Is it really already a month ago?

I have finally got around to photographing some of the sketches I did in Paris - here's the first, a sketch I made at Pere Lachaise cemetery:

It's not the best sketch I have ever produced by any stretch!  It was a very hot day and my paint was dry almost as it hit the paper!  I also ended up having to use several different drawing implements so - the lines are a bit messy - and as for the perspective!!  Still, I really enjoyed painting it, and as with any on-the-spot painting it evokes so many memories, the smell of the trees, the sound of them, the overgrown plants and patches of grass - and of course the heat!

I'm going to class this as EDM # 29 Draw something architectural - I think it fits that category fairly well and it is an EDM I may have otherwise avoided doing. Cheeky I know!

More to follow when I get my act together, hope you are all having a lovely weekend. :o)

You say it's your birthday

I have had such a busy few weeks (months) in my proper job I have hardly found time to produce any artwork.  Which has made me feel very sad.  It was my husband's birthday last weekend and I didn't even manage to get his birthday card finished on time!  I have worked on it all this weekend and when he gets back from walking the dog, I will present it to him!  I hope he likes it....

Each picture basically represents a band he loves - so he has to work out which bands they are!  He will, he's a music anorak, nothing will pass him by!  If he really likes it I'll frame it up for him.  I really enjoyed doing this.  Some of the images were more successful than others I think, but they were all universally fiddly to do as each square is around an inch and a half across.

The lack of recent artwork other than the above has made me have a look through some old images I have on the computer.  As this post is about Paul's birthday I thought I'd post this picture too.  A watercolour I did last summer (in daylight - when can we have proper daylight again???) - part of a series of studies I did trying to master painting snowy mountains.  We had visited Zermatt in Switzerland a couple of years previously and this picture was an effort to portray Paul with a dramatic mountainy backdrop.  Still not sure of the success of this piece, my sky wash is a bit weak, but I am quite fond of it because of the memory it evokes - so, here is Birthday Boy in the Alps!

  

Right, the light is disappearing on another weekend (where do they go?) so I'd better go and do something useful.  I have more time to myself again now, and from next weekend a week off the proper job - yey!!!  So, hopefully I'll find time to have a go at a couple of the EDM challenges I have been wanting to try - my fingers are itching to get cracking.....

Deliver the letter, the sooner the better...

Well, I did it!  I have just posted a painted envelope to the Mail Me Art 2 project and I'm really excited.  I've enjoyed doing this so much, I really needed to set myself a little project and be disciplined about a piece of artwork, and I've done it!  Hurrah!  I don't even mind if I never hear about the envelope again, I even just like the idea of that little bit of art being out there, somewhere, hopefully making someone smile.

I'm a children's librarian, I love children's books and their illustrators, so I decided to come up with idea that reflected that.  I have tried to make my piece look like it could be a page from a children's book - which meant me having to make up a bit of a story.... so, the idea is that the front of my envelope is supposed to be the illustration from a fictional - fiction book (!) you flip it over (turn the page) and on the back is the page that explains the whole piece - hopefully!!!!

So here's how it all came together, a bit at a time (without boring the socks off you).  I had a few ideas for the front first, sketched in my little sketch book...

Idea number 1:

Idea number 2:

So you have basically got a small decorated envelope, on top of the larger envelope.  I wasn't keen on either of my ideas for the 'smaller' envelope, then found this 'scribble' in an old sketch book that I quite liked...

So, that became the basis for the 'smaller' envelope design, which was essentially supposed to look like a piece of post that had been dropped onto the ground on an Autumny, leaf covered path.  The the little envelope itself is slowly being covered in leaves.  Here is the collage as I started to build it up:

As you can see, I painted each bit seperately, including the Autumn leaves, then glued them down, overlapping each other.  The final front of the envelope, after hours of painting, cutting, gluing and sticking looks like this:

You can see some of the flyagaric toadstools have managed to find their way in!  The back of the envelope I hope will help you understand my thinking for the whole piece:

The size of the piece is bigger than A4, I'd say about 13" x 9" ish (in old money!).  I have thoroughly enjoyed doing this.  I'm really fired up to set myself another project now, got to keep going!  If I hear anything - i.e. whether or not the envelope actually gets to it's destination, I'll post something here.  Watch this space! x