Dulwich and Tea

Hello again,

I hope you've had a good week.  January is racing past and it's been going pretty well so far.  I'm creating lots of new work and planning all sorts of things which I'm really excited about.  It's also been (unsurprisingly) very cold, (well I am a wimp with the cold, so very cold for me that is!).  This time of year is a great time to be cosy at home with a nice cup of tea which is what inspired the illustration below.  I do enjoy drawing food and drink and I had fun inventing the cup and teapot design and arranging the composition.

Yesterday I also had a lovely day finally visiting the Tove Jansson exhibition at Dulwich Picture Gallery. I really enjoyed it, she had a wonderful way with colour and it was great to see a range of work besides what she is best known for.  It was also a beautiful day with a wonderful blue sky so I took the opportunity to go into Dulwich Park for a bit of a wander.  This was one of the first London parks I visited when I first came to London many years ago.  It's quite far for me now so I felt incredibly lucky to be visiting on such a gorgeous day.  It was wonderfully peaceful and very relaxing.  Nature is an amazing thing!  I would have liked to spend longer there (even though it was very cold) but I really wanted to come back to sketch up for some new work I'm doing.

I'm glad I went yesterday because it has been raining most of the day here today so I definitely would not have had such a lovely walk :).

Have a lovely week and I'll be back soon!

Inspired by nature

Hello,

I hope you're all doing well.  I'm feeling really settled into 2018, the end of year break seems well behind me.  So far January has been pretty good for me.  I've been busy creating new work and organising myself for the months ahead.
As I said in my previous blog, my little Christmas trip back to the countryside has inspired some new work.  I'm determined to try and travel a bit more this year, (I think I say this every year though!) it's so good for me, it always gives me new ideas and just clears my head.  The illustration below was inspired by a country walk and also a book I started reading, there was mention of a hare and I knew immediately I wanted to bring one into my work, sometimes that's all it takes.  I wanted this illustration to have a decorative aspect also.  I love to take plants and make some sort of pattern with them and it was really enjoyable to just sit and build up the pattern using a mix of media, I was in my element!  I also love challenging myself with restricting my colour palette, colour is hard!  I'm really pleased with how this turned out though.  I worked on an A3 paper size for this, I've been working at A4 or smaller just recently so this made a nice change.

I hope you've had a good week.  I'm sketching for some new work this evening and tomorrow will be (hopefully) a painting day :).  Bye for now 

New Year, home and away

Hello,

Happy New Year!  I hope 2018 will be a great one for all of us, personally I'm pretty excited to see what it will bring.  I hope if you had a break over Christmas and New Year it was a lovely one and you're all feeling well fed and happy! (I was sent back with a food parcel and I still have some left!)

I had a lovely break, I went to see my family and it was good to have a few days off, I think I needed to wind down a bit.  I got back before New Year and have been working hard since then.  When I do have a break, I find I always come back full of energy and ready to get on.  I also find a change of scene really helps my work and gives me inspiration for some new creations.  I was particularly looking forward to walking out in the countryside and by the coast.  Living in London I really appreciate being able to do this whenever I go home.  I often visit places I went to when I was a child so they feel very familiar.  This time I went walking near Cromer and then went onto the beach (I am sea obsessed, I always need to get close to it).  When I got back here I created some work inspired by the famous Cromer crab.

Here's a couple of photos from the beach, it's quite rocky but the colours of the stones are so pretty and there was some beautifully coloured seaweed.  Nature has such amazing colours.  It was pretty cold by the way, but I am a weed in the cold!

I hope you had a lovely start to the year and here's hoping 2018 will be a great one for us all! :)