Friday 29 July 2016

A very personal painting




This is very definitely a painting for my children. It is very personal and actually makes me cry a bit when I look at it but I love it. It is mixed media with several layers so there is also an awful lot more tucked away under those layers.

Thursday 14 July 2016

Image Transfer

I have done a bit of image transfer in the past as part of a mixed media page but recently had a go at transferring images and photos to small canvases. The level of success varies as you can see below, it seems slightly harder to transfer to canvas than just to heavy duty watercolour paper but I am getting there and learning with each one. Still working on getting a better image of the first one....every time I do it I seem to lose just a bit too much of the image when I rub off, or rather a bit of the image in a place where I really need it to stay. They are meant to look old and vintage-ey and I like that effect. I read somewhere that a bit of oily household polish on the final image can help remove the final bits of cloudiness which I am going to try. I haven't done it on these and I haven't got pictures of all the ones I have tried but I think I will try and keep a record of how they develop from now on.



Monday 11 July 2016

Tuesday 5 July 2016

Some recent paintings

I am really critical of my work as I guess most of us are but I quite like these three paintings, well at least the first two, not very happy with the third. At least I got a little bit of pleasure from something I had done in the first two and I enjoyed experimenting with multi coloured and layered backgrounds in pictures 1 and 3. It was interesting to see how it affected what I could actually achieve on the faces themselves.

Thursday 31 March 2016

My new start didn't happen....but trying again.....


I don't know what suddenly urges me to come back to my blogspot but here I am again and I see it is almost a year since I decided to "start again". What happened? I am not sure....I think I just sort of completely withdrew into myself, I can't say more. Anyway I am back to try again, we will see. I hardly drew or painted at all last year but have started again now, thanks to Tamara Laporte's wonderful Lifebook which I decided to enrol into again this year in order to make myself make time to paint again. Art is such a solace and I am wrapped up in it once more. I have a few pictures to post but will start with this journal page. It is the result of a melancholy day thinking of when my children were very small, all the wonderful moments which were fated to become shattered for us all when their father left and we lost our home. Things were hard but eventually sort of worked out. Nothing is perfect and I am still consumed with worry about them but they are all beautiful, kind, honest people who try hard and work hard. I am so proud of them for they had such a difficult upbringing. Now I have three beautiful grandchildren....in the same order as my children as it happens ... boy - girl - boy. I have a lovely husband too who is a wonderful stepdad and a beautiful grandad. I will try and keep my blog us this time......