Seascapes by Vivien Blackburn - the book! and the trip to London yesterday

Draft cover for the book, showing back and front covers and spine.

This is what I'm currently working on instead of painting. I decided a while back that I'd create a book of my seascapes - it's escalating! - when I've finished, I now feel like doing a series of others with my digital images, waterways project, landscapes, sketches and flowers in separate books - over time, not all at once of course! it's fairly time consuming. I would also like to do a story book for Sam and a book for his first birthday full of the best photos and sketches of him.

I've decided to use http://www.blurb.com/ . I saw whilst arranging to meet up with Tina that she had just published 2 books and asked her which company she'd used and was she happy with the quality? she'd used blurb and was delighted with them. She offered to bring them to show us. Seeing them was so helpful, the quality is excellent, her paintings of course beautiful. http://tina-m.blogspot.com/ check here and have a look, worth every penny - or cent :>).

I'd had a look at Lulu but the options available in setting up pages didn't compare. I really like the drag and drop type features of blurb. You download their programme to set up your book. Tina explained that blurb was editable later to do different versions which I also liked.

Another lovely book is Casey Klahn's at http://pastelsblog.blogspot.com/ beautifully colourful and vivid.

And keep your eyes peeled for announcements from Katherine ;>)

London was great. The watercolour show was maybe a little heavy on the traditional work. I particularly liked the more contemporary work of Diane Bell, Peter Folkes, Leslie Goodwin, Cliff Howe, Penelope Lee, Michael Morgan, Norma Stephenson , Shirley Trevena. Deborah Walker and Geoffrey Wynne (a candidate for membership this year). I'm going to allow Katherine to do all the link chasing for the paintings as I struggled to find many and none to suitable works :>( I'm going to get on with the book instead!

Alison Watt's show, Phantom, at the National Gallery was well worth the visit and free as well :>)

She was influenced first by the fabric of the dress in the Ingres portrait of Madame Moitissier and then went on to look at the intricately folded and knotted cravats in other well known paintings in the collection. She then produced huge monochrome canvasses with beautifully modulated form and ambiguous spaces and holes based on these. Really lovely, particularly when seen en masse. The accompanying film was excellent and well worth watching.

Katherine, Glen, Tina and I did an awful lot of chatting over lattes and smoothies at the Mall and again at the National Gallery and I came away determined to a) buy Tina's book of her paintings and b) get mine done!

back to book production ...........

links:

http://pastelsblog.blogspot.com/ Casey Klahn

http://tina-m.blogspot.com/ Tina Mammoser

http://makingamark.blogspot.com/ Katherine Tyrrell

http://www.lulu.com/uk/ lulu

http://www.blurb.com/ blurb

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