Jessie Lilac Blog

  I'm crocheting a new seat cover for an old chair in lovely bright colours. If the cushion on the left looks familiar, you might remember the watercolour painting I did a of these ladies eating ice-creams a while back. This cushion is available from my Society6 shop if you'd like to see. :) It was a gloriously sunny day here on Good Friday. Spring has definitely sprung! I'm looking forward to my tulips blooming. They're my favourites.   So all there's left,  is for me to say Happy Easter! xx

And so I reach the end of another colourful blanket. This one was only going to be a shawl but I didn't really want to stop at that point so it carried on getting bigger and bigger until it was a decent sized blanket, fit for a single bed! I love putting the colours together, choosing which one I'm going to use next, pure joy. Now I've swamped my entire family with them I was thinking maybe I could make them to sell. What do you think? My sketchbook drawings continue each day. I love choosing the colours for these too but I don't find it as easy because paint colours are limitless and choosing balls of wool not so much, I have only the wool from my stash to choose from. Of course choosing which pen to use is a bit like picking out a colour from my wool stash. I have purple glitter yarn and now I have a purple glitter pen!   ☆ ♥ ☆ ♥ ☆ ♥ ☆ This is one done with Intense pencils. I tried to limit the colours but as soon as wate...

As you might already know from reading my recent posts, I love using pens to draw with. I've got quite a good selection now thanks to christmas and my birthday ;) but the ones I love the most are the ones that will sit on top of a darker colour. This 2 page sketchbook spread above was done with a layer of acrylic paint before I added the detail with my Posca pens. These pages above have a layer of collage paper and acrylic inks as a background. I used my Sakura Souffle pens for the lighter lines but then I remembered my trusty old Sharpies. I'd almost forgotten all about them in my new found love! They don't stay as bright as I'd like when you draw over a dark background but on the white areas of the paper the colour sings. The background of these were done with my FW inks. I wanted something quite bright and fluid and when you spray them with water, you can get lovely effects and blending. Another background you can use is Neocolor crayo...

We've had a couple of lovely sunny days and my first daisy is tentatively peeping from her winter slumber. The light's lovely in the morning, perfect for drawing and painting. After admiring the results other people have made with gouache paint, I bought some for myself. I had a little play but I still find them very difficult to use, the brushes I was using made the marks clumsy and when I tried a finer one, the paint was too thick. They say don't blame your tools so maybe I'm just not suited to them! Anyway I'll try again another day, I don't want to give up on them just yet.  This one was done with acrylic paint and the details were drawn with my Sakura pens. Again, the one below is mainly acrylic with the line detail drawn with Sakura pens. Have you ever tried using ordinary fineliner pens on paper and adding water?  Because they're not waterproof, when they get wet they bleed and make a lovely watercoloury effec...