Under the Oak designs

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...

After a slow, quiet start to the week (at least as far as art is concerned) the last few days have seen a couple of pleasurable forays into new mediums for me. On Thursday afternoon I attended a pastels workshop at the local community centre.  There has been an art group that meet each week for some time but periodically, at the moment, paid classes are also available.  I say paid but it only cost £4 and for that I could've used all of the tutors materials for the full two hours of the session. I didn't, I took my own cheapo soft pastels that I picked up somewhere, in a sale no doubt, but I did use the paper, pencils, putty and fixative spray that were available. Boat on a beach She started us off with a step by step exercise to get used to using the pastels - The output of which is the dark and moody 'boat on a beach' picture you can see. I was pleasantly surprised with the ease with which this came together - I think we worked on it for 30 minutes, that's all....

I spent a lovely morning manning my first market stall on Saturday.  As I mentioned in my previous post I collaborated with the lovely Helen of Walkmill at no.7 in Knighton.  The collab worked quite well I think and our stall did look rather attractive with the combination of elements.  The community market is much like all retail in the area at the moment, quite slow, and so my expectations were not high. That said I think we're all the same is as much as secretly we hope it'll be a bumper day - It was not - but it was a good day all the same.  I did sell a few cards and Helen's side also sold quite well. It was the first time I've put myself 'out there' in terms of my art. Selling via a bricks and mortar shop is fairly anonymous, even if a few locals do know me. This time I felt I was facing folk directly and you can guarantee that not everyone will have liked my stuff.  There was , however, no negative feedback at all. It was all either neutral or...