PEONIES IN THE GARDEN

Philippa came round yesterday for an afternoon painting session and it was so lovely we went into the garden to paint the beautiful soft pink peonies that were blooming.

Here's the result of my effort in my garden sketchbook of flowers. I hope the new sketchbook ordered from Chalk Hill Studios arrives soon as I only have one page left!

Here's Philippa working in the bright sunlight with borrowed sunhat.

and here is how the bloom developed today after lots more strong sunshine.

PEN AND WATERCOLOURS

Two more pen and watercolour pieces for The Garden House Gallery in Cromer.

Number one is of the Hunstanton lighthouse at dusk after they had put on the uplights to give this glow to the structure. I have caught it from the cliff top garden after sketching with Anita on the beach during a long weekend last year when we hired a caravan.






This is from a visit to Cromer with my daughter and girls whilst we were strolling on the pier.




Both done with waterproof ink pen and washes of watercolour, selecting a few of the many figures on the pier either sipping tea, strolling or catching the small crabs bottom left.

CROMER PIER

Another watercolour on Lana Vanguard to go to the Garden House Gallery in Cromer next week with the Norfolk Lavender (same size 13" x 11" mounted and framed in plain box white wood). The pier supports nearly drove me mad and now I see the image on the screen it looks as though it might be collapsing! Ah well such is the life of a painter. Creating the sky, sea and beach were lots of fun in this technique. I had thoughts of adding boats on the beach but decided it would make two centres of focus, so simply added a little trickle of water to lead the eye in to the pier and some detailed stones in the foreground. Here's how it looked before I played with the beach adding different size stones and colours and lifting out to get back to slightly tinted highlights. Then added the trickle of water just kind of happened! Thats how my work develops nowadays - like magic - especially on this Lana Vanguard! Here's a closeup of the texture I created on this lovely support.

NORFOLK LAVENDER

I have been working on small pen and watercolour paintings for forthcoming Norfolk shows and I had planned to create four square format pieces for the Garden House Gallery in Cromer, but unfortunately my local framer David has injured his achilles heel and is unable to complete all four frames for me. So numbers three and four paintings I was planning to use for Cromer I have put aside for the Grimston Easter event in the hope David will have improved and been able to complete them. The painting measures only 10" x 8" and looks really fresh against a white mount and box frame. So that meant I had to think of two other ideas to fit two white rectangle frames I have purchased to match the two completed square white. I decided to use watercolour and pen on my beloved Lana Vanguard for these and thought to use Arabic Gum solution to help with the control. It worked - or so I think! This is a popular scene at the front of the Norfolk Lavender Company shop and tea rooms at Heacham along the north Norfolk coast road. The final piece using the same technique is going to be of Cromer pier.

EASTERN OPEN 2011

I was pleased to be advised that the following work was accepted for the EASTERN OPEN 2011 and yesterday Sandra joined me to attend the opening at the Kings Lynn Art Centre. Out of 642 works submitted from 7 east of England counties, 126 were exhibited. Although I did not share in any of the prizes, visiting the Red Barn (one of the four galleries at the Centre used for the show) I noticed a lovely red spot on my work. The Assistant Arts and Education Manager introduced me to the buyer and we had an interesting chat. Gathering at the Magic Pool This work was created with acrylic inks on the contemporary slippery surface of YUPO/Lana Vanguard I have been experimenting with over the past 2 years. The judges were Professor Nick de Ville a 70's designer of album sleeves and tutor at the Goldsmiths' College; Anna Lucas a London based artist film maker; and Poul Webb a watercolourist and past student at Cambridge School of Art, work acquired by the HM Government Art Collection and exhibitor at the Royal Academy, Museum of Modern Art at Rijeka plus many other prestigious international events. Their comments were most encouraging ie '...all artists chosen can justly be proud of having created a very strong and contemporary Eastern Open 2011.'

NEW ART WEBSITE

As I have been getting more and more contacts within the art world with particular reference to my floral work, I decided to build myself a new art website with the aid of webs.com and above is part of my HOME page. There is a link on my blogger righthand sidebar for you to go and have a peek.

I felt that all the text in the blogging system is interesting for other artists and friends, but I needed a more commercial website to promote my work for sales and commissions.

The albums in the gallery so far have around 10-12 images in each and cover the following subjects:

- watercolour flowers

- acrylic flowers

- garden flower sketchbook

- flowers in the landscape

- Norfolk Landscapes

- Church inspired work

I will continue to add more albums to the gallery and am thinking of creating one on STILL LIFE.

Its a good thing I have always photographed and stored images of all my paintings in a stand alone Omega hard drive that can take up to a million images! Its getting pretty full over the years but I don't think I am anyway near that number yet!!

Using webs.com was great fun though time consuming and I am very pleased with the format I chose from their 70 or so different styles.

Hope you find time to go and have a look and maybe comment!

Hopefully I'll get back to regular visits to your blogs and update a little more often.