One Eye Open

Watercolour and Coloured pencil

You never know what's going to happen, so it's best to keep one eye open at all times!
A little birthday card (ssshhh don't tell).

Slow Motion

Something in Motion was the challenge for Edm 302 and this tiny snail was moving I promise,  but he was a little slow.  I found him in amongst some broccoli I was preparing.  I love the way his shell is the same colour as the broccoli, a really good camouflage?  I left him in with the discarded leaves and forgot he was there until I found him making a dash (?) for freedom across the kitchen floor.

Merry Christmas!

A very Merry Christmas to all my blogging friends around the world, I hope it's a happy one!
Thank you to you all for your company in 2010, it has been much appreciated.

This  'online' Christmas card was inspired by a photograph by my friend Anne on her blog Frayed at the Edge up in cold and snowy Scotland.

Bookmarks

I wanted to make a few little gifts for Christmas so I decided to paint some bookmarks.  The hole at the bottom is where I will thread coloured ribbon through.

I used mainly watercolours then added a few details with coloured pencil.  I really liked the tall thin format, I'd like to try something slightly bigger using the same shape.
My favourite is the tree because of the way the colours flowed into each other, entirely accidental, it's all hit and miss when I use watercolour, but then that's one of watercolour's endearing qualities(?)

Christmas Cards

It's that time of year and  I've been busy making Christmas cards, I'm all behind as usual!  This is my design for this year, although I had to turn it into black and white then colour them slightly by hand as there wasn't time to get coloured prints done.  But I think they turned out ok and certainly a lot nicer and cheaper than bought ones.

Sketchbook Cover (Sketchbook Project)

Here's the final product, complete with cover.  I used an acrylic pen to draw in the shapes then I coloured over that with coloured pencils. 

They look almost like transfers as the faces are shiny compared to the softer feel of the cover material.

In the end it turned out quite thick, I think if I was doing it again,  I might just glue every other page together to get a thicker type of paper and use pen directly on that.

But all in all I'm satisfied with the end results and pleased that I managed to finish this quite big project.
Now it's time to post it off to New York to start it's new life.  Buon Viaggio!

County Clare

Coloured pencil and pen

Lisheenfurror, Co. Clare, Ireland  -  Virtual Paintout December 2010

You have to imagine that I was sitting in the road drawing this old farm...the Virtual Paintout visits a different location every month using Google Street maps and artists from all over the world pick somewhere or something to paint or draw.
County Clare is full of wide open spaces, with big skies and beautiful coastlines, but I chose the farm because it reminds me of what I imagine Ireland used to be like.  A lot of the buildings I saw in this area seemed to be fairly new and many places were advertising holiday homes, the price of 'progress'?
See other virtual sketches and paintings from the Virtual Paintout here