Jessie Lilac Blog

Look! After 2 years of gathering dust, I've got my easel out of the corner and I'm using it again! It's been a long time since I've worked with acrylics, or done anything on this scale and at first I almost gave up in frustration. I'm become accustomed to clean bright washy watercolours and if a splash is made, (I'm very messy so a lot of splashes are made) then a splash of watercolour is easily remedied. NOT the case with acrylics as I was reminded the first day I was using them when I dripped a LARGE LOADED brush of bright red paint onto my cream rug. And it bounced . (!) What is a cream rug doing in a studio you may wonder. My 'studio' is also our bedroom and I'd had rather a lot of acrylic accidents in the past, which didn't matter because the floor was vinyl. When I decided that watercolour was now to be my medium of choice I covered up the paint-stained vinyl with a new cream rug, what luxury! Needless to say I've now moved the rug well...

page from my sketchbook using the bits of paper from the last post! I noticed today that I'm honoured to have 150 followers :o) Thankyou for adding me to your list, I'm so happy that you've joined me here! Would you like to choose which postcards you'd like of my work and let me know which ones you'd like to win? Choose 3 that you'd like and I'll have a draw to pick out a winner. CLICK HERE to see them all :o)xx

There are such beautiful colourful fabrics found in the Boden catalogue. Well my purse won't stretch to buying something from here so I've done the (next?) best thing and cut it up! Mwa haha! Now they shall be mine!! All mine!

I think I must love pink. My eldest son made a remark yesterday about how much pink there was in the room. It took me by surprise, " what pink?" Did he mean the fluffy fairy lights I have hanging in the window? Or did he mean the other fairy lights I have in a vase? Maybe he meant the pink chair? Oh look! there a pink glass bottle there too. I think he must have been referring to the little room where we keep the washing machine and tumble dryer - silly me! I must admit after all this evidence I do have a partiality for bright pink, after all I did buy some more pink wool for my crocheted blanket. It really is as bright as it looks here! Have I been painting recently? Yes I have. This is a bath panel and I'm using acrylic paints. I'm finding it difficult because I haven't used them properly on a big painting for about 2 years. I've got so used to small watercolours that it's like learning all over again!

I made this mosaic sign from old broken tiles and bits of mirror. We had a lovely sunny weekend of walks on the beach. The beach huts are back! A sure sign of the season beginning! Brixham's been going through major changes recently. It's only a couple of weeks since I was last there and this structure took me by surprise! There's talk that it's going to be a fish restaurant (much to Carenza's disgust.) She used to love fish when she was really little and would ask for it every day. I think she must be 'all fished out' because she won't go near it these days! Indulge me for a moment while I show you this. I took this because I thought it was a really sweet picture of her favourite flannel that she was drying in the sun. The washing line was in the shade so she had to be inventive when quick-drying was needed. I expect you can tell that I've found a way of uploading pictures - hooray! There'll be no stopping me now!

The family computer is back and appears to be working - yay! I still can't upload any new pictures but I did find something I did earlier. This painting's called 'The Light' and now hangs on my eldest daughter's wall in London. At 64 x 79cm it's quite big compared to my more recent paintings. I'm glad I didn't sell this one. Here's my youngest in her big sister's flat with Mavis the cat and if you look carefully you can see the painting on the wall behind. We stayed overnight on our visit there a few weeks ago, so in case you thought the 'cushion' with skulls on is part of the usual room furnishings, it isn't, it's actually a duvet . She's almost a teenager and part of her particular teenage requirement is that she wants a skull themed bedroom with black walls. I've compromised and she now has a black lampshade, black bead curtain on the door and a chair and small black cupboard that I painted for her. Yes, her big sister ...

Hello out there! I feel like I've been bound and gagged the last couple of days. My laptop had an accident and is now in the fixing shop having a very expensive fixing done. We have a family computer which I resorted to but again Fate stepped in again and stopped the keyboard from working! HOW frustrating was THAT? (very!) I later found out that I could have used an 'online keyboard?' but even this is irrelevant now because it's been taken away to be repaired so here I am on a borrowed one, unable to blog properly. But... While I'm here I must say a massive thankyou to Amalia for giving me the Sunshine Award! There are so many of you that bring sunshine to my life with your wonderful blogs that I want to pass it on to you, yes YOU reading this now! This Land of Blogs is amazing and continues to amaze me all the time. Thankyou everyone who is part of it :o) I can't upload a picture or even the picture of the award in this post as I'm on a borrowed compu...

No, it's not me that's the winner. My laptop has had an accident so I'm a bit limited as to what I can do computer-wise at the moment, so please forgive me if can't put a new picture here. And do you know, I LOVE to put pictures in my blog posts, it's the most fun part! You'll just have to have a random photo of me in London. Oh I want my laptop back!! After being punished with this photo I expect you do too. ;o) The day has dawned when I declare the winner of my Blog Giveaway. Thankyou everyone who took part. I wish I could give everyone the postcards they asked for! (boo hoo!) I've drawn a name and the name is..... ROGER WHITING Congratulations Roger! Would you send me your address and I'll send you your chosen prints right away. I'm sorry if you entered and didn't win, your comments were so uplifting and a joy to read. Thankyou for taking part. I'm sure to do another giveway before too long!

Don't forget my print giveaway finishes tomorrow when I'll take all the names of you who commented HERE and have a draw to see who wins 3 free prints of the paintings of your choice :o) I'm having a bad morning and managed to kill my laptop with my clumsiness, so I'm on the main family computer and have posted a picture I did a while back instead of a fresh new one hot off the page! I went to see the film Micmacs last night, I'd recommend it to any fans of automata . Here's the trailer: I find automata fascinating to watch. There's something quite eery about the movement that almost seems human. One place I would absolutely LOVE to visit is the Sharmanka Kinetic Theatre but it's in Glasgow, a long way from where we live.....oh one day......!

This week the word is 'Brave' . When you're loved it helps you to be brave. ~~~~~~~~~~ I'm having a giveaway this week and holding the draw this coming friday. If you'd like to win 3 free prints of my paintings it's easy, CLICK HERE !

Hooray! My chocolate bar arrived from April . Thankyou April, there's not much left of it as I write this as a have quite a penchant for the stuff, so it's a good thing I took this photo as soon as it arrived otherwise you wouldn't be able to see how enormous it is! April has a blog called Ugly Rabbit and I was the lucky winner of her giveaway! Talking of giveaways, I'm having my own this week and if you go to my last post and leave a comment you too can be a winner. I've been having fun painting trees and owls and cats. And this morning a session of life drawing. This one was done using watercolour pencils. This one, graphite pencil. This one pen and ink. This pose reminds me of the Little Mermaid. Maybe I'll do a painting from it one day, afterall, I love pictures of mermaids!

I think it's about time I did a giveaway don't you? I have postcards that have been printed from my original paintings, some of them are from my watercolours and some are from my larger acrylics on canvas. Something for everyone! So, would you like to win THREE FREE PRINTS? All you need to do is to leave a comment here and say which ones you'd like to receive and I'll have a draw next friday to find the the winner! To see the full list of prints to choose from CLICK HERE , or click on my lefthand sidebar where it says 'postcards of my paintings' Go on..... it's about time you won something isn't it?!

The sun is shining but one comment on another site and it's a bad day. Please bear with me, sometimes I'm too sensitive for my own good.

At last I've finished knitting this jumper. It took an age because it started life as this..... .....and I unpicked it after putting up with those e-NOR-mous sleeves for far too long. When I'd originally made it a hundred years ago, I'd sewn up the seems so well that I could hardly see my stitches. That's why it's lasted so long but it was sooo tedious to try to unpick let me tell you! Anyway the task is done, it fits me and is thick and warm ready for next winter. Next winter? Yes, because you might have noticed how warm it was today - Spring is Springing!

Just because..... I felt like drawing a face in my sketchbook with whatever I found in my hand. In this case it was an HB pencil, a bit blunt but I didn't want to think, just to draw.