Lovely people, I have a new website and will no longer be updating this blog. It can be found here. If I have any readers who are not on Facebook and would like to help me with some testing I would be very grateful if you would make yourself known to me via the contact section on the new site. I would really appreciate it!
Hope to see you there! And please do let me know your thoughts on my new home.
Collage and watercolour on paper.
I moved to the coast, I may have mentioned that. As if I didn’t already love drawing pebbles, now I get to see them every day. And I was expecting my work to take a seaside turn as soon as I got here, that’s a given. But I wasn’t expecting to find sea lamps.
I imagine that the things protruding from the sea, looking like 1950s standard lamps, have a real life water safety purpose. They probably have a practical name that has nothing to do with interior ambience. But, to me, they are sea lamps. They are there to provide a nice warm glow to the daily goings on of aquatic life. Somewhere, deep down, a cod family are lighting a fire and watching – oh no she didn’t – Codonation Street while basking in the cosy glow of the sea lamps.
I do not wish to know the real reason they are there. I like my version.
Disclaimer: The real sea lamps do not have brocade shades and fringing. That’s that there artistic license for you.
Natalie commissioned this picture of a very carefree Wendy, to celebrate her new life by the sea.
I was commissioned by photographer Samantha Ward to create an image that she could use alongside her branding for her new family photography venture.
Samantha wanted an image of a little girl (Scout) and her pet Wolf…and here they are! You can see Scout and Wolf at home on Samatha’s website http://www.scoutandwolf.com.
I was commissioned by Marie to create this image as a wedding gift for her brother, who recently married his partner Paul at Tower Bridge. Must have been amazing, imagine the views! Congratulations!
After tea I went to Sonia’s and Victoria was there. We played on our bikes but Sonia hasn’t got a bike so she just ran. (2016 note: Seems a bit mean! Surely someone could have given Sonia a pag*?)
*Pag, backie…let me know if you called it something else!
The theme of the latest art challenge was ‘Into the woods’. Given that most of my family portraits are set surrounded by trees, this theme is well within my comfort zone, so I really wanted to try something new. I did consider using a completely different medium, but spent so long umming and ahhing and changing my mind that suddenly the deadline arrived and I had done precisely nothing. So, instead, as used it as an exercise in loosening up, and it was well overdue.
When you spend all day trying to capture likenesses without adding detail, there’s not much room for spontaneity, and it can take hours to get it right. With this drawing I made the decision to complete the whole thing within 10 minutes. If I didn’t like something, I stuck a bit of cardboard over the top and started again. It is a mess. There’s no getting away from that. But it’s quite a nice mess – I am a fan of the cardboard. And I do feel like I’ve had a bit of a creative workout.
Last year I drew Iain, Romy and their children for Iain’s 40th birthday gift. Recently, Iain got in touch again under sad circumstances. Unfortunately, their horse, Tiggy, had passed away and I was asked to draw him with their youngest “horse mad” daughter Eloise.
My pictures often contain pets but it’s rare for the animal to be the main focus of the picture so this was something quite different for me. After the standard 5 minutes of eeeek, I got on with the challenge and was quite pleased with the way it turned out. Hopefully it’s a fitting tribute to what was clearly a dearly loved member of the family.
Hayley Restall 