Excellent news

I've been nominated by Casey Klahn on his blog The Colourist as one of 10 blogs he deems as excellent. Praise indeed from a man who's work is strong and intelligent, and is a true craftsman in the world of pastels. Now I need to ponder on who, in turn, to nominate for my 10 most influential blogs.

So here, in no particular order, they are, with the reasons why they have me hooked.

The first four are art blogs which I have learnt from and check on daily for more tips, ideas and just to see what they've been up to.;

Muddy Red Shoes - I love Sarah's work, and her writings have been so helpful to me, especially for her walk-through in painting Music Night at le Brasses du Bengale. She is the first artist I've found online from who I've bought a painting.

Paint and Pastel - Gesah isn't shy of sharing successes, failures, and everything in between, and is quite frank about her work. I admire her honesty.

Life Plein Air- Ed's paintings are bold, and I think if you cut him, you'd be slicing through layers of paint before you reached flesh. His work often takes my breath away.

Cougar Peak - throughout 2007 Jared Shear painted the mountain view from his house every single day, all weathers and seasons in a range of materials. I really really miss my visits to peek out of the window in his home in Montana. Check him out as he's still blogging on his other linked sites.

Eudaemonia For All - this is the writing blog of Lisa Mattlin, and I can't even remember how I first came across her. Maybe she had commented on another artist's site I'd found. Anyway, her observations on the process of writing tie in so closely with my experiences of painting, it's like she can see inside my head. And I've told her as much on many occasions.

Next I must include Lisa's husband Scott Mattlin. Not because of any sense of obligation to Lisa, but because Scott has become my light in the storm. He's received my occasional haphazard pleas for help by email, and never judges my immaturity or scattiness. He always offers both reassurance and, more importantly, constructive instruction.

Next comes my older sister's blog, Beansprouts, which has just been nominated by the Observer as one of the UK's 50 most influential blogs. Melanie never preaches, but speaks passionately about sustainability.

From Mel I found Musings from a Stonehead. Stoney (whose real name I don't think I actually know) has a croft in the cold wilds of Scotland and is the most hardworking, bloody-minded, caring, down to earth, belligerent bugger I have ever had the pleasure to know. And his blog is a pleasure, and a breath of fresh air - no pun intended, given the current weather up there.

Homesteading in a Condo is a relatively new blog, in which Ilex writes about her wormery. I've admitted it now, I'm addicted to reading her heartfelt accounts of life and death, love and war, and red wine consumption under the mulch. The worms don't drink the wine, as she drinks enough for all eight thousand of them. Only joking, Ilex.

And last, but no means least is Marvin The Magnificent - Marvin was eaten by aliens in December 2007, but I'm offering up goats and doves in the hope that he'll return. I need to know what happened to Jen, Moonchild, Diane, and the rest of the innocents he's endeavoring to protect, whether they want his help or not. Come back Marvin, I miss you terribly.

So there you have it. These are the sites that fan my flames and make me red-eyed and grumpy from staring at the screen hours on end.

Tree Lines #9 to #12

And here are the last four.

Next, I want to paint the white shapes onto a black background. Thick white paste-like paint, leaving black grooves.

When I drove home from work yesterday I noticed a number of trees in peoples front gardens which had been pruned back hard, resulting in the most uncomfortable shapes. Especially as it's not quite spring here yet so they are still bare of leaves.

Today the wind is up again, and I walked into the kitchen this morning to find two collared doves taking shelter on my bird table. There are a lot of plants on my windowsill so I was able to get most of the way through making coffee without disturbing them. Until I reached up for the sugar, when then took fright and left.

Tree Lines #5 to #8

Here are the next four in the series. Some I smudged with my finger, some using a rolled paper tortillon, some I just drew over and over with the charcoal.

Tree Lines #1 to #4

After drawing the tree in my garden I sat at work all day distracted by the way the tree cut across the plain canvas of the painted wall behind. So, this evening, in the dark, I took a series of flash photos of the tree from different angles, and made charcoal studies from these on 6" squares of watercolour paper. Here are the first four. I don't know what they'll end up being used for but I had great fun doing them.

Batten down the hatches

There's a big storm hitting the UK today. The worst areas affected will be the south-west, and as I'm in the north-east I'm getting off lightly. But there's a driving rain, and the noise of the wind as it batters our house which overlooks the river Wear and the North Sea is frightening at times. I was first woken by it in the wee small hours. And hubby is driving in a high-sided van down to London today. I just hope it's still upright. Goodness knows how those in the south-west are faring?

Anyway, I made a start on a garden drawing yesterday, using charcoal. There's a thorny tree in the garden which has been pruned hard over the years so that all the leaves are above head height. The split trunk is contorted and makes a great set of lines against the cream-painted brick wall. I pressed and twisted the charcoal stick as I drew. I know it's a subject I'm going to draw time and time again. I have an idea for a canvas with a matt, chalky background with the tree cutting across, and maybe just a hint of the green diffused light on the wall cast by the canopy.

Getting organised to draw more

I don't have time to sit, without distraction, and draw during the daytime most days. My hubby sometimes arranges to have the kids to give me some 'art time', but, as we both work, when we have the chance we'd rather spend time with the kids together. He's working all hours at the moment, and yesterday I made him a pecan pie as a treat to keep his spirits high. The kids didn't like it much, but that just meant all the more for us.

I've been thinking about what I can and what I can't do when I'm with the kids. What I can do is take them to interesting places. I can't expect them to amuse themselves while I sit down in an interesting place for a 40 minute sketching session. But I can take photographs of views and objects, then draw them on an evening while the kids are in bed.

So, this morning, I made up three accordion sketchbooks, an idea I got from Laurelines' travels, then spent 15 minutes in the garden taking photos of the views. The accordion sketchbooks seem like a fantastic way to collect together views and images on a theme.

I love my garden. It's a peaceful space, even though it's the size of a postage stamp with walls on all sides. I have a number of bird feeders, and even in winter I'll stand at the back door watching the activity of the goldfinches and blackbirds, and the changing sky overhead against the terraced rooftops beyond. Because it's so small, I can only ever see a narrow area at a time depending on where I stand or sit. Because of this, I've arranged it so that every corner and wall is a landscape in itself, with areas of interest, as well as space to let your eye wander so that I don't feel too enclosed.

The photos I've taken will provide me with plenty of starting points for drawings and studies.

Rip it up and start again

Well, that was the idea I got from reading An Artist's Journal yesterday, and the next step will be something to do with scruffy train stations, hence the blue and orange I used which reminds me of the Merseyrail Waterloo platform. That was a place in which I spent many hours whilst I lived in Liverpool. I feel I must add that I was there waiting for trains to various destinations.

So, I covered a canvas with burnt sienna, ultramarine blue and a reddish orange, and worked it in with a 50/50 mix of water and PVA glue. When I was happy with this (happy being a moveable feast, you understand) I ripped up the pastel and ink drawing of the yellow clock and glued it on. I was surprised about how strongly I felt when I was arranging the pieces. However, there's a piece on the left which curls and leads the eye out of the left of the canvas, so I'm going to need to bring the eye back on, or create an barrier on the left. I may in fact turn it round 90 degrees clockwise, putting the clock at the top instead of on the left and see how that works.

I'm interested to see how the glue dries with the acrylics. I've never mixed these before, but it felt like the right thing to do at the time. You'll notice I'm still avoiding working on, or even talking about the big self portrait I started.

Out of chaos comes.... chaos

Last night I grabbed some time to draw, and I decided to look at a retro yellow alarm clock that I bought from e-bay last year.

I started off by taping down some pastel paper to a board, making a square about 14" across. Then, with soft pastels, I worked in the colours. The paper was grey, and the shadows were grey, with harsh light reflecting on the glass cover of the clock. I didn't like the pastel strokes, so I smudged it all with my finger working in an anti-clockwise direction, which caused a lovely dark area between the minute and hour hand. I sprayed it with fixative, then painted over with inks - black Indian, canary yellow, and an opaque white. Then I stopped, as I wasn't getting anywhere fast.

Looking at it this morning I can see that the yellow needs to be much warmer, the shadows need to describe the shape of the clock and I want more detail on it. It looks mucky at the moment, but I don't want to scrap it. What to do next, I wonder? Any suggestions?

How do you expect me to work under these conditions!

Big sigh. I'm getting there. Clearing out the studio, that is. Dad bought me a big floor-standing easel, because the canvas for the self portrait I'm working on is too big for the table easel and my upright one, which he half-inched from school 25 years a ago for me, holds the canvas too high for me to reach it. I wonder if Toulouse Lautrec had to stand on a box to paint? And he was 2 inches taller than me in his stocking feet. Probably in his fishnet stocking feet, if the stories are true, but I digress. So I need to clear floor space for the new easel, which is still in it's box because there's no room to assemble it (I knew that 'mantle' wasn't the opposite of 'dismantle, and it took me a moment to remember what was). Luckily, some of the tables I'm currently dumping stuff on have screw-off legs, so they'll be coming down. I was desperate for storage space, so shelves have been put up in odd, and now inconvenient, places but I can work around those. It would just be nice to have nothing above waist level, so that my line of sight reaches all four walls, giving the appearance of space. I also need some wall space to hang my completed work and other images that stimulate me. However, the walls were built with industrial brick which is a bugger to drill into. The wall is too uneven to blue-tac stuff too, and it's brick painted with emulsion, so blue-tac slides off it eventually anyway.


Also, the idea for this self portrait is to depict both me and my studio, so I want to position myself so that the background is interesting, not just a chaotic mess of irrelevant stuff. At the moment it's filled with pink plastic boxed of mega blocs, camping equipment, the broken windsurfing gear our neighbour upstairs left behind, and other funny stuff. Actually, that makes it sound quite interesting. BUT, there isn't room to swing a cat, or a feather boa (sorry Toulouse, I couldn't resist. Given me ideas for another self portrait, but, again, I digress).


Last week clearing out I dropped off 10 bags and boxes at a nearby charity shop, and there's another three in my boot from yesterday ready to donate. I can now see the light from the tiny window in the corner, but there's still just too much stuff in there. I mustn't grumble, at least I have a space of my own to work in.

Much loved.

Here's the cards and pictures my beautiful two children made me for Mothers Day. In fact I was sitting on the loo when my son came in for a cuddle wished me a 'Happy Mothers Day' at about 6am. What a way to start the day. Followed by a fluffy pink-with-brown-dots dressing gown, a box of chocs, and a set of gardening tools enamelled in ditsy flowers. How cool. I don't think it was for Mother's Day, but Lisa got an amazing gift from her hubby.

After hubby cooked breakfast, we headed off to check out a kickboxing group I'm going to join. This is a totally not kind of me thing to do, but I'm really fired up about it. Just think, soon I'll look like Stephanie the Vampire Slayer.

When we got back I spent half an hour clearing the bottom end of my studio, and have spent this afternoon reading and lounging around with the family.

Anyway, roast duck for dinner after a long hot LUSH bath, me thinks. I hope everyone else is having a lovely day.