Portrait in pastel

Happy new year! I hope your start to 2015 has been a good one. I've been a bit under the weather, but I've been keeping myself occupied with a pastel portrait of my niece - it's been a long time since I've attempted one of these (and it shows!).

The likeness isn't great to be honest, but it's kept me busy, fiddling here and there. I've decided to call a halt though I can see lots of things I could fiddle away with!

A4, pastel pencils and pastels on Strathmore 500 Series Charcoal Velvet Grey (which is actually a warm browny grey).

A very penguin Christmas...

I hope you've all had a very merry Christmas! Here's the card I did for my other half - it's a little painting of the small collection of penguins that we've somehow accumulated :-) (they live in an alcove in the chimney breast, of course...). Wishing everyone a very happy 2015!

Feed the birds

Here's a small ink and watercolour I did for a Christmas card exchange on the Painting Friends forum. This is a Great Tit, a small bird fairly common here in the UK. They seem to have had a really good breeding year - there are lots on our feeders (and I had one on the windowsill the other day, tapping at the window!). I'm also doing a linocut based on this image, so watch this space!

Yorkshire dales collagraph prints

A couple of months back I did a printmaking workshop with Sherry Rea, and following on from that she very generously offered the workshop group a day of open access in her studio. So we reconvened a few weeks later and got printmaking again!

I decided to try another collagraph, this time a landscape inspired by my wonderful week in the Yorkshire Dales earlier in the year. I pulled several prints from the same plate, trying out different colours, different amounts of wiping/leaving ink on the plate, etc. I was really please with the results - my landscape efforts thus far in other media have been somewhat disappointing!

So, here they are...

 I need to pick a favourite to get framed, but I don't know which one I like best!

And here's the collagraph plate...

Drypoint cat

Here's a little drypoint of the cat, completed a few weeks back... I printed some like this, with two ink colours, and some in just black. I also printed some in black then added some watercolour. Had fun playing around!

Linocut lizards...

I enjoyed a fab lino printing workshop a couple of weeks ago with local printmaker Nina Sage (http://www.ninasage.co.uk/workshops - you can see me lurking in some of the photos!) Here's what I did and have been working on since...

 

This first one is the 'key' block - the image printed in black. It's based on a pic I took in France.

 Next is the image printed onto a monoprinted background. Back home I carved a second block so I could add some body colour,  and printed onto more monoprint backgrounds. I can see I am going to have fun with the colours here!

Conkers!

At last, a new drawing in my somewhat neglected natural world journal...

These are conkers - the fruits of the horse chestnut tree. A sure sign that autumn is here! The top drawing was done with coloured pencils, and the bottom group is in watercolour. Nice to explore the different qualities of these media!