Well Hello!

 Hello friends!

I hope you are all keeping well. Winter seems to have been longer than usual this year. I think there must have been at least 273 days in January. Yet already the year seems to be flying by as we have just a week or so left in February and tomorrow is Shrove Tuesday which can mean only one thing: pancake day! How do you eat yours? My favourites are to make large crepes lightly spread with a little butter, sprinkled with a little sugar, and drenched in either lemon or orange juice.

will you be giving up anything for Lent? I am contemplating giving up chocolate which will be a huge sacrifice for me as it is my one comfort.  I tried Veganuary in the hopes that giving up cheese I would lose weight but I actually gained 4 pounds it was not meant to be that way!

Since I last wrote here all the way back in December, before Christmas, I have had a very nasty arthritis flare up. For those of you who suffer from arthritis I don't have to tell you how debilitating this is for me. I am in constant pain and cannot get comfortable in any chair or bed in the house.

Consequently almost all my activity has been curtailed, even if the weather has been kind enough to get out for walking I am barely able to put one foot in front of the other at the moment. To compound matters, two days ago I had a nasty little fall. I have no idea how it happened one minute I was standing upright the next minute I was hugging the tarmac. Thankfully no damage done a couple of tiny cuts, a grazed knee and a very bruised ego. But it just goes to show how easy you can fall over nothing more than thin air.

Parkinson's disease means that it is very difficult to hold books, and a short while ago a very kind friend sent me this. It is a wooden book stand and I can put my tablet on it with the kindle app and I'm therefore able to read without having the book shaking in my hands all the time. It has transformed my reading and I am deeply grateful to her for sending such a thoughtful gift.

Thankfully I am still able to paint, so in December of last year I signed up to the Anna Mason online art school. I have access to all sorts of instruction connected to watercolour painting and pencil drawing and all for less than the cost of a decent bar of chocolate a week. I didn't start the courses straight away, however I have started them recently and this is my first attempt. I guess you could say it is my first official watercolour painting, having used watercolour paints but never in the style of watercolour painting always used as part of my mixed media art. it is a song thrush egg, and although I have had to improvise with the colours a little, I'm very pleased with the overall results.

I have tried doing the daffodil but I am not so happy with this one the first one is all wrong. I know you will all disagree with me but trust me on this it is very wrong. I do not have the right size brushes or the correct coloured paints consequently it is turned out poorly.

This is my second attempt at it. Again having the wrong colours and wrong sized brushes is not helping even though I'm taking a different approach. As soon as I can afford the outlay for the new brushes and paints I will give it a third go.

Another dear friend sent me an Amazon gift voucher, so I treated myself to a tin of Derwent Chromaflow pencils. So I've been playing with those as well. Here's the first portrait I did using them.

And here's a little field mouse I drew using the new Chromaflow

Using mixed media, I did a couple of mandalas.

And finally a little mixed media painting of cone flowers just for fun.

my friends, as I said I hope you are keeping well this winter.

Until next time

Stay safe stay well stay warm

Debbie xo

Painting a Picture

Hello Friends!

I was recently given this lovely colouring book. What makes it special, and more exciting than my other colouring books is that this one is all printed on quality watercolour stock.  This means I can use my favourite wet mediums without buckling or tearing the paper.

The illustrations are also printed in light grey scale, so unlike most dry medium colouring books, the lines disappear once painted, instead of remaining highly visible on the finished piece.

I found my set of Inktense blocks, which I feel will give me the best selection of colours to do the chosen piece of two gourds.

Of course, this wouldn't be me without a blunder.

I didn't know there was a page of instructions in the book, which had stuck together.

So, by the time I found them, I'd already started and gone about it the wrong way.  I had also picked up the wrong colour and put it down in the wrong section.  C'est la vie!

Onward and upward.

I started using the instructions, back peddling now to try and save the day, laying down the colour where it shoud have been put in the first place.  I have to say, if you didn't know, it isn't too bad.

However, this is what it should be more akin to.  Then again, it is the first layers and will be built up.

I shouldn't say it, but I am mightily chuffed with the stem.  It's turned out well.  I keep on wanting to touch it.

I must contain myself and let well alone, not fiddle with it any more, and hope that I can recover the earlier mistake on the body of the gourd to better match the stem.

It may seem like a lot of photos, but there's method in the madness.  Keeping a good photographic record of each stage helps me learn from my mistakes, a visual step by step of progress.  It becomes an invaluable tool.  I do end up with a lot of similar looking images, but each one is different to the previous set.

Later on, they can be put side by side, as each layer happens, or a colour change is made.

Digital photograpy is a superb tool in this process as it time and date stamps each photo, so if you forget to tag, the process keeps in order.

I won't bore you with all the stages, here's the end result ~ et voilà 

I had to make myself stop.  That's always a problem I have, knowing when it's done.

I also took an online, hour long, paint along tutorial hosted by Matthew Palmer.  I found it very difficult to keep up as I had to keep changing glasses due to near vision issues between screen and workspace.  So, it's a bit of a mess.  Also, because it was simultaneously broadcast in America, it was late in the evening here {almost bedtime} and I found working under artificial light my grey mixed up to more of a purple.  Anyway, for those who haven't seen it, this is what I ended up with.  The waterfall is abysmal indeed.

Then the next day, I did this one trying to remember what to do.  I didn't have masking tape, so used pretty, low tack Washi instead.  I didn't do another waterfall, and used the purple paint to create some misty mountains.

Removing the tape to reveal a border makes a huge difference, even when the painting is awful.

I've been working in the garden, more off than on in the cold, and taking lots of walks, as well as painting,  Gardening and walking when the weather is good, painting for when it is not good.  I'll never be any good at painting, but it makes me very happy to putter for a few hours.

Until next time

Stay Safe, Stay Well