A Splash of Paint

I have been painting away these cold February days - glancing out of the window to notice the sun when it ventures out but otherwise engrossed in learning how to paint again. It has only been a few months since I spent a block of time with my paint box but it's amazing how much one has to relearn after time spent away. I'm showing the ones I'm happy with but I could just have easily photographed a bin full of the ones that just weren't up to scratch ( always painful to scrap the picture that has some nice bits and that you've spent ages on, but no matter how much you creep up at it from all angles it just doesn't have the magic to get it through quality control. )

Iris fairies. I love the shapes that these flowers make and hard to pare down the detail in them ( I'm always too keen to put everything in ) so I wanted them to be bleached out and in doing so I think they become a bit ghostly and hopefully magical at the same time.

Daisy fairies. I was drawn to the delicate tracery of foliage in these plants.

Poppy fairies. Clothed the fairies in tailcoats and breeches.

Fern fairy. This one is a work in progress - haven't signed it yet - always a satisfying task 

as I only will do so when it's good to go !

Cosy Studio

Just the weather for hiding away in the studio and getting on with all those things you just can't put off any longer. Of course one has to get organised with supplies of tea and biscuits, the radio tuned to a good play and the fire aimed at one's feet and then I find there is no stopping a girl and her sewing machine. 

In the interests of continuity here are granny squares I talked about in the last post - hardly recogniseable under their layers of machine embroidery. I do rather like their soft and mossy surface and must now find a way of incorporating them into my fairy garden pictures.

In the top one I have pulled some chiffon through from the back and plan to develop this idea further. They also remind me of Elizabethan parre terre gardens and this may also be a direction to follow. In the meantime I am  trying to get back into my painting - it's taken about six bad ones ( that had to go straight into the bin - always a painful process ) to get back into anything like the flow I had before Christmas ; in fact this little one was done a couple of months ago - will post some new ones when the paint starts to behave.

PS  The marmalade is going down well on these cold breakfast mornings and there is a pot here for Fred who has kindly mentioned it on his blog !