A busy bee

The last few days have been brilliant as I set up position in the middle of the living room. I've been surrounded by rulers, bits of paper, scissors, sellotape, sketch books while I design a new paper theatre that i've been thinking about for the last 2 months. It's more in keeping with traditional paper theatres, so is rectangular rather than circular. The circular format is nice but it's a problem when it comes to installing things into it and you have no base on which to place things.

Here's a page from my sketchbook.

The line drawing produced after numerous sketches

A digitally coloured rough it to get an idea of what general colours to use

There's a story to go with the theatre and i'm hoping to make the sea creature moveable, which might take some fiddling around and prototypes.

I also managed to finish off one small commission, a hair painting to go with the season:
I have another week off work in which to make a start on the theatre and work out what i'm doing next year!

Chinoise, commissions, general update

So at the moment my day job has been pretty hectic and i've been filling an order for a commission. It's a lot bigger than i'm accustomed to but it was very enjoyable so I may do bigger pieces in future. Below are some progress shots which are pretty rubbish, the weather has been overcast the last few days. If I can, I will post some better pictures soon.

I tried to keep the whole thing simple and uncluttered, the photos really don't do it justice (even if I do say so myself!).

I've also swapped Jimi Jumping jack for a bag and dress from the wonderful wonderful artist known as Unordinary on etsy. Her etsy shop is really just the tip of a very large iceberg however, check out her great paintings and dioramas here, as well as her blog here. Here's the dress - I LOVE it!

I took some better photos of the Jumpin Jimi before sending him off to her, here's one of them:

Meanwhile I want to get on and start this musical sculpturey type thing i've been gnawing over the last few months and i'll hopefully have the chance to do that tomorrow. Beautiful sunday! pure bliss. I'm also thinking of doing a bit of weird jeweller