Featured Artist!

Do you ever do anything on the spur of the moment?  Is there ever a time you’ve woken up and decided ‘yep, I’m going to do this today!’? 

Well, I did just that on Saturday.  I woke up and announced to my youngest that we were going on a train.  She didn’t react with the same kind of enthusiasm: ‘But, I’m busy!’ she groaned, not even bothering to ask where the train was heading. With a little … OK a lot of persuasion … we caught the train with five minutes to spare and she finally cheered up when we arrived at our destination two and a half hours later in Portsmouthnd I managed to squeeze a drawing in, using my 6″ x 6″ sketchbook on the return journey.

  
 We were met with glorious weather and a bear hug from her big sister.  She bounced out of the station and took you straight to a massive ice cream parlour.

   
 It’s been an exciting week.  Not only was I featured in an eco e-magazine sharing about my art and creativity using natural products for painting and my passion for recycling, upcycling and using items found around my home to create, but I am this week the featured artist over on an amazing Facebook group site called DoodleArt 😀

How did this happen?  Well, I posted one of my forty-five minute doodles of my OH and the cat, Nikon onto the page challenge: portraits.  It was selected as receiving being among the top three with the most ‘likes’.  The group runs a different challenge a month, so there’ll be a new challenge set on June 1st.

The irony of the icecream parlour visit and eating in a restaurant, aptly named Giraffe, was that my latest doodle depicted both icecreams and a giraffe all painted using naturally made inks from coffee, tea and strawberries!

  

Hare print from a Big Mistakes Eraser

I bought a ‘Big Mistakes’ eraser a while back and have been wondering for ages what to draw on it so that I could do some carving.  

I guess I’m going through a bit of a ‘hare and rabbit obsession’ lately, what with buying a baby dwarf rabbit and watching her binkie around the living room; watching her ears twitch and turn as she listens out for unfamiliar noises.  They sure are fascinating creatures.  

Yesterday, the family went to a wooded estate where deer were enjoying the sunshine and shade.  I could have decided on a deer for my print – maybe next time!

So out came the pencil and I sketched a hare, then taking the smallest cutting took from my lino cutters,  I carved away the layers of rubber to reveal my hare.  I have a rainbow ink pad and used this to take some first impression prints.  This was the third impression:

   
     

Doodling bunnies

Today, I glanced out of the window at work to a field that usually has three horses nibbling the grass.  By mid-afternoon, the horses had vanished and ten wild rabbits ‘binkied’, hopped and sniffed around.  Every one of them was a character that I could bring into a story.  However, having just got a baby bunny rabbit two weeks ago, I can’t stop drawing her!  She hops up and down from the sofa, scoots around my rainbow rug and loves having the run of the lounge!  

She is going to be a character in my children’s story I’m writing, so I guess, the more I sketch her, the better!  Can’t wait to do the proper illustrations, but first I’m jotting down the bones of the story.  Maybe I should start a new blog dedicated to the adventures of Willow.

   
     

Bunny sketch on marble print

Butterlies and Dragonflies … For Spring :-)

Zentangle mandala

hi everyone! Had fun doing a Zentangle mandala.  Most of my doodles have been in black and white, so it was great to add a bit of colour and see this develop 🙂

Doodling Hares and New Facebook Page

Morning everyone!  How are you?  The day started well yesterday when a colleague handed me a carrier bag containing a bottle.  I thought, what a lovely gesture … She’s bought me a bottle of wine (even though I don’t drink wine).  I opened the bag and then remembered I’d asked her last week to get me some cleaning materials that I have traipsed around three supermarkets for and been unable to get!

moving on …

On Monday I opened a new Facebook page.  When it reaches 100 likes, I’ll be doing a free giveaway of one of my mosaic/doodle drawings.  So, all you wonderful WordPress followers, it would be fantastic if you could visit and ‘like’ my page (and comment, so I know you’ve been).

https://www.facebook.com/doodle2ink

As you can see by the name, it’s all about making doodles, Zentangling, making patterns and sharing step-by-step tutorials.  I do hope you’ll visit and be inspired to have a go xx

Elephants Never …

Good morning everyone!  Have you ever had to do something in secret?  Have you ever had to go ‘undercover’?

Yesterday was Mother’s Day in the UK and sadly I didn’t get to see my own mother.  But it got me thinking this morning about the time i helped a neighbour secretly arrange a surprise birthday party for her.  In the week leading up to my mum’s birthday, I made my excuses and popped around to my neighbour, Sheila’s (who incidentally told me she’d always wanted a little girl, but couldn’t), to bake.  In previous posts, I’ve revealed that I dislike cooking, mainly because my mum was a qualified chef and a perfectionist.  Anything I did had to be perfect, so I didn’t like baking cakes with her …

in the space of a week, Sheila and I prepared trifles, traybakes (flapjack), a birthday cake and savouries so colourful that there was no need for a table cloth!  I faced the complaints by my mum as I kept asking to go over to Sheila’s.  We fell out over it, but I couldn’t tell her what we were really up to.  That’s a hard thing to do when you’re ten years old!

On the day itself, my mum had to eat her words (she’d said some spiteful things in that week) and I watched as her mouth fell open in amazement when she saw the spread of food.  It was a good celebration, but I still hate baking!

Hurtful words linger and dig deep; they create invisible scars.

One person posted a quote and image on Facebook (the social networking site is usually littered with them).  I’m not sure where it originated, but on a search, it informs me that it was written by ‘Anonymous’

“One day someone is going to hug you so tight that all your broken pieces will stick back together.”

I wish I could have hugged my mum yesterday, especially after the weekend I’ve just had.  I hope she’s enjoying her holiday.

Latest doodle

Good evening from the UK everyone 🙂 Ever drawn a Shar Pei? Ever wanted to draw a dog that has loads of folds and flaps? My friend’s favourite dog is the Shar Pei. She hasn’t got the space to own her own pup, so instead she asked me if I’d draw her one to frame on her wall. I sketched an outline first in pencil and then began the lengthy task of filling in the spaces, yet still trying to maintain that Shar Pei look.

There was a risk of over-doing the pattern and part of me thinks I should have left a few more white sections. I’ll look at it again tomorrow when I’ve rested. What do you think?

Now I’m off to,dream about my next project – I’ve been asked to draw a horse called Jimmy, plus I want to get a sewing gift finished. Night all xx

Ok, it’s been a while!

I’ve been away on holiday you see, soaking up some much needed sunshine in Cornwall. We had limited access to wi-fi and so I made the most of the break away from technology and drew, doodled

and watched my youngest paint a picture of a labrador puppy.
Then of course, like all holidays, they eventually come to an end :-(. I had to play catch-up at work and still slot in some me and family time. So what have all you lovely people been up to? Have you been glancing across the road for the first buds of spring? I spotted snowdrops this week and suddenly daffodils are shooting up on the verges. My favourite season: spring! Excited! Not only do I wait in anticipation of the appearance of flowers and blossoms, but some gorgeous leaves that I will be able to print from.
Anyway, for today’s WordPress post, I’m going to share with you some photographs of my little getaway trip to Cornwall to accompany one of my drawings from my time away – hope you like them.

This was a hidden underground pool found in a disused slate mine – isn’t it wonderful?

For literature fans – we visited Jamaica Inn, the setting for one of Daphne du Maunier’s novel of the same name. According to some people, there are parts of the inn which are haunted and when we toured the adjoining museum we were treated to memorabilia by the author and details of smuggling that took place over the centuries across Cornwall.
As well as taking a sip of a cool drink, we were able to watch a fifteen minute video about the history of the inn and surrounding areas.

One of many smugglers’ caves … This one was found at Polperro. When we weren’t exploring caves, we played around with our shadows. Even though it was February half term, the weather was glorious 🙂

Interesting then that we returned home to snow, sleet and rain making it feel all the more real that we’ve been away on holiday 🙂