New watercolour aceo's (june)

This is the third of my catch-up posts, actually things have been so hectic at home that I have not had a great deal of time for art/craft and so it is good to have these in hand. My MIL has is beginning to settle into her residential home and we have been very busy trying to get her settled in, also lots of finance and admin tasks to sort out her own house have kept us busy. We have attended several functions at the home with MIL to get her acclimatised.


We have just seen my youngest son turning 30, of course my wife turned this into a special event. Again lots of things to do, etc. And last but by no means least we have beem planning for our 40th anniversary later in the year. Lots of decisions and sorting out of itineries and all the little things that go with this sort of project.


This does not of course mean that household / domestic chores could be put on hold - oh no, my crafting has had to take a back seat. So here are a few watercolours to bring you up-todate.

The first three are from a series of paintings I started based on photographs of sunsets in Africa. I have considered doing a tutorial on how I did these, as some people seem to think that they are difficult to do. They are actually quite easy and I think I could show this in a very simple tutorial.

The last is also from a photograph, of Glastonbury Tor seen from the Avalon Marshes. It is now framed and belongs to my son who requested it on his birthday. He is into New Age stuff in a big way. How could I refuse?

OK folks that's it for now - see you soon, hopefully with more new art work.

New collage / atc's

OK this is the second of my catch-up posts (will be one more for paintings), this time I am posting a number of atc collages. Beside the point but I have just looked out of my window - it is p***ing down. After a few days of incredibly hot sun, the weather has turned, with a vengeance. But that shouldn't affect my typing so here goes.....

Title: A trouble shared

Created for the MAMMA swap on Flickr, the theme was to use the distressed gesso technique as demonstrated by Berni Berlin in her atc workshop book. I gessoed over the backgroun and then added a little oriental text, which was also slightly gessoed. The main image was printed onto acetate.

Title: Music soothes the savage breast

A fairly simple atc. I used a polyester material for the background, sealed it with an acrylic sealant and then layered the main image onto the card. The musical staves were stamped with a white ink.

Title : Really



Title; Salome

Both of the above cards were created from ephemera sent by kind friends with traded cards and also ephemera won in competitions on PDA/Kim Newberg's Ning network

Title: Me and my shadow

Stamped and cut-out images on multi layered background, again using bits of ephemera referred to above; gold circles stamped with wine cork - which just happened to be available, honest..... LOL

Just realised that I may need another post to bring myself right up to date with collaged atc's, lots to show which I have been creating whilst being blocked from my blog with this damned IE8 issue. Again I have to admit that putting the follower gadget towards the bottom of the page seems to have done the trick but It does feel as if it is the wrong place.

See you soon....

new digital art work

Well moving the follower gadget seems to have done the job - I can at least get into blogger! However I seem to have lost the habit of posting here.

Just as a catch-up I will post a few recent art pieces over the next few posts to try and get back into that habit. In this post it is the turn of digital collages. I sem to have been on the computer again just recently, not least because my art room is in the roof space of our house and in the spell of hot weather it has been impossible to use it for any length of time. My PC is in a much cooler and more comfortable area.

Anyway here are a couple of digital collages for you (well three to be precise):

Title: Honor, fate, forever love

A digital collage made using Photoplus ( version 8 is free). Images from a number of sources. The background from a collage sheet, I bought (LOL) from etsy. The warriors and the LH lady are from Dover, the RH lady may have been from art-e-zine. Oriental alphabet characters from Flickr courtesy of (artsyfartsyqueen on Flickr ). The diagonal edging (?) is also from Dover. Various swirls and shapes created by me as brushes in Photoplus. ..... Busy, but I like it!

Title: Lucy in the sky with diamonds

A fun collage created for a themed challenge on PDA .

Title: My Lady, I feel a presence

A digital collage; most of the images are from the free Dover sampler, the gypsy (RHS) is from Suzee Que and the background from PDA

BTW if you can't see it the title refers to the image of a face in the top LH corner, LOL

More to come in the next few posts, when I can hopefully get back to normal with my use of Blogger for recording my successes and failures with art.

A quick addition to the post: I did this from a collection of images which I selected for a collage sheet on PDA, I called it an "autumn collage", after the colours which were the theme of the sheet.

Well that's it. Up to date with my digital work. And this time I am sure. See you next time.

(Almost) a new venture.

I have just started a new series of Squidoo "Lenses" based on some of my very old blog postings. The idea of these posts was to show some of my sketches and discuss why and how these came about. And further how they led ( where relevant) to finished paintings.

I have been trying to get back into painting recently, not because I want to stop collaging but rather that I want to do both. Over the past couple of years I have been neglecting my roots as an artist and I want to re-establish them. I was browsing some of my old work, and decided that I would re-visit the blog posts where I had showed these and decided that I could add more - hence the "Lenses".

For those new to Squidoo, a lens is simply a single page web-site.

The original aim of this blog was to write (and show) how I was progressing in my chosen hobby, and to include failures as well as successes ( hence the title! ), it has become more of a way of simply showing off new work and is really complementary to my Flickr photostream. So I hope that you will be able to visit the new Lenses as they are written, and the first draft of the new introductory lens is available for comment. ( I must be a fool??)

error with Blogger blogs, using IE8

I have noted several times on the last few posts that I have been having trouble with Blogger ever since I downloaded and installed IE8. I have just noticed this on the Blogger help forum....

I found this on the blogger list of known problems...
Some users are seeing an 'Operation Aborted' error message when trying to load their blogs from Internet Explorer. We're looking into this and will update this message when we have a fix.

We apologize for the inconvenience.

Update (May 26): We are still working on resolving this bug. This only affects viewers using IE to view the blog; for right now, blog owners can either move the Followers gadget lower in their sidebar, or remove it altogether. Either action will eliminate the pop-up dialog box in IE.

It actually seems to work, I know of at least one friend who has tried it, and it seems to work for both of us. It is a poor substitute for a fix since you would normally have the follower gadget near the top ( I would think) and not at the bottom. But needs must.... I hope to be able to resume normal service as soon as possible.

watercolour aceo paintings

I have been trying to get back into watercolour painting; since starting to collage I have been neglecting my painting and more especially my drawing. This video shows some of the paintings I have been doing over the past six months. It is another very quick posting I am afraid, real life is still interfering with my blogging. Apologies . I hope normal service will be resumed shortly.

Another thing... has anyone loaded IE 8. It is playing havoc with my ability to view Blogger web sites.



see you soon - I hope

My journey into digital art

another quickie today; I have just uploaded this video of some of my digital artwork. From the early days of playing with digital "art" programs and getting a wireless tablet so that I could draw without having to use the mouse, to creating digital abstracts.

All the software has been free to download, art programs such as ArtWeaver, Artrage and Project Dogwaffle - there are others but three to play with seemed sufficient. I also use Photoplus (Serif) for most of the digital collage work and manipulating photos. It is probably not as "good" as the industry standard, in that it does not have the same support and vast range of on-line brushes and tutorials but It is quite similar once you get used to the teminology.

More next time.