Jessie Lilac Blog

HAPPY HALLOWEEN ........mwah ha ha.....! Ready for some scary sculpture I made back in the day? Hello new followers, you're very welcome here, I hope I'm not scaring you too much! ;) I have some drawings I did at the time too.. I always did have a thing about birds! ;) Phew! That's enough for now! I shall be back quite soon with some giveaway news for you. This blog might possibly look quite different next time you visit too. :) Happy Halloween!

love alters not when it alteration finds  The quote above is from Shakespeare and to me it means that true love will always remain regardless of the changes that life brings. My enchantment with the illustrations of Arthur Rackham has 'altered not' since I was a small child!  For me, he really does create the best witches of all, in fact it wouldn't surprise me to learn he invented them! ;) Shall I remind you how fantastic they are? He's the master of witches isn't he? Or do you have your own favourite witch artist?  I'll love to know!

a page from my sketchbook With the reminder of Halloween hovering around Blogland recently, I've been reading a book we've had lying around the house for a long time. It's called The Witches Handbook by Malcolm Bird. My eldest daughter used to love this book and   having read it in bed myself last night, I now understand why. No War and Peace for me when I'm feeling under the weather . ( Actually, that's just an excuse.) The illustrations are genius and have so much thought and detail in them. See for yourself! . This is one of the pages giving the modern day witch advice (that's you, the reader) as to which pets are the best ones to keep. I love their expressions, don't you? My favourite one is the frogs!  My daughter told me years later that she thought at the time that she really was a witch! Children are so impressionable, I wonder when it dawned on her that she wasn't? Hmm...I'll ask her next time I see her. Thankyou ...

  Do you go through phases of drawing and doodling a lot, then other times almost forget you even have a sketchbook? I'm like an addict with mine, once I start, I keep on wanting to do more and more hence the last post, this one and no doubt a few more after this one! Often I just doodle and see what comes out of the tip of my brush or pen. I like to try different medium, for instance the one above is a mixture of fibre tip pens and brush pens with a touch of watercolour too. Sometimes I create a random image just to try out a particular colour combination. This one above has sepia ink in the background and I discovered that the blues and pinks shine out much more than they would have done leaving the background plain, don't you think? Sometimes  my emotions at the time of drawing are there to be seen very clearly. (I added the writing after I'd finished the doodle, my arms aren't actually long you know!) Perhaps my head was in a spi...

The Nightjar The weather's changing, still sunny but a slight chill in the air every now and then. I have to finally admit it, autumn is upon us! To mark the occasion of the autumn equinox and to get us in the mood for those dark nights ahead, I'm changing the look of my blog for this magical time. I shall be using this new avatar too. Do you like her? The nightjar lives in her hair but she doesn't mind, in fact I suspect she's forgotten it's there!

That's better! I wasn't very comfortable with that last image from yesterday staring at me. I have a tendency to draw birds quite often, you might have noticed but would it surprise you to know I actually have a fear of them?! I love to see them outside and I'm fascinated by how they look, especially owls. It's a rare thing to see an owl in the wild but the last time I saw one flying in the countryside was Swindon of all places! Such magical creatures. I'm going to be painting over my scary bird in the same way I've started to paint over the left hand page of the sketchbook. I'll keep you posted with the results. In case you thought Halloween was over in this house, you and I thought wrong! She couldn't resist dressing up as an 'undead Alice-in-Wonderland' and the pumpkin soup was delicious although I say so myself!

I could have done a painting on the traditional Halloween theme but for some reason this image evolved on the page! I find it spooky, do you? ;) Do you remember my recent give-away? I've now listed the postcards on Etsy and they're only $2.50 each. I had them printed by Moo from my original paintings on canvas and they've done a great job! To see them please CLICK HERE .

I thought it was about time I did a Halloween themed picture as we've only a few days to go! This is a colour combination I haven't tried before and if you're familiar with my painting, you'll know how difficult it is to restrain myself from using more colours than just the two! Hmmm...or is that 3?