First flat!

Yesterday was a Big day - I moved into my first flat (proper grown up now). My little bro was a total legend and took the day off to help me. We've unpacked already and I think it looks great.

Sweaty and squinting

mmm...nice clean kitchen with lots of drawer space

 Lucky me! And I'm off to France tomorrow for a week's surfing. Jim better not have a house party in my absence.

Pretty presents

Some might say I have too much time on my hands...I'd say that the wrapping is the best bit.

Present for my cousin  - the boy and I are off for a week to stay with him in France!

 

 

This one is for a new born baby girl

And the final one is a little something for the boy - can't wait to spend a week with you surfing, chilling, eating, drinking, sunbathing and laughing xx

Portrait

Last night we went to the National Portrait Gallery (at times like this, I love living in London) to draw some of the portraits and to learn what makes a good 'un. it's fascinating how much it's changed through the ages. The earliest ones are incredibly flat but begin to use little tricks (like horizontal and vertical reference points) to weight the figure. We did three sketches. My favourite of mine was this one below. I wish I WISH that I'd written down his name (oops) but I remember that he was a newspaper editor. The painting itself was done from a photo which I think comes across. I like the way he is filling the scene and peering at the viewer.

It's a dog's life

I haven't been posting much here recently as life seems to have got very busy with the flat move (first home!). It's just so much choosing beautiful things to fill it with. Yesterday saw me, Olly and the gorgeous Tig (pictured above) take a sneaky mid-week trip back to sunny Norfolk. I visited a fab pottery shop in Holt and found the perfect teapot. A walk on the beach, crab for lunch and a new teapot - pretty blooming marvellous!

Lino

Lino cutting reminds me of art classes when I was eight. It's a nice technique to use I think because planning the reverse of the picture you want in order to make the cuts forces the old brain to work a bit harder. I like also that you can produce multiple prints of your image. Here's one I made on Sunday with the girls for a friend who is getting married (let's hope she doesn't see this post before then):

 

This book has just arrived for me in work this morning - what a great thing to receive on a wet Monday morning!

Burghers (not burgers)

I'm really hungry - hence the burger digression. The ones with an 'h', though inedible, are far more interesting to draw. Rodin's famous sculpture is right next to my  work and I'm going to try (once this horrid weather sorts itself out) to draw the Burghers in my lunch break instead of reading anodyne and instantly forgettable novels. Here is my first attempt from yesterday. It's unfinished because my hands got too cold.

Nude

A quickie blog about a quickie three minute sketch last night...after 20 minutes of free drawing movement as the model sauntered around the space, three minutes of pose felt like a luxury!