Gardening, painting and fashion doll dresses.

Hi, does'nt time fly. I have spent a couple of weekends working on my garden with my husband. It had become so overgrown it needed a big clear out with some replanting. Its only a small garden but it took a lot of hard work and I have replaced some shrubs with hardy perennials. I hope that
when they establish themselves I will have some lovely flowers for painting.
        I had a lovely surprise this week. I went to buy the Artist and Illustrator magazine and found my painting of an orchid printed in the portfolio section. It was great to see it in print. The only problem with photographing botanical paintings is that the white paper often looks blue or grey.
        I have also been stitching some dresses to fit 11.5" fashion dolls. I found a lovely mushroom/toadstool print fabric that made up into a two lovely dresses. Thats all for now folks.

The background paper is white. Orchid splendour.

Painting on holiday

Hi, I have just got back from my holiday in Cornwall. The weather was great and we had a lovely time. I enjoyed making a few pen and watercolour sketches of some lovely coastal scenery. I sketched the view in pen first and then added some simple watercolour washes finding this to be a much more successful approach than drawing and then painting in more detail. I found that on a family holiday you don't want to spend a long time painting but just create the essence of the places you visit quickly. I have taken lots of photographs so that, with the sketches I have made, I can now paint the lovely scenery of Cornwall at home.

Lanic Bay

Porthluney Beach

St Michaels Mount

Talland Bay

Bedruthen Steps

Painting Orchids

I have just finished my painting of an orchid. I loved the colours of this Orchid and thought it would make a lovely painting. Because Orchids have long stems I decided to approach the flower stem and the leaves seperately and overlay the leaves with the flowers. The masking fluid worked well and enabled me to achieve balanced washes across the leaves. I thoroughly enjoyed painting the markings on the petals. Very nice painting project to do.

Watercolour painting of Gorran Haven Cornwall.

Have been painting and sewing this week. I have finished the watercolour of Gorran Haven Cornwall and am now painting an Orchid. I had drawn up the plant as part of a short course and thought it needed to be finished. I still have a lot to do but it is painting up well. I had to use masking fluid on this painting as the orchid flowers lay over the leaves and I needed broad strokes to paint the leaves. I don't like using masking fluid as I find it difficult to get smooth edges but this worked well and thankfully did'nt damage the paper when removed. I have also made some 11.5" fashion doll dresses and they look really cute and summery.

Gorran Haven

Photographs of the Orchid painting will follow.

Painting and sewing

A lovely week. I finished work for the summer on Tuesday and spent Wednesday cleaning the house.Thank goodness I did it yesterday, its too hot today.I have been making apple pin cushions from a pattern I found on Etsy by Nap Kitten. I am very pleased with the pattern and the apples were straight forward to make, if a little fiddly.

I have been wanting to paint a coastal or harbour scene in watercolour for some time.  I have a lovely photograph from my holiday last year of Gorran Haven in Cornwall. Just the thing. Since it is so warm I thought I would paint today in spite of the fact that the paint might dry very quickly. Actually it was fine. I think it must be humid which does help. I am using Khadi paper which I have not used before. I learnt one thing you cannot use the rubber on this paper as when you apply the paint it acts as blotting paper. I am painting in stages because, at the moment, the sunlight is directly across my painting and is very bright. I am waiting for the sun to move round a bit then I can do some more.