Jessie Lilac Blog

I've finished my painting of a magic garden. This week's theme for Illustration Friday is 'Midsummer Night' so I thought I'd put it together with a night background to produce a midsummer night! Shall I show you the original painting I made? It has a very different feel to it and I've used gold and silver pens on the watercolour - great fun to do! I'm thinking of offering it for sale on Ebay. I'll let you know when I do. :)

You might have noticed I have a brand new header on my blog. It's been adapted from an original painting that I'm going to offer for sale on Etsy . Here's the painting as it looks in real life before I did the computer fiddling..... It measures 9ins x 8¾ins (which is 22cm x 23cm.) and is painted in watercolour. It's for sale on Etsy at $40 (approx. £25.50) Please CLICK HERE  if you'd like more information. :) (close-up detail) (close-up detail) Latest News..... Aprocot has chosen me for her lovely Etsy treasury 'Resplendent', You can view it HERE  ! I've nearly finished another... (click on the photo to see much bigger) Here's a little sneak preview.I'll post the finished one in all its glory very soon. :)

Illustration Friday: 'Launch', taking a brave step into the unkown. 'Yet each man kills the thing he loves, By each let this be heard, Some do it with a bitter look, Some with a flattering word, The coward does it with a kiss, The brave man with a sword.’   - Oscar Wilde. 

This is a painting in my sketchbook I made yesterday. It was really just an excuse to try out that particular colour combo! I've used watercolours here but I think it could work in acrylic too. I do tend to paint different subject matter depending on which medium I use. My acrylic work is more abstract and experimental but the watercolour work figurative and more 'precise'. I'd like to combine the two but still they remain separate. Do other artists do this too? If you are an artist, have you found this with your own work? ******** Could I just say, if you think I haven't been visiting your blog recently when I usually do, I have! :) It's just that in the last couple of weeks Blogger won't let me leave comments on the posts where I have to choose my profile from a drop-down menu. I expect other people might have had the same problem? Please could you change your settings if yours is one of the blogs that do this. I miss commenting! :) EXCITING UPDATE !!! ...

I don't know whether it's all this heavy rain pouring down today that influenced me but I originally painted this illustration with very bright warm colours! I quite like the effect the of the monochrome. It gives it a different atmosphere doesn't it? Here's the original colourful version. Which do you prefer? I'm going to be listing this on Ebay later if you'd like to buy the original. The bidding will start at just 99p so it's a chance to snap up a bargain! (detail) ******** I had a lovely surprise in the post yesterday. A parcel arrived from my talented blogging friend Pati . I was a winner in her recent giveaway and won a lovely etching print!  Thankyou Pati! :)) You can see more of her lovely artwork here.

When I was at art college there was a book we were recommended to read called 'Ways of Seeing' by John Berger. People on my course would rave over how interesting it was but back then I couldn't engage with it myself. Looking back I can see that  my life of juggling a large family with small children plus trying to fit in time to study for a degree didn't give me  the energy or time to do any extra reading! Our circumstances can change over time, along with our perceptions, so looking at it now I can see why it became so popular. To quote from the book: "The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled." With that thought in mind, let me show you some landscapes I recently painted...  - a brooding sky over a sunlit hill?  - the bank of a river? - looking out to sea from a grassy hilltop? Each of the paintings above could be seen as complete but each one is really just a tiny glimpse of this one! Whe...

( acrylic ink on paper ) Just after I'd finished painting this, I was going to change the sky in Photoshop but after a visit to Perranporth  yesterday,  it now reminds me of the sea there, so it's now going to stay au naturel ! Raw nature, nothing like it is there?