Jessie Lilac Blog

I don't want to bore you with tales of how I've had a cold which turned into something nastier so please scroll down to miss out this bit if you like, I won't mind! :)  I very rarely go to the doctors and prefer to wait for my body to heal itself but this time the pain I'd developed in my back was so relentless day and night I had to at least find out what was causing it.  It turned out to be something called sacroilitis. There was no escape from the severe pain unless I stood up or walked when it would then change to an ache which was more bearable. Anyway, the doctor prescribed strong painkillers and anti inflammatories which made me feel like I was in a dream. I couldn't do any 'proper' painting because when I do a painting, it takes a lot of time and concentration so instead I sat briefly each day and made a drawing.  The drawings you see here are the ones I did during this time. I did one each day starting from day one with

'Edge of the Forest',  mixed media on canvas.  This week I've been working on another landscape painting, this one's on canvas and believe it or not started out its life with a big boat in the foreground covered in roses. I thought I'd taken a photo of it at that stage but I've looked through all my pictures and it doesn't look like I have. I'm afraid you're just going to have to imagine what that looked like, sorry! This one was worked on in the same way as before, building up layers of paint and collage paper, aiming all the while for a balance of shapes and colours. I finally came to a point where I decided that the cottage needed a doorway.  Here's a close-up (above) of how the cottage looked at this stage, I liked it like this but I felt it needed a door. So here it is with a door and with the walls painted a brighter shade of peachy orange and the green tree to the left a little more finished. I'd changed the f

I'm very happy to say that I've finished the painting I've been working on over the past few weeks, yay!  Sometimes a painting can take so long that I imagine it'll never reach the end! This one was made during some challenging personal times and maybe that's one of the reasons it took me so long to finish. The strange thing is, that throughout the making of it I kept on thinking of the word 'peachy' and although I felt far from peachy, I decided it would make a nice title for it so I've decided to call it 'Feeling Peachy'! Here's what it looked like at the very beginning, acombination of collage papers and acrylic paint. I fell in love with that beautiful patch of orange quite quickly and my feelings didn't change as you will see! I painted the sky mauve and the beginnings of buildings and trees were appearing. Here's a close-up showing the house I painted, a stage further than the last picture, it looked li