The Octoparty

This is my latest drawing, another silhouette. I drew a couple of silhouette-type compositions a couple of years back for my ’72 Fairies’ calendar, and found them a bit difficult to get started with, but an interesting idea that I always meant to get back to (and it did help that out of that collection of drawings and paintings those ones were the ones that sold first). So, here I am having another go. I still find this an interesting compositional challenge that in some ways is actually trickier, and just as time-consuming, as working out a composition for an…

Demon Baubles! (a brief christmas message…)

Predictably, it is the afternoon of Christmas Eve and we are still cleaning the house, and I still have some baubles to hang, and we have about 40 people arriving in about 3 hours for mulled wine… But I have actually wrapped up all my Christmas presents, which counts as seriously efficient for me… So, just time to wish you all a Very Merry: Christmas/ Atheist Piss-Up/ Late Winter Solstice/ Other Religious Festival of your Choice/ Hedonistic Party/ Bar Humbug… (please select as appropriate) Nancy xxx

The Naked Masquerade: part 4 (finished!)

The Naked Masquerade is finished. Apologies for making you wait! I have been on holiday, and then I had some catching up to do… Here – finally – are a heap of photos. Usually a scan shows off my paintings better, but the scanner, while it’s great for showing detail in the painting, flattens out the gold leaf and does not do it justice. So, I apologise for the lack of sharpness in the details, I shall get this on the scanner and then on my website, one day… in the mean time, isn’t the gold shiny? 🙂 Painting in…

The Naked Masquerade: part 3

Work continues… all in Prussian Blue. There is not much more to say at this point, but I thought you might like to see a couple of photos:

The Naked Masquerade: part 2

Gilding and some extreme stopping out…. I have begun The Naked Masquerade (which may not be its final title) in earnest. I recall saying last time when I showed you the sketch that I had not quite decided how I was going to approach it – whether as a painting or an etching. Well the next day common sense sunk in and the bit of my brain that is in charge of delivering the message ‘You Have Got To Be Joking!’ as regards particularly stupid ideas, pointed out the sheer horror of undertaking All Of That as an etching. It…

The Naked Masquerade

On the internet, everyone can see your bits! This blog has lately been so much about a certain Ms Wendy Marani (plagiarist extraordinaire), that, showing you any new artwork, I feel like saying: and  now for something completely different! Except there is a tie-in: on the internet everyone can see your bits! Of course the ‘bits’ in question may not be what I know you are now thinking about: you can’t see those in this sketch either. But it is worth remembering that, whatever you display, people are going to see it if you put it out there! And so,…

Medusa comes out of the shadows!

I was quite pleased with my first experiment in drypoint… If you haven’t seen the previous post, I had an etching plate that just wasn’t… exciting, but in which I was trying to retain a large extent of the line drawing aspect of it, and was unwilling to etch more tone onto it. So I took it home and attacked it with a pointy tool instead… all over, but especially in the background. Here is one of the first prints taken from it before pointy tool attack: Medusa, at a sort of masquerade / cocktail party affair, and they are all…

“is she or isn’t she?…”

I have a sketch for the December picture for my Medusa Calendar! She is on her own all through the year (so far… I still have some months to fill in and i was wondering about a valentine’s theme for February), but December needed something jolly, I thought. So, here is Medusa at the Christmas Party: It’s a kind of Masked Ball affair. She would probably have preferred fancy dress, then she might come as herself – with hair like that Medusa can only come as herself. But then again, Medusa enjoys the occasional opportunity to be noticed – she…

What this calendar needs is a bloody great pumpkin!

Ahem… well it seemed like a good idea yesterday, but now I have drawn it I’m a little alarmed at how complex some of the pictures are getting. These were meant to be simple! Anyway, let me introduce you to the latest sketch for my calendar: 10 Fairies for October… all wearing masks, as seemed only appropriate, but still no clothes of course: lets not get too carried away here! Actually, I always thought a Naked Masquerade would be a great subject for a painting. I’m also sure it would be a great theme for a cocktail party, though I’d…

Finished Painting: “Vis-à-vis”… a masquerade in gold and orange

So, I finally finished the latest Masquerade painting: This painting is an absolute so-and-so to photograph in order to give you any idea of what it looks like in real life. So I have done my best with a lot of close-ups, but clicking on the images will also bring them up bigger so you can see them better. The colours are very subtle, which is hard to capture, but the main problem is that as you move, or the painting does, or the light source does, the gold leaf springs to life, sometimes much darker than the figures, sometimes…