Sorry I have been AWOL for a couple of weeks - just overtaken by the usual Christmas busyness of course, as I expect most of you are.  Am pleased to report that all is now organised, and if it isn't that's just too bad, because I'm not losing sight of the real reason for our celebrations ... a great mystery of love unfolding before us if we can tear ourselves away from excessive consumerism, snowmen and robins for a minute.  Sermon over.

Anyway, this started in the simplest possible way when I just painted the page red using standard acrylics.  Sometimes it doesn't have to be more complicated that this, and I chose the colour because it was a dark wet day .... adding an eye from my collection of collage images, a new honeycomb stamp (which I'm not altogether thrilled with) , a section of black and white border from my own home made collage sheet, and a scrap of tissue paper laid down with matte medium.

The circle pattern is another new stamp, part of a set I really like.  I've been so into black and white line drawings lately, its obviously my latest "phase" but its such a simple concept that you can do so much with!  The words just came ... so presumably were the ones I most needed to get off my chest at the time.

The pointy finger is another stamp, an old favourite, and then I just started doodling with my white paint pen, because I knew that what I'd written was enough, and there was no more to say.

So you know how it goes, I doodled away to my heart's content - its almost meditative doing this and possibly the part I love the best, or maybe second-best anyway!

There's no answer to give to this because it isn't a question, just the statement of how things ARE, but at least admitting it here is the first step to making the changes that will bring those Better Times to fruition?  With the coming of a New Year shortly its probably a good time to do this kind of thinking ...?

I hope your Christmas is Holy and Blessed, and I look forward to your company as the journey continues into 2015 ...

WOOD FOR THE TREES .....

This is quite a simple page for me - in its basic construction anyway.  The leaves took ages, but as you know I LIKE doodling.

Still not feeling 100% after a really nasty cold which had me in bed for a couple of days - I NEVER do that, not least because it would mean staying out of the studio.  Husband completely understood  that my having done so meant that I really felt awful.

So simple is good, when you're finally back in the studio but convalescent?  I had a vague idea that I would be painting branches etc across this when I started out, so the background was deliberately kept to one colour.  In later pages I toned down the colour in the face (broadly representing me) because the real me was (and still is) distinctly pale and wan ....

Then I began to sketch out the tree and its branches, trying to go across the figure without obscuring it too much.  I was still feeling wobbly and not quite "with it" at this point, and when I looked at my inboxm the ironing, and all the other things which hadn't got done because I'd been ill, I felt utterly overwhelmed and incapable of starting.  It actually took 4 or 5 more days before I did!

The paint is just ordinary acrylics, built up in layers, hoping for a bark sort of effect.  Its in there somewhere I hope!

Then I went on to outline the branches using my posca paint pen and began to draw in the leaves.  I painted them first (also Posca pen) and when the paint was dry went back with a fine black liner.  The words came last of all .... even though I'd sort of known from the beginning what they would be about.

I must admit to some artistic licence here - I DO have short naturally black/brown hair, but after that any resemblance to the genuine person fades!  My eyes are green - but that would have been too much green, and they are not large and luminous as depicted here, I just wish they were.  I am this thin in my imagination if not in reality, and considerably younger, so am constantly surprised by the tubby grandmother in the mirror!

Still this flight of fantasy achieved its aim of getting stuff down on paper and making me feel calmer. Heck, I thought, it can all wait until I feel better.  And it has.