A new print making its way into the shop today! Another dream jug I wish I owned…

I’ve been playing with the paints recently – some of my fellow instagrammers may have spotted these pictures over the last few days. I’ll be doing a big shop update soon and some of these lovelies will be up for grabs! I’ll keep you posted!

Just a little post full of pictures. :)

A new Print – now in the shop! Title: Flowers in the Dark. Based loosely on one of my paintings from the “Looking for Trouble” show. Someone mentioned they would work well as prints – so tada! I tried mimicking the speckled grey card that the originals are painted on but the colours looked washed out in the print form compared to the paintings, so I settled for a darker background. The print measures around 21cm x 29.7cm (A4) and is priced at £12.

The bright colours on the black reminds me of fireworks and another print I used to stock – my last attempt at a jug of flowers back in 2009. Weird looking back at older prints and pictures, they sometimes feel so primitive. Do you find that? I know the older picture only dates back a couple of years but it just shows how subtly styles can develop without you really being aware of them doing so.

ANYWAY and more importantly ;) Autumn is nearly here which is making me greedy for Halloween, pumpkins and Bonfire night. Not forgetting the gallons of Gingerbread lattes I will be drinking when the time comes…

I’m busy getting all the work ready for the shows next week. Tomorrow my Nottingham Castle painting experience begins. I’ve planned a nice packed lunch to take with me to ease the nerves – so now I’m looking forward to tomorrow lunch time, which means by then I should be at least 3 or 4 hours into the piece. Cunning yes? I hope the distraction works!

Today I’ve been colouring in the smaller pieces and apart from the name tags I’m pretty close to the finishing line! That’s a really good feeling!

I bought this desk YEARS ago from a charity shop for the grand total of £3!! It’s been living in a friends basement and ever since, mainly because I could never find an easy way of getting it home via public transport and I kept forgetting about it. But as you can see I finally brought it home!! It has little legs you can screw on the bottom but for now they’re tucked away inside and I have just the top resting on my work table. It makes the table the perfect height for painting projects so I’ve nicknamed it my ‘paint station’ for now. In the past I’ve been using big books to lean on (as you can see in this older post) as an attempt to limit the back damage I keep accidentally inflicting on myself. Fingers crossed this beauty does the trick!

Below: The spring flowers are filtering their way into a lot of my doodles at the moment (but I think that was a bit obvious in the recent sketch book updates). Anyway, here are some of the beautiful flowers I’ve been enjoying and some examples of how I’ve been putting them in my pictures.

And here is a random illya picture: