Can he swing from a web? No he can't, he's a pig

The Simpsons kind of ruined the Spiderman theme tune for me, I can only ever hear the Spiderpig version in my head now :)

But anyway, the reason the tune is in my head at all is that I have spent the afternoon racing to finish this:

which is my submission for Summer of Colo(u)r Week 5

As soon as I saw the colours for this week - red, royal blue and a splash of light blue - I had Spidey stuck in my head, and I couldn't dislodge him

So here he is on an 8"x8" canvas, the background is collaged with black and white comic book pages, knocked back a bit with a messy swipe of gesso.  Spidey himself is painted in acrylics with all the black details done with an extra fine Pitt pen

I'll be sending him over to Gloucester in the next couple of weeks for their big free art event at the beginning of August

And in other news, the BeStitched fabric circle journal that I have been a part of for the last 7 months or so, is now sadly drawing to a close.

The last theme that I had to work on was "rainbow".  The CJ owner wanted us all to make an 8" square mini quilt that would be soft enough for children to handle....so as this one is aimed at kiddiwinks I didn't do anything too arty farty - instead I had fun bringing a cheeky little leprechaun to life, revelling in his end-of-the-rainbow pot of gold:

The background is hand quilted in the ditch, made up from strips of fabric I already had in my stash, I was pleased I managed the whole rainbow.  

The leprechaun, based on some ancient clip art I had on my computer, is painted with acrylics onto heavy muslin and outlined with a sepia extra fine Pitt pen

I'll be sad to see the back of this CJ, I've really enjoyed it.....but I'm looking forward to receiving my own one back!

Racing to catch the deadline for Summer of Colour week 4

Phew!  This has been the busiest week I can remember in a long time.  I really didn't think I would be able to fit in an entry for Summer of Colo(u)r this week, but managed to grab a couple of hours just now to have a little scribble....

<==== This week's colours are Apple Green & Pink with a splash of Dark Green

My mind went a complete blank on this combo .... all I knew was I wanted to use the funky little green fridge magnet frame that I had in my pile of "interesting frames to put something in"

So I sat down with some Posca pens in the right colours and quickly drew the first thing that came to mind:

I'm not sure what that says about me .....maybe just that I have been watching too much Hannibal!

I did cheat a teeny bit and use two different shades of the lighter green, just so that I could differentiate her face from her antler cowl - and I used my 'splash of dark green' to add shading

This little madam will be joining some other bits and bobs and going over to Gloucester soon for the big free art drop they have planned to coincide with the upcoming Paint Jam Festival

Summer of Colour week 3 and the Free Art Friday machine rolls on.....

So our colourful summer continues :)  This week's :palette in the Summer of Colo(u)r is Lavender & Grey, with a Smudge, Splash or Pop of Plum:

It's a lovely colour scheme but a bit out of my comfort zone, that's always a good thing though.

Jay had a really good idea for this one, to do a boxer's face in greyscale, and use the purples for bruising and a big black eye, but I couldn't find a reference photo that I thought I could do justice to, so I reverted to the relative safety of "pretty girl"

So here's what I ended up doing:

(the colour-perfect frame was a Poundland find!)

She is based upon this gorgeous photo reference from Paint My Photo, photographer is Alex Lee Johnson :

I love that swipe of blue paint in the original photo but I'm not sure if I prefer my painting with or without it (here's without):

But it's too late now anyway, she's been swiped :D

I'll be donating the finished, framed piece to Free Art Friday Swindon   (if you have time, please click through and check out our photo album 'Art for the big launch drop' - around 150 arty items have already been submitted, it's an amazing selection, I've been overwhelmed with everyone's generosity!!)

Also in the Free Art Friday pot are a few more of my little Day of the Dead canvasses - since last weekend I've tried out a couple more designs of those:

That's me done for this week - see you back here for week 4 of Summer of Colour!

Summer of Colour week 2 and some more Free Art Friday goodies....

So it is week two for the Summer of Colo(u)r - and the colour scheme we've been given to work with this time is dark teal and coral with a pop of white...

I thought this would be a good excuse to practice my portraits, and went hunting for a reference photo on the excellent site Paint My Photo that would work well with the colour scheme (thanks to Carmen for tipping me off about this site!)

I found this piccie that looked perfect .... the photographer is Alex Lee Johnson

And I did my best to bring her to life, mixed media stylee (acrylics and oil pastels on a collaged base)

I am donating the finished painting to the Free Art Friday Swindon cause, I hope whoever finds her, likes her!



And talking of Free Art Friday, I was playing around the other day and made a little sugar skull canvas on a matching spray painted easel - it's tiny, the canvas is only 2" square:

I wasn't sure if it would work for Free Art Friday or if it was too small, but I asked my peeps on Facebook and they reckoned these would go down well (even if the finders will need to be extra eagle eyed!) - so I made a couple more :)

That's all for now, see you next week for week 3 of SoC!

a Circle Journal catch up - Free Art Friday - and more Lost Dogs

Phew - I've been busy recently, here's a little round up

First of all, two entries in the fabric circle journal I'm taking part in over at UKScrappers - there's only one more after this month, pity, I've really enjoyed it:

This one's theme was vintage fashion.  Not my usual kind of thing, but that's what I enjoy about circle journals, they sometimes push me kicking and screaming out of my comfort zone!

I was originally going to use an image transfer technique for the focal image, but, well, this is how it turned out!  Oops!

So I painted her instead, and she turned out pretty cute.  In fact I think I would have left the piece like this if I was keeping it for myself....

...with no further embellishment than the frayed edges on the fabric.  But it wouldn't have been enough for the circle journal requirements, there needed to be at least a little bit of needlework in there, so I added some lace and ribbon and other frou frou in line with the theme :)

Next up, this month's theme was Wings, and I was torn between an angel, a death's head moth, or Icarus.  As you can see, Icky won out in the end:

Again a combination of a painting (acrylics) and embroidery on fabric, which I've done a few of now and I'm enjoying the combo.

This is also my entry for Summer of Color 2014, week one.  The colour palette we were given this week was aqua blue, and yellow, with a pop of hot pink.

Not sure if you can spot the hot pink, so here's a close up - it's the thread around the wings:

Now moving on to another circle journal - the Stay-At-Home CJ over at Collabor-ART ended this month - and sadly so did the site itself, I've decided to wind it down as it has gone deathly quiet there over the last year as we've all moved onto other creative endeavours.

I'll be sorry to see it go, but at least it bowed out with a really great project - the S@H CJ has really been a lot of fun!

Here's my final entry - the theme was cogs, wheels and rust:

It's a bit busy!  It looks better in real life really due to the metallic embossing powder behind the heart and the patina in it....  you'll just have to take my word for that :)

And here are all my pages together for the full 9 months of the project....

....no idea what I'm going to do with them now .... maybe I will donate some to....

Free Art Friday

how's that for a seamless link?

Because I have somehow found myself "volunteered" to organise Swindon's very own chapter of Free Art Friday ..... how did that happen???

All the details about our launch event and how things will shake out in the long term, are on the Facebook page : http://www.facebook.com/FreeArtFridaySwindon - please do check it out, I'm currently in crazy recruitment mode trying to persuade all my creative friends to join in :)

I've also been making lots of work myself to contribute to the big launch event - including 6 more "Lost Dogs":

And, for the kiddies to find, some stencilled My Little Ponies:

There's a ton more in the pipeline too, I'm hoping to contribute 20 or 30 more items to the cause - either for the Swindon drop itself or to swap with other artists and Free Art Friday chapters....so I'll continue to be busy busy busy!!!

Wouldn't have it any other way, though :)

Time for a bloggy catch up

I've neglected this poor old blog recently, haven't I....... no "Rocking Your World" or "A Year of Firsts" posts since March, and half the stuff I make doesn't get onto the blog any more either.

Sorry peeps, it's all down to wok craziness, it's been such a busy year and I've been working silly hours, so a lot of my free time activities, including keeping my blog up to date, have had to give

But anyway, enough excuses, here are a few things I've made recently that I haven't put on here yet:

First up, I've been taking part in the Summer of Color challenge this year - and a few of the bits you'll have seen already, but here are two you haven't:

Week one - colour combo Citron Green & Turquoise - I made a batch of gelli prints and then used one of them to make my dad's Fathers' Day card:

Week two - Hot Pink & Orange - I used on a CJ entry already blogged here

Week three - Lime Green & Purple - well purple always makes me think of chocolate thanks to Cadbury :)  so I used this combo for my Hollow Chocolate Bunnies book review artwork, already blogged here

Week four - Charcoal Grey & Pale Pink - I can't share that one yet as it's on the artwork for my next ARC book review, but watch this space!

Week five - Candy Apple Red & Yellow - I made something for myself to keep for a change.  I bought this wooden plaque a while ago in the Works for £1.99, and used it to make a bit of tribute fan art to the wondrous webcomic Romantically Apocalyptic

Any of you who haven't checked out RA yet - do it now!!!  Head for the archives and read it from the beginning or it won't make sense.  Well, it doesn't make much sense anyway :) But it is so funny and beautiful and just brilliant.  What are you waiting for?  go!   (but do come back here afterwards and finish reading this blog post :) )

The week six combo is looking likely to be Sage & Sepia, not sure yet what I'll do for that one....

What else haven't I blogged?  This ICAD portrait of my cat:

And this CJ entry:

(I cut that 4 layer stencil of the Krays by hand, it gave me a knife finger blister! more details over here)

I think there are probably other things I've forgotten to blog, but that's a reasonable attempt to catch up.....