July postcard for Carol M

This months inspiration was chosen by Pippa


Like a lot of my fellow Calendar Girls this month I wanted to capture the texture of the picture.

First I embellished a piece of scrim to a thick piece of fabric. Sorry the photo isn't very good of this stage.


Next I embellished various thickness of thread on to the background.


Covered it with a layer of gesso


and sprayed some brusho blue paint on then left it to dry.


I then added some fabric paints in blue and green painted on some white acrylic in parts to lighten it.


Finally a coat of watercolour 'Iridescent medium' to give it a sparkle, you know like when the sun glints of snow or ice.

Neglected Blog

I've been neglecting this blog lately. I'm still here but I've been concentrating on my photography course and finishing the 3rd module City and Guilds so if you want to see what I've been up to please click on the links to my other blogs.


and because I like to put a photo up on any posts here's one I made earlier (anyone outside of the UK that's a reference to a children's programme here called Blue Peter). Dylan and Ermintrude where very patient and didn't complain once during their photo session, while I was trying to get the Depth of Field correct!!!

June Calendar Girls postcard

This is the inspiration for this months postcard from Sharon.

I used part of the right hand corner as my inspiration. It reminded me of a patchwork but I didn't want to use that technique so I embellished 'Silk' fibres to a background.



I zig zag stitched the lines to accentuate (blimey that's a big word for this early in the morning) between the different colours I used.


It will be in the post to Jenny this afternoon hope you like it.

The Dream

Has anyone been following Channel 4's Big Art programme over the past 4 weeks.It has been interesting to see how some have been open minded to a piece of 'public art' in their communities and yet some have been so closed minded that they won't give it a chance. It was the last programme last night and it showed the completion of only the second piece of Art to be completed which is in St Helens not far from where I am in Liverpool.

This picture is only the artists concept idea but if you look on Flickr there will probably be loads of photos over the coming weeks.

If you missed the TV programmes you can catch up with it at here.

What do you think of Janet Street Porters comments from The Independent on 1st April

There's already been controversy over the 60ft-high concrete and marble sculpture of a girl's head called Dream, by Spanish artist Jaume Plensa, currently being erected on a former slag heap by the M62 in St Helens outside Liverpool. If ever there was a strong argument for not allowing the public to choose art, this is it.

Put baldly, it is completely without merit, the only plus being the local council did not pay for it.

I don't know what anyone else thinks of it but I like it.

Calendar Girls May

For a while this afternoon I thought I wasn't going to be able to use the internet. We had power to our electric lights but not to the sockets on the walls. About 3 months ago the landlord had installed a new electric board, you know the sort that has a trip switch etc instead of the old type where you had to use fuse wire in the fuses. Anyway I tried resetting the switch but it wouldn't work so I got on to the landlord and they sent someone out within the hour.

He had us unplug everything but couldn't find out what was wrong. It wasn't until he asked when the power went off that he realised it was something to do with the heavy rain we'd had around 3pm. We can't use the front room because of the damp and one of the sockets on the outside wall over the years must have got wet in it and the heavy rain this afternoon had caused a short circuit. He managed to fix it and we are back to normal.

Anyway back to the subject of this post - my Calendar Girls postcard for May which I posted to Neki this afternoon.


This is the picture that Doreen chose for this month.

I embellished some wool to a piece of fabric for the background.


Then added silk fibres in various colours......


..... and finally added some hand stitching to suggest the 'water lilies'.


This months postcard isn't my usual "style" but I hope Neki likes my "impression" of Doreen's choice.

Calendar Girls April

It was my turn to choose the picture for this month. It took me ages at the end of last year to find a calendar that was suitable to use. All I could seem to find was dogs, cats, cars or pop stars but after going into umpteen shops in town by pure luck I got it down the road from where I live in a card shop's New Year sale.

I thought it would be easy to use this as the inspiration for this months postcard but it has been harder than I expected. This afternoon I sat down to do a small watercolour painting of part of the picture to see if it would inspire me. I'm so pleased with it that I hope Lynda who it will be going to will accept it even though it is not a postcard as such. I've not cut it to postcard size and put a mount on it so you can frame it if you want to.

All about faces

For the past few weeks I've been concentrating on an online class I've been taking with Paulette Insall called 'All About Faces'.

In the first lesson I practiced drawing eyes, noses and mouths. They look really funny when they are out of context.

Next I put them all together in a face. I need to practice faces they all seem to have the same look.





Week 2 I did the background for my paintings. I used a 8 x 10 inch and 10 x 14 inch canvas. I had to re do the green one because I made a mess when I started to paint the face and couldn't rescue it so you will see the background is different in the smaller canvas.




I made a start on the face by drawing then painting the first layer.




2nd stage - Add colour to the eyes and lips and the face starts to look more lifelike.



3rd Stage - Add hair, eyebrows and start to add shading to the face. I prefer the 1st face, the 2nd didn't work as well. I wanted her hair to look as if it was blown by the wind but I don't think it worked.



4th Stage - Add shading to lips and more shading to face.



Finishing touches - I didn't want to do to much to the 1st face so just added decoration to the hairband and touched up in a few places. The 2nd face hasn't worked out as well as I wanted so I just added a quotation and I'll put it to one side for a few weeks and look at it again.



PS I should have said I used acrylics for these painting with some Caran d'ache Neocolour water soluble wax crayons for the cheeks and lips.