Season's Greetings

A late Merry Christmas, I hope you've had a relaxing few days. It was remarkably peaceful at my house; usually someone is complaining about what they didn't get, or needs help putting together something with hundreds of little plastic pieces!!! This year everyone was happy!!

I hope you got a present to inspire you - I remember one christmas I was about 16 and got my first set of acrylics - after a lifetime of kids tempera blocks and powder paint they were a revelation! This year I treated myself to some books, including the sketchbook challenge, and got a moleskin journal. The moleskin is still in its shiny wrapper - I hope it isn't too nice to use!! (Do you have this problem too?) But I have been doing some drawing, here are a couple...

Also this in progress work for the Cloth Paper Scissors 'Quotable Art Journal Challenge', you can find out more about it here. There's still time to send something in if you feel inspired.

Best wishes and happy holidays!!

Starting the year

I'm starting the year with just one resolution, to be positive. Especially when I'm feeling emotional or defeated to go and do something positive, some sewing or lino chiselling, something that keeps me going forward instead of getting bogged down!

Over on flickr I'm playing catch up, I didn't post any of my work in the second half of the year so I'm trying to get all those into my photostream over the next couple of weeks. My internet connection is so slow in the evenings that I'd practically given up, but I've discovered I can get a lot done in half an hour in the mornings...so here I am!!

The sketchbook challenge is on for a second year, so I'm going to have another go at it... this month's theme is doodling.

I have set myself a little writing challenge, to write a haiku a day, I've bought myself a cheapo diary that just has room for a poem and a note about what I'm reading... here are a couple from the first week.

Lightning in the night
circling the house again
rain wave on the roof.

Last weeks pumpkin soup
seeds pushed in the ground sprouted
stems with twin green leaves.

I wonder how your resolutions and challenges are going. Cathy Cullis has a lovely post about daily challenges with a philosophy that is very forgiving!!

Hopefully I'll be back next week with some artwork to show! Have a great weekend.

sketchbook snippets

I wonder if you have been taking part in the sketchbook challenge? Or checked out their blog/website...I especially enjoy reading the artist interviews. There are some very tempting monthly prizes!!! and all you have to do is post a drawing to the sketchbook challenge flickr group each month....Having said all this, I haven't managed to enter anything for May or June and it's nearly halfway through July and still nothing posted...sometimes the weeks just get away. BUT I have been drawing, and maybe this is the best prize, to be using my sketchbook again for the fun of it, to explore and play, some pages are awful and just get painted over, some are too private to share, some are a few scrappy lines that only mean something to me! Here are a couple of samples.


Just a little aside about sunflowers! I planted some sunflower seeds because of Van Gogh, they did grow and finally flowered over the last couple of weeks. I don't know if it's the kind of seed or if it's my poor soil, but they are a tiny stunted variety, knee high not shoulder high, and the flowers are very shortlived, they barely last a week before they start to shrivel and go brown - a bit disappointing. I'd love to hear if you've had more success!

domestic...laundry

Just dropping by to show that I'm still keeping up with the sketchbook challenge. This month's theme is 'spilling over' and eventually I came up with this -


I also did a colour version with gouache which you can see over on my flickr page.