Under the Oak designs

Life can change in the blink of an eye- or in my case - in the last few seconds of a catch up call with my youngest daughter.  There isn't a need for details here but long story short - We've upped and moved house back to the Midlands, we've sold the motorhome and are no longer part-time travellers.  There, when it's said quickly it all sounds so simple.  The impact upon this particular little slice of the internet is that I no longer have a studio and any work I do is definitely no longer done under the arms of a gorgeous old oak tree.  However, as it took me soooooooooo very long to come up with a name for my little practise I've decided it can stay as is for now.  Also for the time being my cards will continue to be stocked in Knighton and the plan is to look for additional outlets in my new locality.   My mojo, however, is something else entirely. Actually that is probably better described as lack of mojo and having half my 'stuff' still packe...

I'm currently still skipping from one medium to another and we're now back on the road again so inevitably I'll be wanting to pursue something I don't have the equipment for.  I seem to have packed a small print studio so really that genre should be my focus - I don't appear to have quite got there yet 😃  I'm still tatting, as I call it. The art above, as yet untitled, belongs to the tatting category.  The original resides in one of my new handmade books.  Like the book,  it's not perfect but I am rather pleased with it.  I also finally decided upon a use for the smaller of the two books I made in my workshop.  I'm using it as a little glimmers or gratitude book and will intersperse the writing with tidbits of art like the one below. In other news, a recent printmaking course will hopefully be inspiring me on the intaglio and relief printing fronts - hence the packing choices. One of the techniques explored did result in this lovely new range of cards...

Our lifestyle choice of traveling for 3 months or so at a time does sometimes stifle my creative flow sadly.  At least I think its that - maybe it's just me lol.  Either way it is good to get to grips with a new skill every so often and so last week found me sat with a lovely girl in Shrewsbury where she taught me the art of bookbinding.  I've had my eye on this for a while and have 'saved' quite a number of Instagram posts on this very subject.  However, for once, I have refrained from buying ANY equipment until I had tried it out with an experienced book binder.  At this point I must introduce Naomi of Briar Rose Books .  I contacted Naomi following a post of hers on Instagram/Facebook advertising a workshop that I really fancied but couldn't make the date.  She didn't have any future dates planned at the time but did offer me a one to one session at her studio.  Fast forward to earlier this week where I spent a fabulous 5 hours c...

I'm working away slowly in the background on a few bits and pieces so I thought I'd just share some photos. In no particular order. Drop me a line if you're interested in anything

I had a little session in the studio a couple of days ago with the main aim of producing a birthday card for one of our grand daughters'.  That session proved to be successful and the outcome was both the required card and a new one for my 5 x 7 range (which I have already printed out and used for an 18th birthday card too)   As a result of this session I do also have a small series of acrylic paintings that I've played around with in a digital mock up in order to test how best to frame them.  I'm really liking how they might look.  Not sure whether to stick with black frames or try white and oak - we shall see.  Firstly though, I need to cut the mounts  accurately which is always a challenge. I'm intending to make these two originals available from Walkmill @no 7 over the next week or so, always presuming I can cut the mounts correctly of course. Thanks for reading Wendy xx

It's always nice to make a sale, or two as is the case this week, which is an absolutely fantastic feeling - especially after a small hiatus .  Firstly, one of the affordable art prints sold in Rebel Vintage, closely followed by a little original hand painted print in Walkmill @no7.  I have replaced both but annoyingly I keep forgetting to take photos (or scans) of the originals before I send them off.  Helen has very kindly sent me a photo of 'Summer' in situ.  This is the new little hand painted print that she now has in stock. Summer 1/1 HPP - £18 Sadly I don't think I have a photo of the previous one that sold to share with you.  They are both a linocut print that has then been hand painted in watercolours before being mounted and then framed in these gorgeous dinky black wood frames.   This was my second carving of our spring trip and I really enjoyed being able to carve whilst on the road.  I only packed a cheap black relief p...

  Navy Jug 2/20 - Mounted - A digital print of an original acrylic painting - £12.50 I absolutely love playing with new mediums and trying out new techniques but these things cost money.  I do try very hard to be self sufficient in my art practise and on the whole I don't do too badly, but I do need to sell some products in order to fund my habit.   To that end I have taken a few pieces of very affordable art into another fabulous shop in Knighton, called Rebel Vintage .  As you can imagine with the shop name, they do sell a plethora of wonderful pre-loved items alongside some new pieces.  The  lovely Claire has taken 4 framed  and 2 mounted prints to sell for me.  I'm so excited to be selling somewhere new (to me), fingers crossed that they're well received.   Please take the time to have a look at Rebel Vintage , I've linked to their facebook page to help you find them easily.  In the meantime this post contains images o...

Whale-Sing Matilda - SOLD Heading to Walkmill @N0.7 this week we have 'Whale-Sing Matilda'  Perhaps I need to apologise for the title I've given it, who knows lol. I absolutely love this picture.  It's the result of a little bit of digital artistry by myself.  The background is a scanned in copy of a watercolour I painted in 2022 which I never finished - as in I never painted anything in the foreground, quite typical of me I'm afraid. The gorgeous blue whales are digital copies of a linocut I carved whilst on our travels this spring and which I'm struggling to frame the originals of at the moment.  However, the second I combined these digitally I knew I was onto a winner. Limited to an edition of 20, the print itself has been hand embellished to accentuate the golds and silvers.  N o 2/20 has been mounted in a simple black frame and will be available in town from Thursday.  With my digital prints I do print them one at a time nowadays but never...

The better weather we experience in Europe whilst traveling always makes everything feel so much better and that includes my art practice.  I'm not going to bore you, I'm just going to share a few pictures of stuff that I've been working on. The top two are a work in progress painting in my sketchbook and there is more colour to be added but I like to preserve the earlier stages digitally in case I wreck it at some point lol. The linocut I'm quite pleased with but as mentioned previously I can only print in black at this moment so the colourised version has been achieved digitally for now. Both of these will be available in the summer as HPP (hand painted prints) and digital prints.  In other news I am communicating with A .Gallo watercolours in Assisi.  I purchased from them last year for the first time and their paints are just wonderful.  As we are in Italy and will be able to visit the shop in person I am building a wonderful shopping list....

Wishing everyone wonderful Sunday vibes, hopefully a chilled and relaxing day wherever you are.  We're currently sat at a little Agritourism site, not far from the sea, roughly midway between Rome and Naples. I love our time traveling around Europe (we're in a Motorhome) but I do miss my studio whilst we're away.  I pack an art box each time we travel but I always feel I've either packed the wrong items or missed something important.  Anyway, regardless of that I have managed to get started on some pieces from this trip.  For the first time, I packed some linocut tools and materials and I've already put them to good use. This first piece (En Provence) is inspired by the tourist signs that line the French motorways.  All of the carving is done and I'm hoping to use perhaps 3 colours in the final prints BUT I only packed black printing ink.  I know why, I figured I could save space and leave any coloured prints to our return, of course I now wish I hadn'...

Plasencia Dreams 1&2 So, scarily, I have today placed a couple of nicely framed originals for sale in my local fine art gallery (as seen above). I let the proprietor set the price and so this experience is a new one for me.  I'm viewing the whole thing as an experiment that I'm going to try to enjoy and learn from. I thoroughly enjoyed crafting these hand modified prints (HMP). They started life as a print of a watercolour I painted during our Autumn 2021 trip.  Early in the trip we'd stayed just outside Plasencia towards the bottom end of the Jerta valley.  A lovely cycle path ran from our campsite to the Presa del Embalse where my sister-in-law and I had spent a lovely afternoon wandering around and swimming in the lake.  Later in the trip, when we were parked up and chilling just outside Isla Cristina for a few days, I'd grab my paints each afternoon as the temperature rose, and slowly but surely I painted one of my favourite scenes. Presa del Embalse de Palse...

My husband always refers to my art as 'neat & tidy'.  I know it's not a compliment, although (to be fair), it's not a  criticism either.  It's his honest observation, I do feel a need to be neat.  This often manifests itself in a fineliner of some description being used to outline watercolour (or acrylic) flowers for example.  Because I am aware of this  'abstract acrylics' do have a permanent place on my to-do list.  This past week I have ticked this off and, much to my delight, I'm quite pleased with the results. Working on Daler Rowney 190gsm Acrylic paper, I used a mixture of soft body acrylics applied with palette knives and brushes, an acrylic pen and my lovely ArtGraf Viarco Taylor shape in white to add the highlights.  I felt something was missing so I added stamped flowers and/or shapes as the finishing touch.  For future series I am hoping to carve my own stamps to use.  And yes, I did say future series because I enjoyed th...