My favourite door

I love this door. It's the door of an old barn just up the road from the cottage we stay in in Wales. I took photos of it last year too. Maybe I'll go back every year just to have a look at this door. This door reminds me of calmness and peace in times of turbulence. And turbulence is all there has been recently. I went to look at a flat last Thursday, signed a contract on Tuesday, gave away a huge wodge of money on Wednesday and I collect the keys on Sunday. This has all happened quite quickly and I have no furniture and have packed nothing.

This has been all I wanted for the last couple of months and now I'm here I'm suddenly petrified. I have never lived on my own before and life currently looks very different from the way i thought it would at 31.

Printmaking

A weekend spent mono printing and labouring over my woodcut. Shoulders ache. Wood chippings everywhere. If it doesn't work I'm going to be really cross. The pencil is there to give you a sense of scale.

We're mono printing in class on Wednesday and I've decided that, as a primary source of inspiration, we are going to use birds as our imagery. Specifically, black, carrion birds. They just look so cool.

Is it finished?

I have no idea what's going on with the bonkers use of colour in this painting. I just stopped thinking halfway through and doodled away. The question is, is it finished?

Looking at it now, I think not, though what more I can do is beyond me. A lovely pile of Japanese plywood landed on my doorstep on Wednesday ready for some woodcuts. I spent last night meticulously drawing out the scene I wanted ready to work on this weekend. As is usual for someone with so little patience, I couldn't wait to get started but couldn't bothered to move from my comfy spot on the bed. Consequently I slept, rather uncomfortably, with wood chippings.

Sketchbook pages

The woodland scene tonal sketches have been done as preliminary groundwork for a much larger than normal watercolour painting. The first three pencil outlines are for my watercolour class next week, the theme is windows and doors- not for the first time am I wondering whether I have made things a bit hard for my poor students.

Rather annoyingly there is also a smudge of something on the lens of my camera which is very noticeable in the first three images. What's a girl to do?

The flat hunt is on hold for a bit. It was taking up all of my emotional energy and my attitude towards my art had been "I'll just wait until I'm settled somewhere new and then I'll make a start". I hadn't even realised I'd done this until a week ago when I realised I hadn't painted anything for ages. No wonder I was feeling a little fraught. And dreaming about Farrow and Ball painted walls.

The Great Flat Hunt 2010 Part 2

So, the particular flat which promised so much, turned out to be wood chipped of wall (why oh why) and smelling of cabbage and old cats. After Cat Lady's flat I went to see Joan Collins' Penthouse Apartment and then, last Friday, a ground floor garden flat that I will now refer to as Crack Den. The only thing missing from Crack Den was the decomposing body in the avocado bath tub. Tomorrow I'm off to see another garden flat (this time basement) and on Saturday morning, a ground floor apartment in a conversion of what my brother tells me is an old asylum. Excellent.

Meanwhile, here is a sneaky peak of the finished painting. More when I manage to take a photo that's not out of focus.

The Great 2010 Flat Hunt

When I moved back home last year I said I would give myself a year to sort myself and my finances out. That year was up last Monday. I actually started looking for a flat about 4 weeks ago and, my God, has this been a depressing business. I'm not sure what I expected, I am rather impatient. Once I have decided on a course of action (in itself quite difficult) I sort of expect things to fall into place but the perfect apartment has remained an elusive beast. My days have been punctuated with feverish assaults on rightmove followed by bouts of "I'll never find anywhere" and "I'm going to end up in some depressing bedsit listening to The Smiths". Last Saturday afternoon was spent loitering in the drizzle outside the most depressing of ugly new builds waiting for an elusive estate agent. He never did show up.

However, this morning brings with it a glimmer of hope. The viewing is on Monday. In the meantime, there are always more cupcakes.

Hi! I'm Back!

So, you know when you haven't spoken to a friend for a really long time and you wonder whether you just might have left it a bit late to give them a ring? Well, that's what this feels like. When I started this blog, it felt like quite an important thing but events have conspired since Christmas to leave me feeling rather exhausted...

The last couple of weeks, though, I have been itching to post. There has been lots of creative stuff going on and I think it's important to try and document what I'm doing, whether it be here or in my journal at home (pray no one will ever read that- I would be sectioned).

The lily painting, again, started life as a class sample and I have carried on doodling on it. It's still not finished, the background doesn't have any depth and I love seeing dark saturated colours in my paintings.




This is a corset that I have made following the Alabama Stitch pattern in that wonderful book. It took about three weeks and was a complete labour of love. However, having completed said garment, it has come to my attention that a woman with the shoulders of an Olympic swimmer should not be wearing a corset. I do take it out of the drawer and admire and stroke it from time to time though. I'm making the bloomer skirt next.

Right, time to pop into town. I'm off to by a muffin tray. By some benign (accidental) or malicious (his mother) intent my ex seems to have ended up with my muffin tray and I have cupcakes to bake courtesy of the Hummingbird Bakery cookbook.