwriting isn't the best and I was going to try to print the quotes onto the cards but as I already printed most of the pictures upside down I didn't want to take a chance on getting the print wrong as well, so apologies to whoever receives my cards - I did try to write neatly!!

These pictures aren't very clear - sorry about that so if you can't make them out, the quotes read as follows:

The Earth without 'Art' is just 'Eh'! - Unknown

Every Artist dips his brush into his own soul and paints his own nature into his pictures - Henry Ward Beecher

Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time - Thomas Merton

Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable - George Bernard Shaw

Art is much less important than life, but what a poor life without it - Robert Motherwell.

I'm looking forward to receiving postcards from 5 of the other participants plus 1 from Kat herself and it'll be interesting to see all the blog link ups once we've everyone has received them all. I'll keep you posted (no pun intended!)

Cars, Keys, and Crackle Glaze...

2011-06-24T06:51:00.000+01:00

Patchwork Orange - Twisty Town

So, nothing to do with art but I feel the need to vent...my car failed its MOT on Monday and so S kindly dropped me off at the train station yesterday morning and then left my car into a garage for repairs. He then got the ferry over to Scotland yesterday afternoon to bring his wee boy back over to Ireland for a holiday. I got a taxi back from the train station yesterday evening and it was only as I was reaching into my bag for my wallet that I suddenly realised that my house key was on the same key ring as my car key - which was in my car at the garage! Cue sinking feeling and mounting sense of panic as I realised S wouldn't be home until after 11pm that night!

Luckily my only friendly neighbour (its like a soap opera round our way and we're usually just the viewers!) was home and so I sat in her house drinking tea and wondering what to do. I phoned S for the name of the garage to see if I could get my door key from them - he then informed me that actually he took my car key off the key ring and then hung my door key back up in the key box in the hallway - hmm, not useful!

We contemplated smashing one of the small windows in the kitchen and getting in that way but not being keen on having broken glass everywhere and a great big windy gap where the window used to be, I rung round several locksmiths instead. I was met with phones that just rang out unanswered or 'sorry, we don't have any engineers in your area' or 'yes, I'm a locksmith but it'll be tomorrow before I can get to you' - seriously?! Eventually the last one in the Yellow Pages in my area answered and 20 minutes later he was at my door. Literally within less than 2 minutes he had picked our lock and I was £40 poorer (and I still haven't found out how much my car's going to cost me yet!).

Moral of story - keep door key and car key on separate key rings!

Anyway, rant over and this is after all an art blog and so here is my contribution to Paint Party Friday for this week. I've been working on building up some stock for my stall at the style fair in August and after a disastrous attempt to replicate a Walkies picture on canvas (all either 4x5, 5x5 or 4x6) with acrylics (I'm going to stick to watercolour for those) I decided to do a series of Twisty Towns instead. I've completed two so far:

Not as green as I'm cabbage looking - Twisty Town

I've got another 13 to go, unlucky for some but hopefully I've had my quota of bad luck for this week!

Now, it was thanks to Paint Party Friday that I learnt about Crackle Glaze and I decided I just had to have some. So, I was wondering if anyone reads this and uses crackle glaze could they give me some pointers on how to make it work. I tried it out on a sample canvas that I don't intend to sell, put on the stage 1 like it said and applied stage 2 but it doesn't look very crackly unless you look really closely - do I need to go over it with paint and if so which colour is best or does it depend on the colours in the painting?

Crackle Glaze

Don't forget to pop over to Paint Party Friday to see a whole host of creativity out there in blogland.

A weekend of old art and ill men...

2011-06-20T21:31:00.001+01:00

So, we went up home to visit my folks at the weekend. It was Father's day in the UK and we planned to take my dad out for a meal. When we got there though, poor old dad was feeling miserable and heavily dosed with a cold and chest infection. He absolutely did not feel up to going out for dinner but, bless him, he kindly suggested we go on out for the meal without him. As the whole purpose of going to a restaurant was to celebrate Father's day it wouldn't really be much of a celebration if we left the guest of honour at home!

We ended up getting pizza and staying in instead, which is our favourite way to spend most Saturday nights anyway so S and I were quite content.

Mind you, there must've been something in the air that only men could catch as S then ended the weekend with some kind of stomach bug. All in all not really a great weekend for the health of the men in my family.

On the upside, while I was at my parents' house, I noticed that there was quite a lot of my old art work adorning their walls (isn't parental pride quite something!) and I remembered a series of cat paintings I had done about 15 years ago, 3 of which I had framed as a gift for my mum.

I had originally painted them when I returned home from working abroad as a holiday rep, was completely disillusioned with the travel industry and planned a career as a greeting card designer - before a few rejection letters squashed my spirit and my enthusiasm and I put my paints away for another few years and got on with working 9-5.

Anyway, the pictures are hanging in my parents' bedroom and so I took some photos but, again, you'll have to forgive the quality, as they are behind glass. I'm going to try to replicate them for my Purrfect Nostalgia series which I'm working on for the Style Fair so maybe they'll end up being sold as greetings cards after all - just 15 years later than intended!!

A party within a party....

2011-06-17T07:05:00.003+01:00

Pointy Portrait - Pen and Ink, Stippled

The birthday girl

Apologies for the weird angles of the picture but I stupidly forgot to scan it before getting it framed so had to try and photograph it in the frame whilst trying to get as little flash reflection as possible!

The Invite and my source of gift inspiration!

Well, once again it's Friday and I find myself at the end of another week not having produced any wonderfully witty blog posts (not sure I ever do, mind you!) and not having produced any new art work either. I have come prepared with a reason/excuse however...last Saturday I flew over to St.Albans in England for the summer glamour party of the year! (And I've sort of been taking the rest of the week to recover - I'm so not a party animal any more!)

It was Farley (a nickname from school which has stuck even into middle-age!), my friend's, 40th birthday and she threw an amazing bash to celebrate. This was the same friend that I decided to do a portrait of, as a gift, as I simply didn't know what I could buy her that she wouldn't already have.

Anyway, it was a brilliant weekend that saw me in a dress and high heels (an extremely rare occurrence) and afforded me the opportunity to spend some time with my oldest friends from school who I don't get to see as often as I would like these days, what with us being scattered all over Northern Ireland and England.

We drank Pimms, sparkling wine and spiced rum at the private function room in a lovely restaurant which although a good size was only just big enough to hold the large number of folk who turned up and later a few die-hard folk (strangely that included me!) went to the VIP suite of a nightclub in a big old country estate and celebrated that last of our gang reaching that milestone birthday with more champagne and a few vodka cranberries!

I had hoped to post a few photos of the night on here but unfortunately I left my camera sitting on our kitchen table (I've a head and so has a pin, as my mother would say!) and I haven't managed to get any copies from the other party-goers yet.

That was the Saturday night and Farley's actual birthday was on the Sunday so a select few of us went for lunch and loaded up on carbs to soak up the alcohol of the night before at a very lovely Italian restaurant in town.

Farley opened a few of her many, many presents before we left which included my portrait of her. She seemed really surprised and pleased I had done something so personal for her (at least that's what I'm taking from her expression when she saw it and the hug she gave me afterwards!)

In the frame

Now, I really need to get cracking on stocking my stall for the Style fair - August won't be long in coming round!

If you fancy seeing a load of brilliant artwork from the corners of the globe then head on over to Paint Party Friday although I warn you - it's getting so big it's taking me all week to get round all the other blogs!

Paint Party Friday...My first official commission!

2011-06-10T06:18:00.001+01:00

Although I dabbled in art with the odd caricature and watercolour landscape over the years, there is one person in particular that I am grateful to for encouraging me to seriously think about making more of my art. This lady, who we'll call H, was my office manager in my last job and she is now someone that both S and I consider to be a very good friend.

During one of many conversations we had about work, I'd mentioned that I loved to paint and that it would be my dream to be able to make a living at it (she always knew office work wasn't my first choice of career!) This led to her asking me to do a portrait of a chocolate Labrador she had owned and that she missed very much. When I gave her the portrait it brought tears to her eyes - which, thankfully, was a good thing! It was actually the illustration for my very first blog post nearly a year ago. I later did a portrait of her daughter's cat as a surprise birthday present.

Since then I've discovered such a love of pointillism/stippling and have created a few more pointy portraits of pets and people. Obviously I started the blog which has helped motivate me and thanks to the world wide web I've come across so many other projects and ideas to get involved in, not to mention how much I love meeting like-minded folk from all over the world. I honestly believe it was all down to H asking me to do that first pet portrait.

A couple of weeks ago H asked if I could do a portrait of a beautiful Golden Retriever she had many years ago when she lived in South Africa. She is moving away at the end of the month and really wanted to get it framed before she left so I worked on it every spare moment I got and I finished it on Wednesday night. I gave it to her last night. I'm pleased to say she loved it.

Thank you H for giving me the push to try to make my dream a reality - baby steps but I might just get there!

This is Copper:

Copper - Pen and Ink, stippling

Copper

Now, don't forget to pop over to Paint Party Friday - it's getting so big its turning into a weekend long orgy of artistic delights!!

Patiently Waiting for Walkies... (Paint Party Friday)

2011-06-03T07:07:00.000+01:00

This is another in the Walkies series although it originally started life intended for the Purrfect Nostalgia series. I completely messed the background up initially and ended up cutting around the woman and dog, glueing them onto a new watercolour page and adding a brand new background around them, so I suppose you could almost call this a collage of sorts!! It isn't an ACEO this time either as I wanted to do a sketch the same size as the mini canvases I bought, so I could hopefully then replicate it in acrylics, so this one is slightly bigger at 5 x 5 inches.

I started with an idea of a woman looking out a window with a cat at her side but after I drew the woman's victory roll hair-do a cat just didn't seem to belong so I found myself adding a dog instead. As it went along it evolved into the idea of the women passing time on a park bench, patiently waiting for her love to come back from war while her faithful spaniel is patiently waiting for her to take him for a walk!

Patiently waiting for walkies!

This is my contribution to this week's Paint Party Friday which is my favourite time of the week for blog-hopping and discovering all the amazing and diverse artwork that each person brings along to the party!

Roll up, roll up.... all the fun of the fair

2011-05-29T20:08:00.002+01:00

I'm very excited to report that in August I am going to be taking a stall at my first ever fair!! I was contacted via my Etsy shop the other day by Beverley from The Style Fair and she invited me to take a stall as she thought that my art work would fit in with the ethos of what the event is about. The idea is to promote the recycling of fashion by re-selling vintage clothes and high end second-hand items and also includes stalls selling handmade jewellery, handbags, fashion accessories, handmade soaps and toiletries - all sorts of things - they like to promote new designers and local 'home grown' artists.

My mind has been going into overdrive thinking about what I can stock my stall with. I'm going to have printed greetings cards and postcards and I would also like to have some original art in both watercolour and acrylic. I even went to my local art shop and bought 16 mini canvases in 3 different sizes (basically all they had left in stock!) and the very lovely S came home yesterday with 2 brand new sets of acrylic paints and a set of paintbrushes for me!! (Having read that acrylic dries much more quickly than oil and can also be used to the same effect as watercolour, I'm going to give it a go!)

At the end of her email, Beverley put 'P.S Can we have some cats please' - well, I am only too happy to oblige as I love cats as much as dogs, having adopted waifs and strays when I was working abroad several years ago!

This is a sketch in watercolour and ink I did prior to attempting it on canvas and its called "Cat Flapper" (in keeping with my love of terrible, corny titles!) I decided to follow on from the Walkies idea where we only see the bottom half of the women walking the dogs. In this one we can see more of her as she is sitting down but I wanted her to still remain faceless - I like the idea that we never really know who she is or what she looks like. I also decided to keep with the idea of women from bygone eras and so the series will be called "Purrfect Nostalgia!"

Cat Flapper

I have so many ideas running around my head so now just to get them all down on paper and canvas before August!

Empire State of Walkies....

2011-05-25T19:57:00.002+01:00

This week's Walkies ACEO was inspired by a conversation I recently had with S about how many dogs we saw walking around Manhattan with all the gorgeous doggie accoutrements available in American dog accoutrement shops!! We stocked up on a few bits and pieces for our two while we were there as there just isn't the same choice in the UK.

Anyway, I digress. We talked about how the only thing that could've made our wedding day in Central Park any better than it was, was if Reuben and Brodie had been there. (Even though, I know for sure they would've jumped up and got dirty paw prints all over my gorgeous champagne dress and we wouldn't have been able to go to the River Cafe for dinner with them in tow!)

Obviously they we couldn't take them with us to New York so, I decided to recreate the scene where we're walking from the hotel to Central Park and add them in! I love artistic licence!

Dogs in the City!

* Also because the other things I was working on this week I can't show you until after 12 June 2011- namely my friend's portrait which I finished and got framed (and only then realised I hadn't scanned it into the computer first-d'oh) this will have to be my contribution to Paint Party Friday!*

Paint Party Friday...stocking my shop

2011-05-20T07:03:00.001+01:00

This one?

Or this one?

Or what about this one?

I have finally taken the plunge and registered with the tax man to become self employed as an artist (alongside my full time bill paying job - I'm not crazy!). Yay, me!

This means if I ever find the time I can sell my greetings cards and ACEOs at craft fairs and I can officially open an Etsy store and a Zazzle store and even a Red Bubble store. I can now officially take commissions on pointy portraits too. I haven't quite managed to get round to stocking these stores completely yet but I have added a few things to my Etsy store and spent half of last night trying to make a banner fit 720x100 pixels - after several attempts where the pictures looked all squished, I moaned to S and he showed me how to start with a template the right size and add the pictures rather than try to reduce the size afterwards. And whaddya know, it worked!!

I'd love your opinion on which banner I should use - just a slight difference between them but am not sure which to go with. Is 4 pictures too many or does 3 look lopsided? Sorry they're so tiny but that's the size they need to be for the banner to fit my shop!

In other news this week, I've been mostly working on the portrait of my friend that I showed a wee bit of last week. For now you'll have to take my word for it but I am very pleased to report that it is actually a pretty good likeness and so I will be giving it to her as a gift after all!! I was putting off doing the mouth as I really don't like doing teeth so much but I think it turned out ok. Anyway, here's a sneaky peek of the bottom half of her face. Once I have given it to her next month I can post a photo of it in full along with her actual photo so you can see if I did her justice!!

Another sneaky peek!

Finally, I got Reuben's portrait back from the framers and I love it. Now, we just need to get to the paint shop to redo the living room walls...!

Now I just need to hang it!

Don't forget to pop over to Paint Party Friday to see what artistic goodies everyone has brought to the party this week!

Paint Party Friday...at long last

2011-05-13T23:43:00.002+01:00

Well, I had this typed up on Thursday night ready to post first thing Friday morning when Bloggergate occurred. So the title of my post is kind of apt as it was initially meant because I finally finished my pointy portrait of Reuben!! Who knew it would also mean I'm only getting to Friday's party with 20 minutes left before Saturday!

Anyway, I left the portrait in to get framed on Tuesday and had hoped to have it back in time to post a photo of it in the frame today but it wasn't to be (even with Blogger's frustrating delays). Although I love to work in black ink, we don't have any black and white colour schemes in our home and, at the framers, I looked at all possible ways of bringing a little colour into the mount or frame but ultimately, the frame lady was right - black and white look best with black and white mount and frames.

So I suggested to S that we redecorate the living room so that it fits in better!! Cue eye rolling but with an agreement to give the walls a fresh coat of paint and do away with the matchy matchy colour scheme!! We decided that we would remove the giant abstract canvas on the wall above the sofa (which I painted to match the rest of the colour scheme) and put up lots of different pictures all over that wall instead (we did this with photo frames all up the stairway and landing wall and I like that it's a bit mismatched and eclectic and gets added to every time we have a great holiday!). And so, Reuben's portrait will be the first to hang on the 'picture wall' in our living room.

Reuben - my wee furry lump of love!

I intend to do one of his wee sister, Brodie, as well at some point but for now, I've started a pointy portrait of a friend of mine who will be celebrating her 40th in June. She really is the girl who has everything - a real career woman with a champagne lifestyle who works hard and plays hard and who could basically buy and sell me. Which brings up the age old question of what to get the person who has everything?

Well, in this case, she'll be getting an original pointy pix of her very own mug! (That is if it turns out as I hope it will - otherwise she'll be getting a gift voucher for House of Fraser!!) She lives in England and I don't see her that often but all the old gang are getting together for her summer glamour party in June - I've got just under a month to get it finished and framed so best get a move on! She is also too busy and jetsetty (is that a word?) to read my blog so won't know about this! But just in case, here's just a sneaky peek of what I've got done so far!

Either this or gift vouchers!

It may take me the rest of the weekend to visit the other Paint Party Friday people but better late than never!

Postcards from the edge....

2011-05-10T07:33:00.001+01:00

Postcards for the Liberate Your Art project

You might recall a few posts back, I mentioned a project I had come across thanks to browsing through other art blogs one Paint Party Friday - Kat from Kat Eye View had invited fellow art bloggers to participate in a project whereby we send her 5 of our pictures printed onto postcards which she then sends out to all the other participants so that eventually you receive five postcards from five different artists.

I bought a book of watercolour postcards today and set about printing off my five favourite (so far) from the Walkies series.

©Pointy Pix

It also seemed like the perfect opportunity to try out the rubber script stamp I bought online recently from Merly Impressions, together with an ink stamp evocatively called London Fog! I had seen so many lovely pieces again via Paint Party Friday using script and initially thought everyone in the world except me was a talented writer but Wrightstuff kindly let me into the rubber stamp secret!

©Pointy Pix

I tried really hard to get the pictures in the dead centre of the postcard sized template - but as you can see most of them are slightly off centre and I used the entire book of postcards (12 pages) to end up with these 5 plus a few which were even more off centre - so apologies in advance to whoever receives these that they aren't quite right!

©Pointy Pix

Oh, and I hadn't noticed but S kindly pointed out that the ones in landscape above and below are printed upside down - I forgot about the side you write on having a box for the stamp and lines for the address. But if you flip it over from the bottom instead of turning it round from the side it looks the right way up (if that makes sense!)

©Pointy Pix

I can't wait to get them sent off in July (I'm a little bit early!) and start getting some back from who knows who from who knows where!

Paint Party Friday...A labour of love (almost lost!)...

2011-05-06T06:54:00.000+01:00

Reuben - almost finished pen and ink stippled portrait.

I was hoping by now to have been showing this as a finished piece but if you happened to read my post about our trip to Donegal over Easter, you'll know about the drama I had when we got home to discover it hadn't made it home with us and how very, very lucky I am that it is once again in my possession (Thanks to Art, the owner of Sleepy Hollows campsite who kindly searched the grounds, found and posted it back to me after I rang in desperation!)

Anyway, S collected it from the Post Office for me today and I am just so very glad to have it back safe and sound that I wanted to show it to you as it is. I will work on it over the weekend and will hopefully get it completed by next week's Paint Party Friday.

So, in other news, my sister and brother-in-law arrived late on Tuesday night and we sat up til midnight catching up as we hadn't seen my sister since our wedding in November.

I gave my brother-in-law the picture which he loved (although of course he was never going to go "urgh, that's crap, I hate it!" but he certainly seemed genuinely surprised and pleased and my sister definitely loves it!) along with a wee card I made up enclosing money to get it framed when they get it back to England.

What the picture might look like framed!

We also sat up late on Wednesday night chatting, eating, drinking, and getting all competitive over board games so that is my excuse for not having anything new to bring to this week's paint party friday. I didn't want you to think I didn't do any art at all this week though so if I might be so bold, I would like to direct you to Tuesday's post of my latest Walkies ACEO (which I should've just kept and posted today if I'd had a titter of wit as my mother would say!)

Well, excuses over, I'm off to see what everyone else has been up to this week on Paint Party Friday!

Hill Walkies...

2011-05-03T19:12:00.001+01:00

So, I know up till now my Walkies series has been based on different eras in history and the fashions of the time. This week I'm deviating slightly as is my prerogative (where inspiration leads, you've got to follow!).

Those of you who've been reading my blog since at least February may recall my birthday trip to the Isle of Skye courtesy of my lovely husband - well he then framed one of my favourite photos from that trip and I keep it on my dressing table where I can see it as I'm getting ready every morning - it both cheers me up, as it was such a fantastic time, and depresses me because I'm not still there but rather am sitting there getting ready for another day of 9-5 drudgery!

This was the photo:

And it came to me yesterday when I saw it perched on the dressing table, that I hadn't yet included the West Highland Terrier in any of the Walkies ACEOs and, as is often the way, word association ensued - "Ack, look at our wee dogs there, wee dotes...they loved Skye....I loved Skye...that day up the Quairaing was brilliant....I miss hill walking (even thought I'm not so keen on the hill part on the way UP...hmmm, hill walking, hill walkies...ding!"

I guess I'll keep on doing the Walkies series as long as:

a) eras/situations inspire me;

b) I draw every breed of dog known to man; and

c) I can keep on coming up with cheesy titles for the blog posts!!

Donegal...a wee piece of heaven on earth!

2011-05-01T14:46:00.001+01:00

Sunset at Carrickfin Beach

Bunbeg with Mount Errigal in the background

So, we got back yesterday from our Easter holiday in the touring caravan. After visiting my parents in Derry, we drove on up the road over the border (invisible border - the only things that show you are technically in a different country are the road signs which are in Gaelic as well as English, the currency is the Euro instead of Sterling, oh and the mobile phone network changes from UK to Ireland and despite us being with the same network provider both sides of the border, we suddenly incur vast 'roaming' charges for accessing the internet on our phones!!

Brodie showing her best side!

Beautiful Carrickfin Beach

Reuben watching the sun set over the sea!

Anyway, we arrived at the campsite, Sleepy Hollows, and after a near miss between our caravan and another camper's car when trying to manually guide our caravan into the allotted site on a bit of an incline (disaster averted thanks to S's lightening reactions with the caravan handbrake!), we finally got hooked up and unloaded and the holiday began!!

We got a perfect wee corner site!

We had unseasonally beautiful weather apart from one slightly drizzly day and I even managed to get sunburn and prickly heat after an afternoon of lounging around in the sun (damn my Irish skin!).

Bunbeg Beach

Bloody Foreland

We've been to various parts of Donegal before but where we stayed this time is my new favourite. The campsite is in a tiny village called Crolly and the closest beach is just beside the teeny tiny airport and is called Carrickfin. It is simply stunning - massive, white sand, big sand dunes, strange rock formations and long enough to give the dogs (and us) a great walk - which we did both morning and evening.

The rest of the time was spent lazing around on our little plot of grass beside the caravan or else in the caravan itself. I discovered a specific spot on the sofa which when I lay down on it with the dogs had the immediate effect of sending me off to sleep!

I took my portrait of Reuben with me as I planned to get it finished while we were there. I did work on it for a couple of hours but not nearly as much as I should have simply because the weather was too nice to spend indoors for any length of time.

Proof I did do some art while I was on holiday!

Disaster nearly struck when we arrived home last night and the portrait was nowhere to be found. I knew I'd put it in the back of the truck when we packed up and was gutted that I'd spent so much time on it and had somehow lost it between Donegal and Bangor (about 3 and 1/2 hours drive). Out of desperation and not really holding out much hope I phoned the owner of the campsite (whose name, ironically, is Art!) and asked if he'd found a big brown envelope after we left. He went off to double check and would you believe it - he found it under the caravan parked next to ours!! Somehow it fell out of the truck as we were packing up and yesterday's strong wind had blown it there!!

Reuben looking doleful as always!

Shipwreck at Bunbeg Beach

I swear Brodie actually poses for her photographs!

The dogs were in their element

I would hugely recommend Donegal as a destination for a holiday - obviously we were really lucky with the Irish weather but it is still such a beautiful part of the world. That's us back to reality and back to work on Tuesday and already planning our next caravan trip - perhaps County Kerry!