Making a mountain out of a molehill

 

This is a painting I am doing for a friend's sister's 30th birthday present.  She has done a lot of travelling and this photo is one she took in Nepal.  I love the contrast of the colourful man-made flags against the natural world behind them.  Landscapes are not something I normally do, so I'm trying to get over the fear of the mountains and embrace them.

Congratulations card

Just as a quick break from a painting I was doing today, I made a congratulations card for my wonderful friend Amy.  Just pushing the bristles of the brush onto the page gave a lovely petal shape - ideal if flowers are your favourite theme!  What's especially nice though is that all the different colours and tones that have been loaded onto the brush come out, to make the petals look really individual. 

All the paintings together

So this was a bit of an accident - as many great discoveries are.  I had some prints done of some of favourite paintings and was cutting them from their original oblong shape into squares, which I then mounted onto foam board.  I had six scraps leftover and suddenly saw them all together.  Each individually is a nice painting to look at, but united they create something else entirely, something unique.  I am going to continue along this route and see what else happens when I merge individual pieces together.  I also thought about sewing into these to give them some more texture.

Birthday card

For a dear friend's mum on her 60th birthday.

Introducing some stitch

 

 

I have spent a lot of my time painting recently and have begun to move onto collage and now a bit of sewing.  I have never been able to stay fixed to one medium, and honestly can't think of a reason why I should.  The options are endless when using mixed media.  I find it incredible the journey this particular piece of work has gone on so far, starting as a photograph of an old boat on the Isle of Wight, moving through to a patchwork of colours.  I wonder where it will go next.

A familiar journey

A journey between Manchester and Milton Keynes.  One I am very familiar with and one that has meant many different things to me over the years.  I struggled to find the right words this time - I think they have all been said.  It's time for doing now.

This is always how I start my illustrations - a quick sketch on the train.  I'll now sit down with these and start experimenting with lines and textures and eventually they will join the ever growing Moving Images series.  I wonder if they will ever stop moving.