Studio Guests and Trips Out

 Well, the studio doesn't usually house guests, there being no toilet facilities or bedroom, but my guests this month were self-sufficient and bought their own home. Yes for two weeks I was lizard sitting while boyfriend's stepsister and family went on their hols.

Sid and Steve are Bearded Dragons, and came complete with tank, sand, heaters, thermometers, salad and crickets (dinner). The crickets had their own little cage. Obviously as a vegetarian, grabbing crickets with tweezers and sending them to their deaths isn't pleasant, but I suspect they don't live too long naturally, and Sid and Steve have to eat, I doubt they like falafel or tofu.

 



I posted the above photo on my facebook page and it got the highest views I have ever had for a post; never mind the artwork, lizards are so much more interesting than a load of old paintings. A less optimistic person might be depressed by these statistics.

Sid and Steve were fun; they wanted to come out all the time. Sid climbed a lot and Steve systematically rid my studio of spiders by eating them. "Oh my god, Steve ate a spider! Is he supposed to do that?!" screeched the teen. Steve however just looked smug. Letting them have the exercise they wanted was challenging as the temperature climbed into the 30's and I had to keep the door and windows shut because of the cat. I can't say for sure that my furry friend would hurt them, but his general rule is: if it moves, slaughter it. So I wasn't taking any chances. 

I also wasn't letting him bring that rabbit into the house. So he sat and ate it on the patio whilst the teen ate her shreddies, I took pity and temporarily suspended the 'no food on the sofa' rule. Just like last summer Gimlet has gone feral, living in the back field and dining on bunnies. As soon as it rains he comes back as if nothing has happened and he has always been a house cat.

Whilst not messing around with lizards I was painting obviously. I am trying to find more interesting and challenging subjects and this painting of sunflowers behind a local church certainly was that. 

I have always wanted to paint one of those of scenes where poppies or wheat are large in the foreground and go right back into a distant landscape scene. I have never had the right photos, until my daughter's most recent orthodontist appointment. Instead of coming directly home from Haverhill (known uncharitably around here as Chaverhill - ahem), I decided to cut across to Halstead and drop some of my art class leaflets off at the library. The teen spotted a small field next to the road, chock full of poppies and with a pull in for the car. Perfect, now I have the photos I need.

As I lay on the ground and snapped away, the teen hovered about the edge of the field, occasionally wandering into shot. "Yeah" she said, "did a titanic pose..."

I had no idea what she was talking about until I found this:

 Another trip out came when I travelled to London with some of my art class for the SAA 'It's all about art' event in Islington. Here is Mr Mathew Palmer doing one of the many demo's:

The event was much improved on the last time I went, the demos and workshops more accessible, and my students joined in and had a go, painting with some of the countries' top teaching artists whilst I checked out new types of paper and drooled over mount cutting systems I can't afford. Not everyone was happy with the artistic results they got, amusingly I saw one lady in the toilets stuffing her artwork into the bin! What hadn't improved since last time was the appalling lack of air conditioning and I was full of admiration for the demonstrators, on their feet all day without wilting. I do hope they paid them well, in fact this business being what it is, I just hope they paid them!

Back home and I had to steward the Society of East Anglian Watercolourists' show at the Edmund Gallery at Bury St Edmunds. I got there a little early and sneaked into the Abbey Gardens for an icecream. I took some photos of the area called the Sensory Garden, I love the wooden structures and again I think it may be a painting subject for the future.

As the summer holidays have kicked in I am not teaching my regular Saturday art class, but there is an informal list of outdoor meet ups where we can paint together, weather allowing. This week the weather was delightful and although I was late due to private tuition sessions, I caught up with four of them here, on the edge of Cornard Country Park. The views were fabulous, and another chance to get some landscape shots:

Planning to paint my poppy field next I got ready to print a photo... and the printer wouldn't work. I spoke severely to it, but it wouldn't listen. Having several hours to wait until my you-name-it-he-can-fix-it boyfriend got back from work I admitted defeat and instead selected a photo of some pink poppies in a flowerbed, photographed last summer at Layer Marney Towers. 

It is a large painting, and like the sunflowers/church is taking some time. So far I have spent at least 15 hours on it, and I am only just over half way through:

So far I am happy with it, let us hope it is worth all the effort when it is completed!

Gardeners' World

It is a sad fact that I cannot currently afford holidays in the South of France, but if I could I would probably visit this place: Eze, apparently a beautiful mountain garden full of huge cacti and statues. A friend kindly gave me a selection of photos, and after playing around with the composition I made this painting. The painting was challenging, particularly as the eyes of the statues are not formed, just left as soft hollows. But it is my new resolution to push my work into more difficult and complex work, in order to increase my skill level. This will no doubt lead to earning enough money to take holidays in the South of France. Optimistic, that's me.

Actually I don't normally like France, it seems just like another England to me; rubbish weather, grumpy people, plus they think vegetarianism is a form of mental illness. In fact I decided to go vegetarian after a trip to Paris, where apparently it is perfectly fine to put almost raw steak on someone's plate; there it was, all that blood swimming about with my chips and I thought "No, this meat business is just not for me" But to visit those beautiful gardens I would make an exception, and perhaps smuggle in a tofu sandwich or two.

Back home and our efforts to make our own garden look better continue. Here it is, proof that things must get worse before they get better:

No that is not war torn Syria, it is our garden, work in progress! At least Gimlet finds it exciting...

But a combination of warmer weather and boyfriend acquiring a lot of very good wood from work (they were giving it away, it had been a crate housing a machine about the size of our house) has at last led to progress...

New wood store number one:

New wood store number two, this one has a lift up lid for kindling:

Even the teen helped with painting. I would like to say she did it willingly and happily but I hate to tell lies.

And then, my personal favorite, my new 3 bin composting system. Boyfriend may have made it, but I did the hard work; all that designing can be exhausting.

Then boyfriend acquired yet more wood, this time in the form of old garage doors. They are a good paneled wood, under a coating of flaky blue paint. Eventually they will be turned into various indoor cupboards but meantime Gimlet has been using them for sunbathing:

When not sunbathing Gimlet likes to dust bath:

In fact Gimlet is obsessed with dust bathing, until he is beige in colour and dirt comes off him in clouds, I have no idea why, but it is very tiring obviously:

 

Look at those teeth, glad I am not a mouse!

Finally in the garden this week something else appeared. For months boyfriend has been threatening the teen and I with his new soon to be patented invention: The Warm Up Chair. Apparently, all our complaining about the cold could be solved without lighting the stove or putting the heating on. All we need is to sit in the garden in the cold (on the warm up chair), and when we come back indoors it will feel much warmer. Well this week, with a lot of bricks scattered around boyfriend decided to build the first version. The teen got home from school, looked outside and said "It's The Warm Up Chair!" And it was.

Late springs and other avoidance tactics

Yesterday boyfriend said to me "It's two months since you posted your blog". I made it clear I was aware of this. The trouble is a blog is like a tax return, the longer you leave it the more you put it off. Not that I don't enjoy writing, the opposite is true, but it gets to the point when there is so much to say that you don't know where to start. So I will start with my latest painting, a still life, and an attempt to capture the essence of spring. Not that there has actually been much spring so far...

Work on the house had stalled, and boyfriend was going crazy wanting to get on with stuff. "You need to move the Rhubarb, so I can lay the greenhouse base" he said. I looked out at the snow and made it clear I was moving nothing. I appreciate his efforts to make me a greenhouse base but unless it is above 10 degrees I don't do gardening. 

We did make it to Ikea though and I couldn't resist taking this photo for the teen. We are big Boris Johnson fans in this house. It has nothing to do with politics, I am a socialist, boyfriend refuses to vote as they are 'all Liars'. He is right of course, but since I am too busy to run the country myself difficult choices must be made. As for the teenagers they are too self obsessed to take any notice of current affairs, which is fun as it gives boyfriend and I ample chances to wind her up. "So... how long have North Korea and South Korea been good friends and allies?" I asked her last week. Of course, she suspected a set up and tried to bluff her way out: " Er, quite some time?" she said as boyfriend and I collapsed in howls of laughter. "I HATE YOU ALL" she yelled, stomping off. Too easy. Far too easy.

In between teasing teenagers and arguing about the garden I have also completed this children's art print. There are lots of children's posters for sale on the internet, but most of them are designed on graphics programs, with areas of flat colour, so I like the idea of making some that you can actually see have been made with a brush, not a computer mouse.

After becoming more disillusioned with my difficult to use, messy looking website, I have finally decided to order a new one, and the idea is that it will be linked to lots of my other internet projects. The prints will link to my Etsy shop so people can buy if they wish, the tuition articles I write on Squidoo will all have links and my facebook feed will be on the front page. All of this means much work, to make all my internet sites pull together as a cohesive brand, and to list more items online. Including these new 'ACEO' mini prints, the same size as trading cards, many people collect them, putting them in specially made binders:

So am spending most of my time online as I work my way through the backlog of out of date biographies and broken links. The rest of my time has been spent arranging my summer painting classes and courses. Numbers have picked up for the regular classes after dipping in the winter, which is a relief. Now I just need to promote the summer one day courses, and perhaps then I can pick up my paintbrush again!

Sunsets and Smugness

The first local exhibition of the year is entitled "My Stour Valley", and held at the big church in the middle of Sudbury: St Peters. I can find two of my paintings that will fit the theme, but I needed another so I decided to do a sunset. I am quite comfortable with painting them, and have had success in selling others:

The one above was nearly sold several times. A (somewhat shady) business friend of a friend admired it, and negotiated a discount. Then he said he would take it and pay next time he saw me. I smiled and declined. Perhaps I would supply him with my bank details so he could make the payment? (This was years before anyone used BACS), no, I thought not. A cheque then, he would send me a cheque. Fine I said, and after it had cleared he could collect the painting. I never saw him again and nor did my friend who he still owes money. Two years later I sold it at full price to a lovely local lady, and boy did I feel smug.

Speaking of feeling smug, which is always fun, I must as a conscientious vegetarian mention horsemeat. Every couple of years inevitably some scandal appears in the meat industry and it is a good opportunity for us veggies to point, laugh and feel smug. Not the noblest of sentiments I admit, but we get so much flack the rest of the time I hope you will not hold it against us. Boyfriend, who lives on processed junk food said he was delighted to find there was some meat in his burgers, he had never suspected as much. He will however draw the line if he finds any bits of saddle (apologies to horse lovers)...

 Anyhow, changing subject before the hate mail starts; back to sunsets and the above one was sold to my friend Peter. It was the first successful snow scene I managed to paint. My early attempts always looked so cold (no pun intended) and a snow scene needs some warmth, odd as that sounds. My moment of clarity came whilst chatting to my friend D, oil painter extraordinaire, and master of snow scenes. "They need to look as if you would actually want to be there" he said. It all became easier after that.

As for sunsets there are several tricks I have discovered:

Ensure you leave plenty of light areas,

Be careful your blue and yellow do not meet, lest you get green in the sky!

 Ensure that the foreground and parts of the sky are dark enough; without darks the sky will never look 'lit up',

And finally, avoid using black or too much grey paint, the darks should be colourful.

Let me know what you think of the paintings, and if you haven't bought a copy yet, I recommend this month's Craftseller Magazine (and not just because I am in it), the business advice supplement is really helpful for any self-employed artists and crafters:

The frog who turned into some prints

 Tree Frog Painting

Just before Christmas I became aware that my daughters friend Alice was about to celebrate her 18th. Alice is a rare type of teenager; when she comes over for supper she ends up making me a cup of tea (after apologising for existing generally), frequently offers me petrol money for giving her a lift somewhere I was already going and is pleasant to talk to. Of course many teenagers behave this way to other people's parents, and we all know it is a sign that they are not to be trusted in ANY way, you can see through it a mile off. But Alice is just nice. To everyone. Most importantly of all she helped me with my kung fu grading exam, and if it weren't for her then my own resident teen would do no school work whatsoever and be even more disorganised and random than she already is.


So it was clear, Alice needed a gift. Now like me, Alice loves frogs, and she keeps several pet ones. I can no longer encourage frogs into the garden due to our resident feline serial killer. Who incidentally has decided that the cupboard where I neatly store my dressmaking patterns and books is a good place to sleep. There is no room in there but he doesn't care, trampling my patterns with his muddy paws, and sometimes chewing the corners for added fun.

 Gimlet in the sewing patterns cupboard!

I had wanted to paint a frog for some time, so after consulting a few different wildlife books, I came up with a design. The frog was painted in a combination of watercolour and gouache, and then I had the original scanned for prints. The teen wandered into the studio several times that week and I hid the picture. "What are you working on?" she said. "Secret stuff" I replied. The teen cannot keep a secret. Not if she tries, not for money, not even for chocolate. She simply cannot help herself. There are advantages to this of course, because a little interrogation will get anything out of her. Not for her the sullen, secretive, tell the parents nothing approach....

Limited Edition Tree Frog Print

Anyhow, the frog painting was kept a secret, and the first print (I needed the original for exhibiting) was signed, mounted and wrapped for Alice. "What is it?" said the teen, furious that I wouldn't tell, as I gave it to her to take to Alice's party. "It's a calendar," I said, keeping my face deadpan, "Architecture of west Suffolk churches". "Ha!" said the teen, not believing a word.

I am pleased to report Alice was delighted with her present!

 

In more recent news... today's weather:

 

The studio in the snow.

 

Of course, snow is pretty, and it has covered up all the dead animals Gimlet has strewn about the garden, but on balance I would prefer to be without it. 

 

Living at the top of a hill, on an estate where they don't grit all the roads, taking my little pink Corsa down the hill would be easy, getting back up far less certain. I can't get to kung fu or swimming, visits from friends and private students, have been cancelled, as was my Saturday Art Class. I dislike winter at the best of times, but now it is becoming a real pain:

 

Come back summer all is forgiven!

 

 

Busman's Holiday

Twice in the last two months I have taken a week off, but being of a control-freak-must-achieve-something-at-all-times disposition I didn't take the time off to laze about. I sometimes suspect I only work to have a rest as days off generally include to-do lists and large amounts of exercise. But this time I had something bigger in mind, namely the hideous 70's fireplace in our lounge:

That photo was taken before we moved in, because a week after that event the delightful object above was in a skip. Sadly we are still living with the shag pile carpet and nasty floral curtains, but one thing at a time...

Firstly we had to have the gap enlarged to fit the little wood burner we acquired on ebay (if it doesn't come from eBay or Ikea it is unlikely to be found in our home), and a nice man charged us a mere several hundred pounds to raise the lintel. Then boyfriend made the concrete hearth and rendered the fireplace with lime plaster, which despite him being trained in such things was a nightmare and more fell off than stuck on. The hoover was permanently out, but eventually it was ready. 

Short pause for discussion about what to tile the hearth with (I won), as I fought to have old fashioned red quarry tiles.  My triumph was short lived as the chap in the tile centre told us you can no longer get them. But can't is not a word I understand so we headed for the reclaim yard up the road and I got what I wanted.

A longer pause then occurred whilst we had another discussion about my idea of making a mosaic around the fireplace. Boyfriend was against this in a big way, his horror when I said it was going to be red too was great, and he reminded me of all those shows on tv when someone has done something mental to their home, de-valuing it instantly.

I stuck my nose in the air, reminded him I was a professional artist and dug my heels in. He gave in and to his credit once he had agreed he resigned himself to it and said not another word. My confidence was somewhat faked though, as I still hadn't come up with a final design, and starting with a little tile I had aquired along my travels dead centre, I basically started making it up as I went along.

Despite wanting my own way with the house, I am sensitive to boyfriend's hatred of anything floral, girly or too ornate so I started with a simple geometric pattern of circles, avoiding too much sparkle. I toyed with squares, but it didn't seem to work and a pattern of decreasing circles in beige, blue-grey and dark brown from the usual mix of broken crockery, tile and bits and pieces emerged.

I took the idea of the gentle curve along the top from the shape of the glass panel in the stove. It was then a matter of filling in the background with some warm red tiles that were hanging about the place, and boyfriend helped by cutting some tricky curved shapes. Then it was just a matter of time, back-ache and wondering why I had started and would I be finished before the new year...

Eventually the tiles were applied, but not yet grouted.  Then it was time for the nice man to return and fit the fire, relieving us of more money. The crazy thing is we were more than capable of doing the work ourselves, but it was cheaper to have a fitter do it (and certify it as safe) than to apply to building regs for inspection.

 The mosaic wasn't finished, but we couldn't resist lighting the fire, and as if by magic, Gimlet appeared and showed his approval.

 Boyfriend, whose taste can always be relied upon (to offend), found us this delightful wood bucket. I think perhaps we can do better... (Back to ebay again)

 Finally it was time to do the grouting, always tricky with such an uneven surface, but I have been making mosaics for years and took my time.

 And there it was finished, boyfriend likes it, I only said 'I told you so' a couple of hundred times and the teen was delighted. She has been banned from touching it, having a love of fires that is a little too worrying. She argued her case well, but I reminded her that people who include the word pyromaniac in one of their email addresses can't expect to be handed matches.

Of course it won't be to everyone's taste, but we are really happy with it, and to have a fire at night to supplement our rubbish boiler is heaven!

 

Piranhas... 2D

I like to make paintings and prints with sea related themes, but of course everyone gets bored of seahorses and beach huts after a while. So it was clear where I needed to go next... Piranha!

If there is one thing that usually gets me back to the print workshop quicksharp it is an impending exhibition; namely the Gainsborough's House Printmakers at the Edmund Gallery in Bury St Edmunds in December.

Normally I avoid text on lino prints because the fact that you have to engrave the text onto the lino backwards, combined with a graphics program which doesn't have spell check (most of them don't) has in the past led to bad stuff happening. But this time I felt the need and my Piranha prints were born:

Some were put onto printed blue backgrounds...
 

Some straight onto white paper...

  
And one, in a new experiment, onto a painted watercolour background:

This worked amazingly well and is more colourful in real life than the photo shows.  I loved the way the colour variations showed behind the flat colour of the lino. Rather than working in layers and cutting away the block (reduction printing) I tried a much faster method of applying the red ink to the lino with a paintbrush. This also worked better than expected, and I now have two new techniques that I will certainly be using again.

Whilst researching Piranha I discovered some interesting facts:

* There are over 50 species of Piranha and most of them are vegetarian (like me!).

* More people eat Piranhas than Piranhas eat people.

* Pirahanas do not generally attack large healthy animals (or people) and are fairly shy, although they can give a nasty bite.

* Piranhas travel in packs, not so they can drag unsuspecting hollywood actors under, but for protection against predators. Yes, stuff eats them (carefully, I suspect).

* Their evil reputation comes from an article President Roosevelt published after a trip to Brazil. The locals wanted to give the president a show, so they blocked off a section of the river, filled it with a shed load of piranha fish, starved them for a few days and shoved an old (and bleeding) cow in the river. The rest is history and the PR of the piranhas has never recovered.

Anyhow, I am pleased with my fishes; fish with teeth are undoubtedly cool! All that was left was to photograph them for internet sale, and to frame one of the best ones for the upcoming exhibition.

 Red-bellied Pirahna Linoprint in Blue and Grey

Red-bellied Piranha Linoprint in Grey and Red

In addition to the internet and exhibitions, I will take a couple of these prints to the craft fairs I am attending in December, I think there is a shortage of items at such fairs that appeal to men and boys, and I think my Piranhas might just fill the gap!