Jessie Lilac Blog

I've been given several different projects lately, each one very different so yesterday it was nice to spend a little quiet time playing in my art journal. It's good to play, it feeds my paintings especially the more intuitive ones like these... I've just collected these from an exhibition in Bristol and I'll be listing them for sale in my Etsy shop very soon. :) So how about the projects I've been working on lately? The first one I'd like to share with you is a commission I made that was a business logo for Pink Sky Healing . Here's the sketch I made with the client's ideas... Sketches can look very different to the finished painting so I hoped she'd like what I did with the colours and detailing. and she did! Dena's a reiki healer and reads angel cards. She's also an ordained minister and is currently studying craniosacral therapy. I wish I lived closer to her but I'm the other side of the globe! He...

I've been designing some new christmas cards for this year. I started them a few weeks ago so you'd have thought by now I'd have the cards in the shop? Well I would have done but my printer is on the blink. Doh! This one's a little familiar don't you think? ;) While I'm here, let me show you the paintings as they progressed. Here's the snowglobe one that you might recognise from my new blog header? It starts as a pencil drawing. I tend to use very heavy watercolour paper 300gsm so I don't need to stretch it or to hold it down too much with tape. Then comes the painting stage which involves the fun part, choosing the colour scheme, (my favourite part!) and here we have it. The snowglobe painting is finished. :) (cropped) The reindeer painting was made in the same way, I didn't need to tape this one down at all. (Doesn't that water in the cup look dirty?!) I get so involved in the painting I don...

The Place I call Home, mixed media on canvas board 7 x 5" I've lived in many places when I was younger but wherever I've lived and for however long, it's always been important to me to make it feel like home. To me, home is where I feel comfortable. So what makes a home for me? Come and have a peep around my home. :) Being a visual person it's a place where I can look around and see things that I love to look at, a place that has beautiful colour all around. My children's artwork on brightly coloured walls,  and in the kitchen. Books, cosy places to curl up and relax in. What makes somewhere feel like home for you? I've made the last in the series of my little mixed media paintings on canvas board. The latest one you see featured here is now available in my Etsy shop . Do pop over and have a browse! xx Thankyou for visiting! xx

“The work of the eyes is done. Go now and do the heart-work on the images imprisoned within you.” ~ Rainer Maria Rilke This quote is from my book by Rainer Maria Rilke, called 'Letters to a Young Poet'. I read it some time ago but books like this can be read so many times and each time you find something new that resonates. It's full of surprising wisdom considering Rilke himself was only in his twenties at the time! “Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”     ****************** And Most Importantly... Naomi back in the day....

“How happy is the blameless vestal’s lot! The world forgetting, by the world forgot. Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind! Each pray’r accepted, and each wish resign’d” ~  Alexander Pope A new painting has formed under my brush,  filled with dreams, imaginings and thoughts. It's called 'Eternal Sunshine' and is painted on 7 x 5 inch canvas board and is now for sale in my Etsy shop at $40 (£25.52) +p&p. Have you seen the film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind ? Lots have been written about this multi-faceted film but to me it's a film about how true feelings stay, no matter if the memories have been erased. It's a good film! Thankyou for looking, have a lovely weekend.xx ♥

  If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them  ~ Henry David Thoreau Do you remember the painting I was working on in the last post? It's finished! I've used collage, acrylic and ink and sprayed it with varnish to protect the surface. :)  The painting is on canvas board (7 x 5 inches) and is £25.51+ £2 shipping in the UK (or $40+ $4 shipping anywhere else.).  It'll soon be listed in my Etsy shop  but if you'd like to buy it before I do, please email me here . :) ♥ Aim For the Highest Goals in Life, not the Mediocre.   ♥

view to Churston Cove, South Devon Thankyou for your kind comments about my new cushion. I very pleased with it especially as my lovely buttons have a new dwelling place :) I just hope it stands the test of time! A few days ago I was in Devon, mainly working but managed to have a little break or two to enjoy the sunshine. Brixham Harbour, South Devon I felt quite warm there considering it was November but the weather's changed today and it's so very cold! Maybe this is the proper start of autumn?  I've been spending time today working on some small mixed media paintings and my fingers are *  FREEZING  * cold. I think it might be time to put the heating on for longer.  Can I ask all you Northern Hemisphere people, do you have your heating on all the time yet? Here's one of my paintings on canvas board nearing its conclusion. I'll post it as soon as I've finished but in the meantime, can you see what it is yet?  What does it say to you...