Small landscape studies

A whole week has gone by without access to the Internet. I had a week booked off work to get on with the painting and planning for my show and, of course, I have been relying on Mum and Dad's laptop for the last year. It's astonishing how much time can be frittered away just by dithering around on the Internet. I have spent the week painting, reading, making bread, planting foxgloves, lavender and chocolate cosmos, snacking almost constantly, having a sofa delivered, sending it back because it didn't fit through the door, feeling embarrassed, making the stressful pilgrimage to Ikea to buy a smaller sofa, realising that over the course of 7 years I have accumulated many, many throws, buying another one from M&S anyway and, of course, watching daytime TV.

As predicted in my last post, there is a small fly in this particularly girly pot of ointment. Turns out my upstairs neighbours keep strange hours and like to watch their TV with the volume up. So the above list has all been undertaken with the low level hum of exhaustion in the background.

My Fabulous Life

So, after 4 months of looking around grotty hovels I have finally moved in to what feels like my dream flat. As is usual with someone of my temperament, I am waiting for things to go horribly wrong.
I feel like I should be cooking lovely, nutritious food, buying flowers and decorating in a shabby chic sort of style ( I spend too much time on interior design blogs) whilst twirling around in circles and blogging about my fabulous life, but instead I am eating mainly Toblerone and last night saw me slumped on my loaned beanbag (sofa arrives next week) watching Glee whilst feeling vaguely melancholy.
I promise to post pictures soon of the paintings I have been working on, this is supposed to be an artist's blog after all. Tomorrow I am off to Art in Action at Waterperry gardens so a report on that coming soon!

Polperro

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.