Part of my painting course involves making circular paintings, which are called Tondo’s. These are a few I made today – they are all 29 cm in diameter on watercolour paper.

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I’m pleased to let my patrons know that I’ve organised an appropriate tried and trusted payment portal for my shop. Please have a look here when you have a minute. If there is anything you’ve seen on my website previously that you would like me to put onto the shop, please let me know.

This year has been a good one for me, can’t really complain, at least i’m still alive. It’s just the hanging about waiting to see family, give people hugs and sloppy kisses, that’s what’s been crap about it. I made the decision in February to sell my ageing car and whilst that was a good financial move, it has created a lot of frustration. Gone are the days when I could just take myself off to the nearest wood for a wander about, or go shopping by myself somewhere out of the usual supermarket slog. Pathetic to whine about crap like that though, hey?

I have worked from home for the last twenty years of my life, so that has not been an issue for me – other than the fact that I’ve had no work since February! I share this home with my daughter and son-in-law, plus two grandchildren, so I’m fortunate not having to worry too much about the massive dip in my earnings, I have definitely not gone hungry. Her Majesty has been kind enough to provide a couple of hand-outs this year and I believe another one is on the offing soon, I would never look a gift horse in the mouth (sorry, ma’am) but I really want to get back to earning my own dosh soon.

We’re being told that lockdown measures may be relaxed somewhat over the festive period, allowing us to be close to loved ones and in our case have more than one person visit. The ‘rule of six’ has been a gut punch for us, as there are already five of us in this house, so only one visitorwas ever allowed.

If you pass by this post between now and 2021, know that I wish you a very pleasant festive season. I hope you are safe and well and that 2021 is kind to us all.

I’m really pleased to announce that the No Middleman Art gallery, which is a project of Edge of Humanity magazine, is now featuring a selection of my work in their Portfolio section. Here is the link

Sorry to annoy my subscribers with the constant site changes, i am just in the process of editing the pages etc as i am aiming to pitch my work to interior designers in my area and have been told to make a few changes. Once I’ve done it all, I will delete this post. Just by way of explanation … 🙂 Scusie me …

I got me some Pastelmat paper this week and a few new soft pastels (budget brand – Art Discount, they’re not bad though). Did some plein air work (as part of course exercises) today – a scene in our local wood, very early morning. Obviously wasn’t going for realism, just an impression of the atmosphere of the place.

Decided to do some abstracts over the weekend, as I am doing a lot of landscape work in oils and other medium at the moment for coursework and the acrylics were getting a bit neglected. I tried out working in a series – doing two paintings on a similar theme/colour palette.

Both available on my shop over here

Inspired by a photo my grandson took on his holiday yesterday … they are in the Peak District. I was trying to go for a very loose style with the brushwork and lots of water mixed in with the paint.

Acrylics on stretched canvas.

50x45x1cm or +- 19x15x 1/2″

Not for sale.

I was contacted by the curator of an organisation called ‘Edge of Humanity’ magazine a while back and was asked to contribute a series of images of my work for their ‘No Middleman Gallery’. I am so suspicioius these days of anything that may or may not resemble a scam but from what I’ve been able to see online, these establishments seem to be genuine. Has anyone in my circle of WordPress friends come across this lot before, could you offer any comment that might help me? The scope and standard of artwork in this virtual gallery of theirs is mindblowing, can’t imagine why they would want my stuff!!! 🙂

Acrylics, inks, collage and gels on large stretched canvas 120x100x4cm

#helpourkelp

This has ended up being a bit of a work in progress, I am doing some more tweaking on it and will publish the final piece soon.

I have set up a small shop here and will be adding selected paintings to it on an ongoing basis. I am pleased to announce that I sold two paintings yesterday!

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I am in the process of setting up my studio space in order to produce some encaustic pieces. I will be working on these pieces next week.

In the meantime, I have been concentrating on study work as well as a very large mixed media canvas that has kelp as its subject (more on that when it’s done). Here is some recent work:

These are a few things I’ve been doing lately as part of my Painting 1 coursework.

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I am getting quite interested in monoprinting, no good at it yet but interested in it!

I hope all the people who visit this site are keeping safe and not venturing out unless it’s absolutely necessary. I am working on my studies at the moment and have completed a few pieces that I like:

Life is very different now but we will prevail. See you on the other side!