paintings prints and stuff

I'm busy with stuff I'd rather not be doing - like lesson planning etc! so only bits of painting going on :( I found this online and thought it's great! just like my spoilt little madame when she's in 'I vant to be alone' mode :)

Alfreda told me how to add a slide show :) Thank you Alfreda :)

Do your sketchbooks (if you use them) reflect your personality? Mine do. They contain 'finished' looking work, quick scribbles, working out ideas, jotting down ideas, experiments, photos, digital printouts, found bits - anything and everything chaotically crammed together! I do tend to keep books for certain projects but not always. I have a couple of friends - one an architect who paints and the other with a background in business who is an accomplished painter - who have the neatest sketchbooks imagineable! Just fairly finished pieces and no chaos Mine does reflect the way I think. I'm almost totally right brained and organisation is NOT my 'thing'. I think around a subject, going off at a tangent and coming back again. These friends decide they are going to C and therefore steps A and B are necessary for them to get there - I simply don't function this way! sometimes I wish I could. I really have to make myself be organised when I have to be but I hate it. s...

I've finally been managing to find some time to paint. I don't like artificial light so I really need to paint through the morning and into the early afternoon and then stop. When the weather is grim and grey I hate the light to work in. I do wish I had a south facing studio, I know north facing is traditional but I really don't like it. I have been working on the 5 seascapes - tall and thin - 48in+ high and 12-14 in wide. Then I decided to work on some more trees. This is the trees/landscape in progress. It has quite a way to go and this isn't a great photo as it was taken with flash and misses some details, like where I've scratched thin branches through to the underpainting of oranges and drab purples and it's a bit dark. details: It's done in oil on canvas over another painting (that I hated!) in oranges and greens and dull purples. I've used the colours to shine through the snow and come through in the bark of the trees. I also scratched through to ...

Yesterday I went down to the London Art Fair in Islington. I've been going every year for quite a long time as it's a great chance to see lots of contemporary art in one place. Over 100 leading UK galleries take part with stands showing their best artists. You can see the Scottish Galleries, Welsh, Cornish ......... from all over the country - all under one roof. It's a chance to see work by favourite artists and discover new ones. Amongst those I'd come across and liked before was Paul Emsley - http://www.paulemsley.co.uk/ - who does very large charcoal drawings that are superb, subtle pieces. Another was Kurt Jackson with some wonderful seascapes on show with the Lemon Street Gallery in Truro and Messums from Cork Street in London. There is a link to his website in the list at the bottom of the screen on the right. Others I like such as Len Tabner, Peter Prendergast, Kyffin Williams, Barbara Rae and Lucian Freud were represented - all are worth googling for stunning...

I've been working on these seascapes - they aren't finished yet and it's a very bad photo I'm afraid but I'll post better images when they are finished. I like these long thin images hung in groups of 3, 5 or 7 - looking across them adds the dimension of time - the weather changes, the tide comes in or goes out, night falls. It's a speeded up version of a year spent painting on the beaches. They are about 48 ins tall but only 12/14ins wide on gallery wrap canvas - I make my own - well that's not quite true! My father and my husband make the stretchers to my specifications and I then stretch the canvas onto them. Some of the underpainting is thin acrylics on raw canvas - that way I can get some watercolour-like marks. Then it's sealed and I continue with oil paint. These have been done with Griffin Alkyds for speed as they dry overnight. I've also spent hours revamping and rewriting my site. Katherine gave me lots of good advice on what the search en...