Bills Christmas Cakes

Its that time of year again--Bills Christmas cake time!

As you can see from the bottom pic, Bill has already made 2 cakes yesterday- they are all wrapped up in greaseproof paper, ready for the first feeding of brandy in a couple of weeks time!The smell of brandy soaked fruit fills the house, and the clock is being watched very carefully while the latest cakes are baked very slowly in the oven! The latest will be cooked at 11.30 pm tonight, so hope we stay awake til then!

Sparky AGAIN!!!

I swear this cat knows when I sell a painting-without fail he goes out and comes back injured in some way! we should have our own personal parking space at the vets!
The day before yesterday he came in with 2 mice , within an hour of each other,and let them go so Bill could have go a catching them--Sparky thinks that Bill enjoys mousing as much as he does!! Then he walks in around the living room door holding up one leg.Couldnt find any obvious injury on him, no cuts, or swellings, so kept him in and took him to vets yesterday. Another jab for him, keep him quiet(easier said than done) and fingers crossed he will be ok!
He looks so sweet in this pic-you would never belive what a monster he is sometimes!

Good Idea Bill !!!

I always clean the brushes out in the garage sink after a class/one 2 one etc.

It has been getting a little cluttered up out there lately cos Im not the most tidiest of people, and the brushes have been hanging around on the draining board til they have dryed out completely.

Bill has said for a while that we need something to put the brushes into straight away after they have been cleaned, then they can dry out thougherly, then they are ready to put into the individual boxes for the classes.

Simple but effective, he knocked up this storage unit for the brushes this afternoon while I was doing the one 2 one with Penny!

I can put the brushes straight into there as soon as they have been cleaned in the odourless turps and cleaned in the brush cleaning soap and dryed , and they are ready to put into the boxes for the classes. So much easier -thanks Bill xxx

I have just replaced all the scriptliner brushes that we use in the classes with new ones and the old ones I will keep for when we do acrylic classes. The new brushes are also available for sale for just £3.50p including P+P

I also have a new stock of painting knives that will be on sale for just £4.50p including P+P-they sell out as fast as I get them in-once people see just what can be done with them , they all want one!!!

BIG HUGS FOR SHARLEEN AND CO !!!!!!

Loads and loads of great big hugs for Sharleen -one of my students, who has designed and printed the invites for the private viewing and the posters for the ''From Small Acorns'' exhibition.

Me and Bill would have been days sorting that out! We still are not the most computer literate of folk, the computer is a necersary evil as far as Im concerned!

Sharleen has made a fantastic job of doing the invites and posters and we are chuffed to bits with the result!

YOU ARE A STAR!!!!!!!

Also a great big thanks to Penny who is going to supply some of the cheese for the ''private viewing'' She is so enthusiastic about the whole thing--she cant wait to get her paintings on display to the general public!!!

Its great when all the ideas come together, it literaly started out as a small acorns sort of thing and has grown and grown to be this great big oak tree!!!

Kenchester Tea rooms

We had a busy day yesterday, first we went over the Hereford to hang the paintings at Kenchester Water Gardens Tea Rooms. They certainly brightened the place up.! We just had to sample some of the beautiful home made cakes that were on the counter along with a cup of coffee!

Karen who runs the tea rooms has started doing a carvery on a Sunday with a choice of meats and 7 veg's.

Im sure we will be popping by shortly to try it out!

After we had finished there we went to the other side of Hereford to The Wyvale Garden Centre where we will doing demonstrations and craft fairs in the near future.

Its a massive place and they were in the process of putting out the christmas decorations. It promises to be a great venue to be at.

Some of the Beautiful Scenery At Kenchester

Here is some of the beautiful scenery surrounding the KenchesterTea Rooms, Hereford where I have some of my work hanging. Some of the fish in the pond are over 2 ft long!

Try This Out!!!

I have tryed this out and called Bill to try it out too--It is most weird try it yourself and see!!!!
www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,22535838-5012895,00.html

Another Good Day!

We had a trip to Hereford today to stock up with some big canvas, as usual on the way home we stopped for a coffee at Kenchester Water Gardens.

We usualy end up buying a new fish or two for the aquarium, so after having a browse and ending up with 10 neon tetra,2 femail fighting fish,1 male guppy, 1 male swordtail and 5 rosy barbs--well we have got a very big 4ft tank that was starting to look a bit bare, we went into the tea rooms for a drink.

It has recently changed hands, so we were chatting with the staff and as usual I asked if I could leave some of my flyers with the other bits and pieces they have on their windowsill. They said yes and then asked if I had any paintings they could hang in the cafe!!

The walls were rather bare so we quickly worked out how many we could put up and we are going back tomorrow to hang them. I will take along my camera and take some photos of how it looks before and after! Got to get cracking and print some labels for them now.

Great Start

I have had a great start to the week. A new gallery opening on the south coast has asked if they can have some of my work for their gallery. Fire In The Sky will be hanging alongside some very prestigeous artists work--

Henderson Cisz, Jean Picton and Duncan Macgregor will all have work hanging there, so Im with very good company!!!

.

Chris the owner of the gallery, has also bought the 2 paintings that I painted to raise money for The British Heart Foundation. He is hoping to raise even more money for the charity by selling them in the gallery.

A Very Surprised Hen!!

Emma hadn't a clue what was going to happen on her 'hen day' I met her and her friends in the room today and informed her that she was going to spend the afternoon ironing and polishing!!!!

When she realised that I meant doing the encaustic art-ironing on the wax and polishing it after she breathed a sigh of relief! She thought she was going to do a housekeeping course!!!

I had another surprise up my sleeve for her though! She was going to paint a 5 minute oil painting too!!!! ''Have you got a photo copier'' she asked when I showed her the picture like the one she would produce in that time!!!

Nobody belived it was possible to do.

I set up my canvas next to hers on the easel and we went though it step by step and she produced a painting in around 5 mins! She was chuffed to bits with it !!

Hen Party Fun!

Here are some of the results of todays hen party ! We had some really beautiful results,Emma' the hen 'soon got the hang of the special tool and produced the lovely flowers picture.

We had all sorts of weird and wonderful things appear in the wax!

It was hard to get everyone away from the table to have some of the nibbles I had supplied!!! They were really engrossed in doing the encaustic art!

Hen Party

We had such a laugh today at the hen party, you wouldnt belive some of the conversations we had aroung the table! Make your hair curl!

As with the best hen parties we had to have a real giggle and this took the form of a wax willie painting competition!!!!

I showed the girls the best 'tool' to do this and there was no stopping them! We had willies coming in all shapes , colours and sizes!

We decided to let Bill judge the contest when he re-appeared to help clear up after all the fun!

Hen Party Competition Results

As you can see Bill had a very difficult choice to make to decide the winner of the competition, in the end he chose Tina! I think the fact that she made a comic face out of it swung it for her!

Sparky

Just look at this cool cat!!!!

Brushes and Palette Knives

I have managed to source some very good script liner brushes to sell at the classes, they are quite difficult to get hold of in this area.I am going to replace the ones that I use in the classes too. The old ones are still in quite good nick but I will keep them for the acrylic classes.The new ones will retail for just £3-50 which is a real bargain. I have also had to replenish my stock of palette knives--they sell out as fast as I get them in -they will still retail for £4-50
I hope the postal strikes wont hold up their delivery too much!

Some great links

My mate Sharleen has sent me some great links for some arty things http://fcmx.net/vec/get.swf?i=03702
and also http://members.fortunecity.com/camarila/jimwarren/04.html
take a look! Jim Warren is a fantastic artist-checvk him out on google for some more images

More Boot Sale Bargains

The stick insects have a lovely new home in this tank which cost just £2 at the boot sale on sunday. The biggest bargain though was all these paint and draw books-8 full volumes for just £2 and I had the other 2 oil painting books for £1. I love reading through art books, you can learn so much from them,its interesting to hear how other people do things.

I dont know just when I will have time to read them, they will join the ever growing pile of books in the spare room for now!

CONGRATULATIONS CAT GIBSON!!!!!!

A big big congratulations to my dear friend Cat who has become the first certified Alexander Art Tutor in the country!
You can check out her website http://www.gibson-art.co.uk/

Cat and her husband John started painting not that long ago and progressed very quickly---now they teach a wet on wet method similar to the one that I teach.

I was more than happy to help Cat in every way to start her own website, after she found my site and we started chatting.
Cat has turned out to be a genuine friend, and I am not worried about competition from her and her husband---there is room for everybody in this game, so I wish them all the luck in the world!!!!

Jeannie Zelos

I want to tell everyone about a great forum that I am a member of http://forum.jeanniezelos.com/


is a great site with like minded members on board. Lots of hints and tips as well as being able to make small talk with other artists.
Its amazing what you can learn from forums such as these.Drop in and say hello to me and all the other artists on there!!!

Laughing in Class!!!

We had such a laugh today in the class, if it wasnt about being scared to put paint on the canvas it was about how many times there was a request to renew the red paint on the palettes!

We soon realised just why Evonne needed so much red paint--she had more on her hands than her painting almost!

It really is immpossible to do this oil painting game without getting covered in paint-although it is usualy me who gets covered in it!

Chip

We had a lovely addition to the class today in the form of Sharleens beautiful chocolate poodle 'Chip'. He was very well behaved and really enjoyed the biscuits that were sneaked him by Bill!!

We learned lots from Sharleen who trained dogs for over 20 years.

The main one for people who have smelly dogs(as in dogs that fart a lot!!!) is to give them wet food(tinned dog meat ) in the morning and dry dog food at night.

We will be testing that out on my sons dogs Max and Sarah, I will let Sharleen know if it works or not!!

Todays Class

You can see the results from todays ''Poppy Field'' class.

It was the first time that I had tryed out this painting in a full class and I was very surprised at how different they turned out.

Even from the very start when we put the blue sky in , they were all very individual,and by the time we came to do the poppies everyones personality was starting to show through!

It was Jacks very first time painting and he was very surprised at how easy it was, he said afterwards that he really felt that he had achieved something--which he had.He is coming to the next class so he must be happy!

He was a very easy student to teach, he seemed to take in everything I said at each stage and produced a lovely painting.

We varied the paintings a little and added some cornflowers to some of them just to make a little change.

Evonne was quick to add some little flicked out bits to the cornflowers to ,make them look more realistic.Once she added some smaller poppies to the right hand side of her painting to balance it, it was just beautiful.

Jan was very bold with her poppies which turned out beautiful---I think she was a little dubious about them when she first started,but everyone loved them--very impressionistic!

Ive told her to have a look at Google images--poppy paintings.

Sharleen was very keen to learn how not to be not so heavy handed! She has painted at home and thought that the results were ''too heavy handed''. Today she produced the most beautiful subtle poppy painting.The background was blended until very quiet and muted and then she painted the most lovely stylized poppies, a beautiful finished result!

Carol is the flower arranger and she always paints the flowers soooo easily.It comes natural to her-she always knows where to put them without being told!! Because she does flower arranging as a hobby she's one step ahead of the rest of us!

Hayley is Carol's daughter and she was a little more scared of putting the poppies onto the canvas--the first one is always the worst, after putting on the beautiful background it can be hard to put that first blob of red paint and start the poppies!

However the painting turned out lovely--very subtle as are most of Hayleys paintings!

Affordable British Art

I am so chuffed, I am ''artist of the week'' on
http://www.affordablebritishart.co.uk

Its a brilliant site,very easy to navigate and use even if you are not computer literate like me!!
I have lots of my paintings for sale on there and Ros who runs the site is introducing more and more great things to the site all the time.
I have also had one of my paintings used on the artists web newsletter-chosen out of 23,000 other paintings.
I have lots of my work on this site also.
www.dianetheartist.com

Cat

I mentioned here while we were away on the painting holiday that I had bought a limited edition crazy cat from the boot sale at Blue Anchor, I just had to share this with you!

You can see who it reminded me of!!

I knew Sparky was model material!!

Ledbury Art Society

We went to Ledbury today to do a demo for the local art society. There was a good turn out and it was a very interesting morning for everyone concerned!

There were lots of questions from the very interested audience-who had never seen the like before!

Everyone was amazed to see the speed at which the paintings developed, paintng on a black canvas proved to be new to everyone there, most of the people there were watercolourists and the technique I used with the oil paints was quite a novelty to them!

I painted Winter Wonderland and Summer Day for them, and Lesley won the Summer Day painting and Jill won the winter Wonderland one.

Both said they had never won anything before in their lives so they were chuffed to bits with their prizes!

Hen Party

I will be having a group of girls at our usual venue on the 13th Oct to do an ''encaustic'' hen party.
The 'hen' is a Ludlow girl, and Paula the organiser of the hen party was looking for something different for them to do in the afternoon.

We ruled out the oil painting because with the drink that will flowing it might get a little messy!
Also with the encaustic, their paintings will be dry for them to drop off at home before they go back out in the evening!
I am sure the day will be great fun for everyone concerned!!!
It will make a change to have something other than tea or coffee while doing a class!

Beautiful Night

we were very lucky again with the weather while away,we only had one day of wet weather and that was just for a few hours. we were rewarded that night by this beautiful sky.

I have so much inspiration from this beautiful place, I shall never run out of painting material!!

Lilian---star pupil!

This is lilian painting her waterfall painting.

She wont mind me telling you that she is 83 years old.

We met lilian last year when we at St Audries.She said then''I feel like Ive known you for years,'' ----the feeling was very mutual!!!

Lilian painted her first painting last year and she painted 2 more this year.

The waterfall painting was much admired by everyone who viewed them--- all the paintings were put on display next to the dining room, and she actualy had someone want to buy her painting, but she didnt want to sell it!!!

Her grandaughter claimed her black and white birch tree painting last year, saying it was beautiful. Lilians son Graham who is the bar manager at St Audries wanted her to paint the poppy field painting which she promptly did and gave to him!

When she returned to Neath her grandaugher said to her that she had found her vocation in life, must say I agree.Lilian is a natural and although I said she was quite capable of painting at home she said she would wait til next year cos she enjoyed the classes so much!

I have a feeling that we will be seeing more of Lilian well before next year!!!

Her son Graham is the bar manager at SA and he had requested that she paint the poppy field painting. She did so and no one could tell hers from mine

Terry and Anne

Here are Anne and Terry with their Summer Day paintings they did at St Audries.

Anne thought she would have to attend every day in order to produce ONE painting.

When I explained to her that she could do one in less than 4 hours she didnt belive me.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating they say--Anne is coming to me at Ludlow in the near future as she lives not to far away in Brum! She was gobsmacked by the result and her husband couldnt belive his eyes when he came to collect her.

She admitted after the class that she hadnt slept all night worrying that she wouldnt be able to do it------she was very pleasantly surprised!!

Terry returned a week later and painted another beautiful picture.

Another Sunset

Another of the beautiful sunsets--I never tire of seeing them!

a Beautiful Sunset

I have so many photos of the sunsets taken while away.

I have this one as my screen saver,its so peaceful to look at and reminds me of the great times we had there!