Cider Apple Fairies

I have finished the Cider Apple Fairies with two days to go, in time to get them into the Somerset Arts Weeks brochure. So that’s me signed up for Arts Weeks (17 September to 2 October 2016), and one more Alternative Flower Fairies picture ticked off. And a decision: next year there shall be a Flower Fairies calendar! I now have 10 Alternative Flower Fairies paintings, just two more needed. I shall also be doing another swimming calendar as this year’s was delightfully popular. So, pictures of the Cider Apple Fairies – after a long line of Poison Flower Fairies…

Sketching Cider Apple Fairies

I have been Drawing Cider Apple Fairies! The sketch is now as complete as it’s going to get, next stage is to get it onto watercolour paper and get the paints out. This was done on a tablet – not as nice to draw on as paper but what it loses in tactile pleasure it more than makes up for in the ability to move and alter different elements of the drawing until they work together. You can’t see much of this process here, but there was a lot of faffing at the start once I had a pose for…

Fairy Filth!

This is not a traffic forecast of the M6 on a Friday evening, but a cunning plan 😉 As you may have gathered already I am putting on an exhibition as part of Somerset Arts Weeks and it’s going to be all my swimming drawings… However, I’ve now annexed two rooms of the house to be additional gallery-space for a small selection of fairy pictures. And then I had a cunning idea. One room is now an adults only boudoir of fairy filth! And you are all very welcome to come and see it. If you are a grown-up…. The…

Papaver Somniferum

There are gaping holes in my ‘Poison Flower Fairies‘ painting series. This suspicious selection of characters so far includes some toxic, medicinal and aggressive types of fairies, but I have yet to add two blindingly obvious ones. One of the omissions is Atropa Belladonna, a.k.a Deadly Nightshade, both notorious and medicinal, and this is partly because I don’t know anywhere hereabouts where it grows though it must be somewhere around, and I do like to draw a plant from life even if it’s sometimes hard to track down the fairies. The other one is almost so obvious you wouldn’t believe…

Introducing the Spelling Fairies

There has been quite a bit of spelling lately. Since I started putting them up on Etsy, I have had a few requests for Spelling Animals but here is one I was asked for that was not in my Etsy Shop. It is now, because I was rather pleased with how this came out. It’s sweet and innocent, which you may find disturbing from me, so rest assured that on my To Do list is also to offer ‘your name in naughty naked people’ as a spelling option. Sometime I shall get round to that one, sooner if I actually…

Misbehaving, as clear as Black and White…

I have one more silhouette drawing to show you, which I completed before the Octoparty – I snuck the latter in out of sequence because there really have been a lot of fairies lately, and more to add to the blog. Some years back I did a series of drawings called ‘Fornicating Fairies’… they need no more explanation than that. I then added a drawing to the series where, well, you just couldn’t quite see if…they weren’t… or were they…? You get my drift. I called that one Frolicking Fairies. There was much frolicking. This is along the same lines:…

How to apply gold leaf to paper – part 1

I took some step-by-step photos of this ‘gold fairy’ as I did her. Couldn’t say I’m an expert gilder, but I have had a bit of practice by now and I’ve learnt one or two things, so I thought I’d write a little explanation for anyone interested. Here (below) is the outline drawing. The circle is to be entirely gilded. To gild on paper you need to stick the gold on with something. ‘Gold size’ is what the proper glue is called that the gold leaf is stuck on with, but the actual sort of gold size you use depends…

A sudden swarm of Gold Fairies

Printmaking has ceased until October, and in theory this gives me the summer to concentrate on painting and drawing. Time, however, keeps running away from me! Here are six gold fairies though, which I hope will make enticing little pictures for visitors to Somerset Arts Weeks (or just passing people, in need of a picture!). It’s been some years since I drew the last Gold Fairy, and they have always been popular. I love drawing the human form (even if I have to make it up – I just can’t seem to get the models to hover in mid air…

The final calendar pictures, and about time too!

I do apologize for not getting round to showing you the last of the Glastonbury Tor pictures yet! First, I wanted these with a little colour, and then on a whim I started a new blog, and although it was not meant to be time-consuming, everything consumes time… So, here are the final pictures for the 2015 calendar, ’12 Views of the Tor’: ‘The View’ is mostly etching, and ‘The Decoy’ is mostly drypoint. ‘The View’ is an afternoon-tea sort of print, but an Angel’s eye view… Angels of course sit around on clouds and drink tea all the time,…

The Other Boxing Day Hunt…

More from 12 views of Glastonbury Tor I have been getting along faster with the calendar than I have with this blog: here is the corner of my newly-designed studio/gallery – now equipped with with hanging rails, but as you see still lacking the odd cable clip or two. I am three quarters of the way there with printing the pictures! The print below is number 6 to appear on this blog – if I show you all of them together what will I have to say in the next few days? This is probably my December picture – ‘The…