Catch Up Post

Oh dear, it's been ages since I last updated here. Truth be told though, I haven't been doing much regarding art over the past month anyway. I've been travelling to Scotland, then Romania to visit mine and my other half's parents, and it was generally a busy month!

I've decided to focus more on my college work, and I'm currently working on an oil portrait of a horse that will be given in for assessment. I have two more pieces to do to complete my set of work to hand in, and I need to do a big art shop tonight on GreatArt. They gave me a 10%discount code when it was my birthday in December and I can still use it up until the end of this month so I should hopefully get a decent bit off! Once my new supplies have arrived I'll be getting on with the college pieces.

In other news, I decided to get this piece finished so I can concentrate more on my studies.


The reference photo is by http://furlined.deviantart.com/ and I'm hoping to use another of his stock images for one of my next college assignments.

I've also been given permission by one of my other half's work colleagues, to paint any of his huge collection of animal photographs, which is a massive treat! He has a wide variety of animals and birds to choose from, all of an excellent quality and he's given me free reign to use as many as I want, he will also link from his Flickr page to my website and any other places I post the paintings. I'm thinking of giving him prints of the works in exchange for his generosity.

In addition I'm going to be updating the website with new, seperate galleries for all mediums, adding a sale page which will have prints, originals and vouchers for sale, and also I will be offering oil paints for commissions instead of acrylics.

So once my diploma pieces are done I'm hoping to have a lot of new exciting originals on the go. I'll sporadically post my diploma pieces here, if I think they are worthy of being shown, for now, I'm gathering a list of galleries to contact about some of my current originals, then it's time to take Zac for a lovely long walk. Hopefully it won't be too long before I'm posting here again!

Lions and Damsons and Jams, oh my!

As this, somewhat whimsical post title suggests, my time of late has been taken over completely by the afforementioned items. Damsons, as I've mentioned before, have become the bane of my existence, littering the garden, getting trodden on and trampled into the house and matted into Zac's fur. The fight back begun last week with copious amounts of jam and chutney making! Our cupboards are now full enough of damson preserve to last us at least a year, with more of the little devils still to be picked from the tree. My next plans are for Damson Gin and Vodka, which can be nice Christmas gifts and also will be great for my own personal use (in moderation of course!)


Onto the Lion: I decided to paint another large pastel piece in order to take to the gallery, and I found a picture of a male lion looking skywards in the free section on a stock photo site and thought it was a beautiful pose. So here he is, I'm toying with the title "Contemplation" but I am terribly indecisive so it may change several times before he is actually finished.

Angie has moved!

Well we managed, my other half and I moved almost 2 weeks ago now. We have had no Internet up until Friday and then we were away for the weekend so sadly I didn't get a chance to post. My new studio is now set up with my drawing table and materials, we just need a few shelves and things for storage up in the corner and it should be all done. I love my new drawing table, the angle can be adjusted, it has a nice metal rail at the bottom for catching pencils etc that may try and roll off PLUS it has a built in light box!




I'm managing to get some more work done on my elephant today, despite having a lot of boxes to unpack still. I'm working more on the background today and hope to move onto the ears soon.