The first linocut I ever made.



The second linocut I ever made

"Nude"

"Nude after Gaugin"

"Kiss"

"Face"

Two of the still lifes on sale in a gallery cafe in Poynton.

Three of the still lifes on sale in a gallery cafe in Poynton

Three of the still lifes on sale in a gallery cafe in Poynton

Exciting new developments.

First, my sister and my husband have emptied all the crud out of the garage. They have turned it into a lovely space for working instead of a spidery hell-hole. They have painted the walls and the floor, put up workbenches and shelves and storage, installed a loft ladder, loft flooring, better electrics and all kinds of improvements. It is going to be my studio.

Second, I have found two local outlets for my paintings. I am very excited about the possibility of selling some of my art. I have been painting a series of still lifes, thinking they're probably more likely to sell than self portraits and portraits of my family. They're in a different style than I have worked in previously. I will put some photographs of them on this website soon.

I have some very clear ideas about the direction I want to go in, and the projects I want to work on next. I am feeling positive and optimistic and full of energy and enthusiasm for my art and for life in general.

I want to use this photo of my sister as the basis for a painting.



So I made a drawing from the photo.







Too many details. Draw it again using fewer lines.

Using a more jagged line.

Using a brush to make thicker lines.

How much simpler can you get? How few lines can describe a face?

I like this last one best.

A selection of recent self-portraits

This is my first original acrylic painting. How do you think it compares with the exercise from the book?

The final stage of the painting is technically known as "fannying about". If you have a more delicate sensibility than I do you might prefer to call it "adding the final touches". I repainted various things and applied effects such as sgraffito lines in the leek leaves, pointillist dots on the broccoli, woodgrain, string and so on. It is possible I will do a little bit more fannying about as I look at it and decide to make small changes here and there. But basically this is it. Finished and signed. What do you think?

The latest stage of the painting is all about creating the illusion of depth by adding shadows and highlights, and by painting in the background (the far wall, the tabletop and the dark area under the table). The painting is nearly finished now. Only one more stage to go.

The next stage of the painting is to build up the colours with thicker paint. I add acrylic medium to the paint at this stage but no water. I add titanium white as needed because opacity is no longer an issue. The drawing is beginning to vanish. The paint is no longer watery and runny as it was in the previous stage, but nor is it thick enough to form ridges on the canvas.

The purpose of this stage is to put in the range of colours of the objects. So in the previous stage the carrots were a block of one-tone orange, the tomatoes were a uniform red etc. But now hopefully you can see there are a range of different values on each object, and they are starting to take on a more three-dimensional appearance.

The next stage of the latest canvas - the underpainting. I put in thin washes of block colour. Brown for carrots, red for tomatoes, green for leaves and so on. Not just colours straight out of the tubes, I mix up an approximation of the colour I want. For example you can probably see a range of greens from the bright yellow green of the carrot leaves to the blue-green of the broccoli.

The paint is thinned with lots of matte acrylic medium and water. This is for a number of reasons. The thicker the paint on the canvas the harder it is to paint over it, so I want to start out thin and watery and build up thickness as I go. Also I still want to be able to see my drawing through the paint for a little while yet. For the same reason, I am not adding much titanium white to the paints yet as this always makes the paint opaque.

I need to be able to see the underdrawing because I'm looking critically at it and fiddling with it. I don't want to be simply colouring in the shapes. Instead each stage of the painting refines and improves on the last.

Steph has always asked me to put up pictures of a work in progress, the stages I work in. So here is the first stage of my current canvas - the drawing. You probably can't see it very well though. The photo also shows my rather horrible working area - on top of the chest freezer in the kitchen. It's a bugger when the kids want an ice pop. I have to move everything. And the light is T E R R I B L E.

I had some difficulties with this drawing. It just wasn't coming, the negative spaces were all wrong. So I left it for a few hours. When I came back I held my pencil by the very furthest end, the blunt end. And with massive gestural arm movements I put in shapes - carrots here (I wasn't drawing carrots, just defining the area the carrots occupied), radishes here, a plant pot there, and so on. And it all came together beautifully.