Made in The Shade

It seems ages! I've been away camping on the North West Coast of scotland. It was superb! I'll post some pics soon as - with or without camera abilities - the landscape is staggering.

Where I live was mentioned in the last posts comments and yes! it is true I live in a place of ridiculous beauty and i'm very grateful for it. Here's the view from the gate.

The island in the distance is Arran.

It's surrounded by animals, we get sheep and lambs obviously, wild deer, rabbits and hares, pheasants, squirrels, foxes, moles (Gigantic mounds all round the house - the little buggers!) and down the road my favourite animal:

When I first moved here 4 years ago (I'm actually from around the Liverpool area) all I did was paint flowers, bumblebees, foxes and things. Very brightly coloured paintings, but unfortunately i'm not sure where they are anymore. Ah well!

Lots has been going on, but the immediate thing i'm looking forward to is attending Made in the Shade,
I had really hoped to be able to do some originals and paint some brooches for this but I originally thought it was next week - hence here I am sans originals. Also, some inks ran out on my printer and I don't have any more...it's one of those snafu situations.

So my plan is to take the few things I have - and also I managed to procure some old antique photos of serious gents and women and i'll paint on them throughout the day- it's a bit different and it gets around this problem of having nothing original there! Should be fun!

If you're around, do pop in and say hi!

Update and stuff

The weather has been a bit drizzly here, so no more wandering down the lane eating chocolate :) This week's been eventful - including an unusual visitor:


The poor thing was found by Rob shivering in the garden (moor with fence round it) bleating like mad. It's mum had gone off somewhere...tsk. So he put it's afterbirth over it (we'd seen on a documentary once that this was how the mothers recognised their lambs) and took it to the sheep and tried to interest one of them in it.....No takers. So he brought it in. All this took place while I was asleep. It was quite a shocker to find a lamb in the kitchen when i stumbled in there for coffee. So sweet though, it's tiny curls, and elegant face. Later on Rob took it out again, still no takers, so we phoned the shpherd and he came round and took it off our hands....Apparebtly sheep do this a lot and eventually come back for them.

It's been a busy weekend, but i'm having fun...here's a shot from my table today:
An in progress painting i'm enjoying doing. And here's one for the shop update today:
I loved the curliness of this hair, it gave me enormous pleasure to wiggle the paint around....bit sad but there you go....Everything is going up in my shop now :)

A blissful weekend

First of all thanks so much for the responses to the last post. It is so difficult working in a void, it's really important to get objective feedback, and I couldn't agree more with the comments. In reality the case was originally intended to house a different scene. It changed at the last minute and was not sketched before hand....It was just sloppy and all over the place and unsurprising it didn't work. So its sitting, resting in the corner..One day, something will happen.

Instead, I managed to relax this weekend and just do some nice small drawings and paintings..It feels a bit like therapy when I do that. I have these big plans for things, and sometimes it's quite crushing, always trying to move them forward (There is a largish musical mechanical theatre in the making.. I hardly know what i'm doing so it's taking time to figure out how to fit it together). So I just stopped, put it on the back burner. Relax.

I fit a very full time job, lots of travel, freelance work and various other ventures around my creative life, and it can get a bit boiling-point with frustration as I do not have the time...any time... I can feel sort of frenzied and unwell when I come to try and make something. So I had to actually talk myself down from this frenzy.... So, here's some wee thingybobs. There are more, and probably more to come, but before then, a walk in the sun, maybe match some flowers in my Wild Flowers book, probably go to the local shop and buy coke and a chocolate bar and just...meander about and look at the wee lambs in the field next door...And there's some new calfs too with lovely soft wet noses. :)



I'll be updating the shop with these and more on Sunday 4th May. I hope you can make it....And before I go, 2 music links from freinds which I think are brilliant!

http://www.myspace.com/miserygutsmusic

http://www.myspace.com/windwoken

Enjoy!

Shop update today and when things don't work out

Well now - the Monkey and Bear theatre appeared to be going well however - here's the back story. Generally speaking I always work out colour values for every aspect of an image/theatre before hand...Usually by doing a drawing and then digitally colouring it or using felt tips. The reason is that I always end up with one aspect not fitting with another, and then i'm stumped. The same thing happened with the new theatre. The background was fine, then I added bear and you could barely (heh) make out bear. So I put gold in the background. Fine...Then I added monkey, and the two of them seemed to come from completely different pictures. I could have sobbed... I didn't I just went and drank a glass of wine and hoped to find out the problem later on...I never did manage it. Here's some pictures!

Monkey on his own - vicious little devil eh?

Bear on her own - serene and sad


Somehow it just isn't working. It's actually driving me insane. Part of me logically realises that there are more layers to be added, more sea and also some circus bunting around the top....these things may mean it will come together. Unfortunately in a pique of - something - I ripped out the organ painting off he back and there's now a mess there....I really need to leave it alone for a bit! My other thought is that i'll repaint bear in monkey's browns and then they'll both occupy the same colours......we'll see, I don't think I can sit down with it again for a bit!

Anyway, I have some things to put into the shop in a sec. Here's a photo of the queen and I:

And! A jumping jack! He's a tatooed wonder - it's all very mystical

And finally, I leave you with a pic of monkey hanging around on the stand I use at Glasgow Craft Mafia fairs:
Hoping everyone is having an excellent weekend, i'm going to bust out of my studio and go for a walk in the sun.

Cooking, sketching, and clocks

So, I ended up getting ill in time for my time off work...so predictable! So, I did a bit of sketching and made Quick Tiramisu! Let me tell you it's amazing and very simple ingredients and since me cooking is a momentous ocassion in our house, here's the process:

250ml Whipped Cream
250gms Mascarpone Cheese
3tbsps Caster Sugar
2 Eggs
6 Tbsps Amaretto
2 cups of strong coffee
1 Packet of Lady sponge fingers (Like you use for trifles)

Make some really strong coffee (about 2 cups) and let it cool. Add 3 tbsps of the Amaretto.

Seperate the eggs, save the whites and into a seperate bowl whisk the 2 egg yolks and Caster sugar until it's thick and pale.

Blend in the Mascarpone Cheese

Fold in the whipped cream gently

Whisk up the egg whites until they form soft peaks and then fold this quickly but gently into the rest of the cream.

Add the other 3 tbsps of Amaertto into the cream mixture and make sure you don't lose any volume.

Dip the sponge fingers into the coffee/amaretto mixture for about 2 seconds, shake off excess coffee

Layer the bottom of a glass bowl with the fingers
Add a layer of the cream mixture, and repeat until you run out of sponge fingers. Finish with the last layer of cream.

Sprnke cocoa powder or drinking chocolate on the top and refrigerate for 2 hours....The longer the better actually but it will last :)

Serve with some raspberries and Consume! And if you're feeling a bit fruity, you can make this nice liquer coffee using Amaretto, Kahlua and a topping of left over whipped cream!
Excellent day which made up for illness. Some sketching:


And some progress on the clock case theatre. It's such an insanely beutiful case. I cleaned up the outside, fixed some of the gold edging. I have painted the inside and added a large star and also a constellation.....Again i'm inspired by Joanna Newsom.....


The song is pretty obvious if you look at miss bear who is one of the characters to be placed inside it :)


I will have some originals to put in the shop soon then - including 'The Queen and I' from the previous post. I will put them all up at the same time, i've heard this is better than just shoving things up willy nilly. So it'll go up on Sunday 13th :)

Toys! Exhibition

So the Toys! exhibition at Gallery 1988 began last night. I really wish i'd had more time to prepare something for it, but 'King for a day' seems happy where he is:


And I love his orange background! The toys exhibition looks great , lots of people took aprt and it even ended up on the news!
http://cbs2.com/video/?id=63691@kcbs.dayport.com

Anyway, that's all for now, back to work!

Some small progress

Today has been excellent. I managed to put wood panel into the back of the clock case, sand the inside, gesso it and start the first layers of paint for the background.

I also, out of the blue, started and finished 2 small paintings that hang together. They came about because I was asked to say a few things about anthropomorphism in my work for The Storque. And it occured to me i'm not that interested in attributing human characteristics to non-humans but the other way around. I love animal masks, and as I say in the article, this all started with the Wicker Man movie....It could have been a more impressive beginning I know! So i've been messing around sketching animal masks and head dresses and looking at other representations, like this gorgeous drawing by Ink and Ginger and the stills from the Wicker Man film, here and here and this Joanna Newsom photograph:


They all combined into these:

See Mr I Don't Know has been pelted! The poor wee devil. Two wood plaques, they're called 'The Queen and I'.......Some details:


I really liked them, and crucially I was so relieved to just have the time to make something after so long being unable to. It will probably turn up in the shop soon!

I'll post some pictures of the theatre progress soon!