Jessie Lilac Blog

I've started a new blanket. I love to crochet it's such a relaxing thing for me to do in the evenings. My favourite part of course is choosing the colours! W hen it's finished I hope to have it for sale in my Etsy shop even though I know I'm going to love it myself and I'd be tempted to keep it but I have a LOT of crocheted blankets and as you can imagine I'm running out of space to keep them!   I also love the actual stitchery part of crocheting too so I had an idea of something I could make very quickly from some old jute string that's been hanging around the garage for many years. I  don't like throwing away those plastic sponges that lots of us use for washing up the dishes.  I thought I'd make a little washing up cloth out of the jute, here it is! It was really quick to make, probably quicker than it took to make this blogpost and it's good to know that it can be composted when it's worn out one day. Before I go, ...

 My youngest graduated last week with a first class honours degree in Social Pedagogy. I'm a proud mama and here's a little watercolour I did of her in my art journal when we got back. It was an extremely hot day but the setting next to the river Thames was perfect for taking photos.  I like to draw different hairstyles, this one is done in Tombow pens. This hairstyle was more challenging because of the detail but it's all a learning curve drawing something new. I loved how the cat came out even though she's missing a tail! I'm always a bit fazed by drawing animals because I've very rarely ever drawn them from life but I enjoyed painting this one. Cats are my favourite animal so that helps. 😉 💖 I think I must have been channelling Frida for this one! I like using my pentel black brush pen, it makes lovely sweeping swirly lines. It actually ran out of ink so I took it apart and refilled it with ordinary black ink from a bottle. That m...

Here are my latest pages from my sketchbook. Life's been very busy this year and I haven't found the time to make finished paintings as such but I do make time most mornings to sit down and fill a sketchbook page. If I have a gap of not doing any art for more than a week I find it reeeeally difficult to get back into it again so these pages are important to keep the creative part of my brain up and running. The top one is done with Tombow Dual Brush pens and watercolour.  This one above is an inky background with a Posca painting on top.  This one's done in the same way with Posca painting on top of a layer of indian yellow FW ink.  I was having a difficult emotional day when I made this one.  When I looked at this later I was amazed I can see in it just how I was feeling that day. I love it when art does this don't you? And finally  a more cheery one! I used my ✨Sparkling ✨ Posca pens for this, they're so fun to use you can't but he...

Over the years I've tried out all kinds of mediums and I don't think I've ever settled on just one or two absolute favourites but I have a feeling people who have seen my sketchbook pages over the past year might think differently? Anyway, the top picture you see here is an acrylic background with a stamped pattern and the drawing done in Posca pens. Here below are a few of my most recent paintings that I do on a daily basis in my little A5 Moleskine sketchbook. Let's see what my current fave mediums are. This one has a background of FW inks with Posca pens on top. The white flowers and the bird were done with a Liquitex paint marker.  You can't see the lovely shininess from the photo, but these are my Spectrum Noir brushpens. They are lovely and glittery. I also used some cobalt blue watercolour because I don't have many of the Sparkle pens and I felt the picture needed an extra colour. Here's another Sparkle pen painting, the onl...

We had a lovely time in London last week. It's a very long drive there from Devon so we stopped at the lovely Stourhead to break up the journey. Being a weekday it was quieter than usual and it was nice to see the beginnings of spring there. It was great to be able to take this photo inside the grotto without anyone standing in the way! So onwards to London Town... The next day we met up with Youngest Daughter and took the tube to Camden. In all my years of visiting London, I've never been there before and what a treat I had for my eyes! I loved all the outside decorations on the shops, even the dark ones!  This tattoo shop pictured below has amazing decorations but what made me laugh was that Youngest Daughter thought it said "ERIC from the needle"! 🤣 🤣 🤣   It does in fact look like that, I do so hope the tattoo artist is called Eric! You have to be there to see how big this statue actually ...