When Life Gives You Lemons…

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Sometimes, a rubbish day turns into a nice day.

Our village woke up to house alarms battling with the dawn chorus this morning, signalling a power cut which lasted until late afternoon.

This resulted in a mad dash with a friend to the nearest ‘powered up’ café for a caffeine hit and then leaving housework aside (no hoover, washing machine or steam iron in use, yay!) and settling down to paint (no electricity needed, double yay!!).

This little seascape study was the result. As the saying goes ‘When life gives you lemons, make lemonade’!

Lily

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This Unison pastel painting on Pastelmat is of my studio assistant, looking pensive.  I like slightly unusual poses of animals to work on – candid shots can produce interesting portraits.

Pastelmat paper by Clarefontaine is a slightly unusual surface to use, almost like a very, very fine sandpaper so that the ‘tooth’ of the paper texture holds the chalkiness of pastels.  I found it a tricky paper to use to start with but the more I use it the easier it gets and the end result makes for a smooth pastel painting, great for details.

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Oz Dogs

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These two beauts, Kiku and Kura, are owned by friends who live in Australia.  They both have faces full of character and expression and I couldn’t resist trying to capture them.  They are done with soft pastels (Unison) on Pastelmat paper which has a good ‘tooth’ for holding pastel.  Fortunately, the drawings/paintings survived their global journey from the UK to the other side of the planet and arrived unscathed within a fortnight.  Amazing!  Well done postal service.

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TAE18

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This year’s Twitter Art Exhibition in aid of Pegasus Riding For The Disabled is taking place in Canberra, Australia from 7-29 April 2018 (extra details can be found on the TAE18 website).

So with that thought in mind, I set out to paint a little French Bulldog on a postcard size piece of mountboard. He’s called ‘Ozzie’ and he’ll be up for sale along with several hundred other postcards that artists around the globe are donating

Hope he sells and helps raise funds for this great cause.

‘Red Bull’

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This latest painting was taken from a beautiful black bull spotted in a farm field in Cumbria.

The red background shows his colour off really well, but it was also chosen as I had just heard of the decision by the Balearic Islands in Spain to stop bullfighting.

I understand the idea of tradition in countries but I don't understand this cruel 'sport' in the name of tradition.

Hot Off The Press

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Here is the latest run of my animal portrait greetings cards.  All are 15 x 10.5cm in size, professionally printed on quality card and are supplied in individual cellophane pockets with white envelopes to keep them pristine.  They make brilliant Thank You cards, Birthday cards or Just-A-Note and if you order the set of 5, I’ll wrap them with a pretty ribbon ready to be given as a gift (or to keep for yourself!) Contact me or DM me for details 🤓

Limited Edition Prints

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I recently sent four of my paintings to have a limited edition of giclée prints produced by a local printing company called Deadly Digital in Glasgow.  I was really pleased with the results and now have them ready for selling.

The sheep prints (‘Yorkshire Ewe’) are taken from my painting of a gorgeous photograph by Jan Lever with her kind permission.

Here’s a couple of photos showing the prints;  my art unit at Garrion Bridges Garden & Antiques Centre, and how one of them looks in a frame.

We’ll see how this latest venture works out.

Rosie 🤓