Another birthday

Birthday card for my sister who is plagued by rabbits eating all the plants in her back garden. Back to the chocolate paintings next week!

A watercolour favour for P.

Happy birthday to C! This didn't turn out exactly how I imagined it but I'm fairly pleased with it.

Yummm....

I have been having fun with something that's constantly on my mind! Chocolate! Creating textures by pressing objects in the gesso, using salt, metallic colours and staining colours. I had to do a lot of research for this painting!

I'm back!

Hello! I'm back. After 2 manic weeks at the design agency I needed to blow some steam, so we headed back up to the Lake District with all the camping gear. I love it!

We put the tent up near Ullswater. It couldn't have been more perfect because a huge craft fair was buzzing with life just down the road. There was loads of inventive stuff there. My favourite was a lady who recycled tin and glass and other things into pieces of art. P loved the food tent and I bought him some raspberry wine and a bottle of whisky based cranberry liqueur.

Later on, P was in his element cooking veggie bolognaise on the gas stove. We shared the liqueur with our next door neighbours who were camping virgins and a great time was had by all. The next day a couple of friends joined us and we hired some canoes so we could take our lunch and explore the islands and bays on Ullswater.

It really was the perfect weekend.

I've been inspired by all the great photoshop work I've been seeing recently on people's blogs (especially Michael Nobbs who writes the wonderful Beany) so I thought I'd experiment a bit. Not my usual style but I'm pleased with this. I was a bit squiffy on the booze when I drew it and didn't want to chance ruining it with the watercolours. So here's the result.

Harbin

I don't link to random websites very often but I had to share this one...



In one of the coldest cities on earth they don't just sit around inside feeling miserable, they have a major celebration of the cold instead. How amazing are these photos of ice and snow sculptures! Check out how the Great Wall is turned into an ice slide. How cool is that!

Sad times

Illustration Friday (a week late) - Hero

Just one last pic!

I did this for Illustration Friday's theme of Hero, then realised when I went back to post it that it was last Friday's theme and that the new one is Sport. Oh well. I'll have to see if I can do another one.

Freelancing

I've got a couple of weeks work at the ad agency I sometimes work for in Chester so my posts may be a little bit less frequent for a while. I'll probably take my sketchbook for lunchtime drawings so there may be a few coming this way. We'll see.



In the meantime, who can give me their 5 favourite inexpensive fun things to do?