Zentangled Balls

 Hi all,  
Thanks for all the recent comments, some good advice in there and I have decided to take some of that on board and do something light and playful. Some of you may remember a previous post where I was talking about "playing with wood and paint" and this is something that I have really taken too, however having said that I have not gotten very far with anything in particular as I am still finding out what will work and what wont. In the meantime I thought it would be fun to do something with these wooden spheres that I bought at a jumble sale for 50 pence a bag, a very good investment ! From what I can see these are birch wood balls, and for a while at a loss as what to do with them,paint them,draw on them, no Zentangle them. As most of you will know wood is very porous so needs to be sealed and as this was still very experimental I quickly slapped a coat of acrylic varnish on them and proceeded to Zentangle with Sharpies. I could of gessoed them first and then painted but that did not appeal to me as I still wanted to show the wood. Looking closely at the balls I can see where the pen has bled somewhat in places, where I have not applied the varnish properly, but on the whole I was quite pleased with how this one turned out and I will be doing the rest in similar style methinks. Any advice on sealing the wood first with something else other than varnish please leave a comment as this is a bit of an unknown territory to me.

 

 

Two Week Break ?

Hi all,
     It has been two weeks since my last post and I think without really being aware of it until now I sort of needed to take a break from it for some reason. I have to say that it has been a bit of struggle of making regular posts when I feel that I have nothing to share, especially art wise and that is a problem in itself when I am not creating anything ! Things have been a bit out of sync for a while and I find myself in a difficult place without a whole of lot of enthusiasm for doing pet portraiture or come to think of it any kind of serious art really. I "play" around with pens,paper,ink,paint,stones,etc but nothing comes of it so not sure where that leaves me at the moment, and I will probably have to sit down and give myself a good talking too to get out of this mindset. I think what has not helped is my health has been a bit crappy as well, and finding out that both of my knees are at some point going to need to be replaced. I can live with that though, as there is always someone out there worse of than you, its just that the pain can be so bloody depressing and tiring,arthritis is not a fun thing to have. I am not a quitter though,every day I get up, and get out for my daily walk with Bluebell and albeit a lot slower I enjoy it just as much. I am sure in due course I shall return to normal soon, but until then my posts may be a bit intermittent and just photographs or something along those lines.
           The swan above was taken last year on a trip to Hever Castle, I really like these birds so graceful and beautiful to look at perhaps there is a picture in the making!

Return to the Cairn Terrier.

Hi all,
          I don't know about all of you, but time does seem to fly past so quickly these days, or is it just my age ? 2011 is here and to be honest I am glad about that, as I don't believe in looking back too much, going forward into the unknown can be scary, but so rewarding too, so upwards and onwards with my furore into untested new mediums and styles.
          Up above it the Cairn Terrier that I started last year and never completed for various reasons, but I have come back to it,made some subtle changes to the fur colouring by adding in some lighter beige's and a little bit of brown. This picture was done when he was a young pup of about 6 months and his colouring was quite light and you were able to see all these pale tones in his coat, but now he has grown somewhat as has his coat and he is much darker almost black/grey in some parts. Even so the dark bits tend to be on the tips of his coat and around the face,lift it up and look underneath and you will see the light parts. Got to say drawing scruffy/long haired dogs is never easy, short coats tend to be a lot easier, but once this is finished I will be happy with it. Size of this one is 10 x 8 inches on Stonehenge in CPs.

Blog change.

Hi all,
     Well it seems Blogger is not going to allow me to post any images up today, so I will come back later and try then. As you may of noticed I have changed the look of my blog to something that I feel always looks great, plain white ! I have to be honest and say that this is something I find myself coming back to all the the time as I feel it is a bit like a blank canvas/paper that I can add some colour too when and where I wish. I am not really one for too many "busy things" that can clutter up a blog/website and tend to opt for the more clean and simple style which can be adjusted to suit my tastes when the mood takes me. I have visited many websites/blogs where they look very nice and funky using all sorts of gadgets and lovely bright colours, but I have found that they can be very buggy and take an age to load, and too many colours just me eyes ache. As this is now my main point of origin for all my art stuff, my main objective is to make it user friendly for my readers.
 Let me know your thoughts on how you find it ?

Ps...Just edited this post and managed to get a picture posted up. Sometime ago I bought some mdf aceo sized boards off eBay, and was in a bit of a quandary as to what to with them, so a little bit of experimentation bought me back to more zentangles. I gessoed it first using pen and paint to make the tangle....although I am not sure it is strictly a zentangle as such, but I did enjoy it and will be doing some more.

Happy New Year

Hi all,
       I wish you all a very Happy New Year and hope that your celebrations went with a bang ! I have to admit to trying to keep awake until midnight to see it in, but my eyes had other ideas and I nodded off watching the tv about 11....I sooo need my kip these days and if I don't get it can be a bit of a GOB (grumpy old bag).
      I did plan to post up some art, but am not too happy with what I have done so far, so will save that for another day. Like most people in the world I thought about making a detailed post for my New Years resolutions, and on a personal level there are some things I want to try and stick to, but when it comes to art related stuff, I am going to opt out this year, simply because I do not want to place restrictions on myself. As I find myself in a time of experimentation then that is something I am happy to keep doing,exploring new medias and ideas can be so much fun and rewarding. I will still be doing the pet portraiture but want to break that up with something more simple, fun and lighthearted. So all I can say on that for the moment is to watch this space.