I haven’t uploaded any pictures of my studio here until now, so here’s a blog post about a day in my studio!

I find that to work on more than one painting pushes me to experiment and vary from canvas to canvas. Right now I am working on six, which is about my maximum, hopefully they’ll all be complete by the end of the week. Bambi our chihauha fell asleep wrapped in my overalls, so I had a little company for an hour. She’s slowly learning, I think, as yesterday she walked through my palette and got green paint on her paws!

(In case you didn’t spot her in the main picture)

I’ve zoomed in on this painting as its a bit more of an experiment. Recently, working on a number of paintings allows me to abstract and simplify my subject, relying on my memory a bit more. In this piece I am layering up the colours and shapes, as if you are looking directly into the grass. I find my eye goes in and out of the leaves and flowers, as there is so much visual information to absorb.

This is another work in progress, a similar feel but I am focussed on the layers of colours. How they interact is fascinating me, I’m really enjoying the composition and colour of the red sorrel leaves on the right hand side. In my extra time, I’m persevering with finding galleries to apply to, competitions, funding etc and a few of my older works are available to buy on http://www.artfinder.com

Of course, last Sunday was the art car boot, so I welcome all my new followers to my blog! The weather was a little dull but I really enjoyed getting all my work shown together and it was worth it for this great photo. Hopefully this will be the first of many art events for me in the future. Keep you’re eyes on this space as all works will be available for purchase, and may be available through some online galleries too, lets hoping..!

This week I am focussing on my wild flowers, they have so much colour and variety, and so much depth in such a small area. This piece is requiring lots of layers to enhance the richness of layered colours. It’s full of purples, pinks, yellows and greens.

Walking through the fields everyday it’s clear to me how much the flowers change day to day. Each day there is a different mood, and today the rain left some beautiful dew drops on the ends of the grasses, into rather elegant droops. In this piece, I wanted a feeling of the buttercups to be floating, sometimes the ground has an elusive sense of depth. I am layering the colours, shapes and marks to bring the image out of my memory into reality. (I also have another, of the same size I am working on, with more rich, reddish tones of the wild sorrel). The abstract shapes of the flowers are really starting to come through here.

A page from my sketchbook -I like to closely observe the shape, colour and feeling before I go ahead with a painting.

Its been two weeks since I moved out from Aberystwyth and stepping into my routine of painting. A life of painting, my ultimate dream!

To make the transition from my studies in art to a profitable career, I enrolled in ‘Business Start up week’ at the University. I was surrounded by people of all departments of the University determined to develop their ideas into businesses, and unsurprisingly, I wasn’t the only art student there. It was a really useful week of understanding key aspects of planning, selling products, dealing with people, managing finances and developing strategies for success. Throughout the sessions, I thought about the words of advice and information given and overall, I had a realistic perspective towards making the right moves in my career and planning achievable goals.

Whenever I returned home to Gloucestershire from living in Aberystwyth I was always overwhelmed by the richness of colour and lush textures of the garden and fields. Our apple tree was laden with blossom, only for a very short time, so I took lots of photographs of the beautifully delicate leaves and translucent petals. This was a water-soluble graphite drawing. I’ve come to enjoy the really deep, rich tones I can get out of a water-soluble graphite than a regular graphite (and it’s less prone to smudging).

 

Naturally, I began a painting from the drawing since I felt the composition was interesting for me. This is still in progress, I am making many more layers of thin paint to describe the curve and fall of the petals.

Our beautiful Jaffa is old enough for walks now, so I take the three labradors for walks together in the fields (this is him above), which are absolutely teeming with wildflowers. I’m overwhelmed and inspired every day. My ‘walking’ sketchbook, which goes with me to document all my walks through the countryside, now has lots of botanical studies of the wildflowers I find. I now have a few books in my collection to identify them.

I’m interested in the randomness of nature with these wildflowers. They make such beautiful compositions, I can sit at the same spot and I find that my line of interest is difficult to pin down because there is so much to absorb! My photographs help me discover how I interpret them in paint.

These pink orchids are stunning, they were photographed in an organic field just down the end of the road from me. So I try not to step on them!

I have two paintings of wildflowers on the go now, this is a detail of my favourite so far that will be on sale tomorrow…hurrah! Yes its been a late night for me as its been an evening of preparing things and loading up the car for the Stroud Valleys Artspace ‘Arty Brum Booty’ tomorrow! It will be the first time I’ve contributed to the SVA, despite being a member for a while, and I’m really excited to meet some fellow art lovers and artists and get some of my work out there. My stall will be laden with lots of artwork from over the past few years and some of my needle felting creations, so I’m looking forward to having an eclectic stall, which should suit the nature of the event.