Under the Oak designs

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....