Experimenting with metal leaf & acrylic glazes on veneer, I made these 3 paintings. Thought they needed serious gold frames to add to the atmosphere.
Flowers For Me
Almost Home
Cherry Time
I love the richness of the colours with the glazes on top of the veneer which is a red mahogany or cedar type of wood, not sure what it is but it is very beautiful. I like the wat the metal leaf shines through the glazes too.
The effect, added to with the deep frames, is quiet and intimate, rich and sumptuous. Must do more!
I have been experimenting with collograph & drypoint. Using old bits of embossed wall papers, fabrics, fruit & veg netting and other stuff to give a background pattern and adding a drypoint image on top.
Sometimes the background is still wet and leaves a bit of itself on the drypoint plate so I use this to make a ghost image.
Other times I ink up the drypoint plate then use a roller over it to add a film of colour. our rollers are not perfect and I get a broken roll of colour.
Another thing I’ve been doing is hitting the plate with the roller to get lines of colour, which can look like grasses or reeds.
I’ve been using both sides of the drypoint plate to create 2 versions of the same image. Some are drawn just using fine sandpaper.I like inking them up at the same time & sanwiching the plate between 2 pieces of paper to make the prints.
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Sat 6th - Sat 13th Aug 2011, I’m running a Painting Holiday in lovely Scilly Isles.
Details here http://www.paintingholidayheaven.com/page27.html
Can’t wait to go!
In bed with sciatica, finally worked out what was stopping my updated website pages to upload - tiny bit of code in slightly wrong place & whole thing ground to a halt! But I found the needle in the haystack & my painting holiday & teaching website is now updated. http://www.paintingholidayheaven.com/
I teach 2 regular classes in Painting during term times. Suitable for all levels, very enjoyable, concessions are available.
Painting For Pleasure, Tuesday mornings 10.15 - 12.15
A general painting course in watercolour or acrylics.
Rumney Adult Education Centre
Llanstephen Road
Cardiff
Cardiff
CF3 3JA
TEL: Sue Paton 07961 358393
Watercolour,Tuesday evenings 7 - 9 pm.
A course covering all aspects of watercolour painting.
Contact Cowbridge Community College, Old Hall, High Street, Cowbridge, South Glamorgan CF71 7AH
TEL : 01446 773 831
As part of Womens’ Arts Association 2011 celebration of International Womens’ Day, I am helping fellow artist Julie Shackson to organise a Book Arts Exhibition at Cardiff Central Library which will be on public view throughout March 2011.
Female artists only, hand made, one-off books only. Books will be displayed throughout the library in the display cases on the book shelves. Julie and I are exhibiting our work along with many other female book artists.
There will be a Book Arts Day open to all on Saturday 12th March. Many book artists will be demonstrating and talking about their methods of working and there will be opportunity for people attending to take part in book making workshops on the day.
I’ve been busy making books for the exhibition. 
The work exhibited will be very varied.
Here’s a link to Julie’s books http://www.julieshackson.com/books.html
This project is self directed, the main idea being to develop one’s studio practice in producing, documenting and presenting a body of work based on the theme of The Absent Figure.
For the project, I’ve decided to produce toy boxes with no toys inside. At first the empty boxes seem flippant, shallow, spoofy and frankly, rather sick, cruel jokes. Upon closer examination we see that they are dealing with very sad, poignant real life situations.
Ideas for toys in the collection are
NOFU-NATALL TOYS present ……
Missing In Action Man
box with retro style graphics of war, explosions, wooton bassett, empty hearse
Snatched Baby Doll
torn open box, one bootee & half drunk babies bottle inside. nice baby boy blue box depicts maternity ward, empty bassinet, horrified mother, midwives doing crosswords. Who took baby - family member, barren wombed psycho-woman, paedophile, social services ….?
Missing Child
box comes with milk carton ready to paste photo of missing child on
box shows distraught parents from behind talking to media press, clutching a teddy
Runaway 13 Year Old Daughter Barbie
empty box, graphics show police in teen bedroom & lap top screen with social networking site, screen shows arrangements to meet unknown creepy male, silhouette of distraught parents
Alzheimer Grandad
grandad’s in the box physically, but he is not “there” in any other way. comes with disturbing brain scan images and feeding tubes
Lost Cat
contains pre-printed missing posters & crayon for your child to draw the missing cat, string for tying to lamp posts
Extinct Zoo
see empty box where the tiger, panda, blue whale & polar bear etc used to be. graphics of empty compounds, painted with murals of how the animals became extinct - harpooning, melting icecaps, chinese medicine, deforestation etc.
I intend to make the packaging as convincingly like real toy packs, without infringing on copyright of any real toy manufactures of course!
One artist I am in awe of at the moment is Randy Regier whose spoof toys and packaging are so convincing.
Here’s a link to my teaching website. I use it to advertise my painting holidays, courses and classes. There’s an online gallery of students’ work plus some of my work too.
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