Jessie Lilac Blog

Evening Peace, acrylic on canvas board. Gosh! After that very unusual post from yesterday, I'm pleased to see you still here! Let me show you  my new artwork. Glittering Stars, acrylic on canvas board. I love sparkly things don't you? I had a lot of fun adding the shiny gold to these two new paintings. You can't really tell from the photo above but  if they're held towards the light, they sparkle!  Each one measures 7 x 10 inches and I've listed the originals on  Etsy at £40. That's roughly about $66 to my USA friends. I do worldwide shipping and any currency is taken. :) If you'd like these designs on a mug or a cushion (pillow), or maybe a tote bag or a phone case? Here's a screenshot of my Society6 shop . Please pop over and have a look. :) You can even get this one as a clock! So which one would you choose? :) Thankyou for looking! xx

So. I've finished my blanket and the days are getting sunnier.  It'll be lovely for cool evenings, or as a rug to sit on outside? The sun is encouraging my perpetual spinach, just look at all that greenery sprouting forth. The lavender seeds in the tray on the right are being a little more cautious and who can blame them when the sun teases us so much, one moment there, then the next moment a distant memory? My painting continues. I'm having fun layering coloured tissue paper onto the acrylic. It gives instant colour and if you don't like it, you can paint straight over! Here's another painting I'm working on. This one is using the same technique of tissue with acrylic. I like to work on more than 1 painting at a time because I can give each one a chance to dry a bit before thinking about the next stage. These are very different subjects to one another aren't they? I don't know why that happened. I know some artist...

 These were taken in my garden yesterday. While most of the country was covered in the white stuff it seemed to missed here completely. Even this primrose that I've shown you before  here  hadn't seen any frost since I last showed you it in November. That snail hadn't finished it off either!  Spring really looked as though it was beginning. Bulbs are shooting Snow? -  it seemed very unlikely. But at last it's arrived, so here are the obligatory snowy pics of my back garden today! No longer looking like a messy wintery flowerbed, now nice white fluffy pom-poms!  See that nice smooth white patch on the ground? How could I resist? ;)

I really enjoyed working on a small scale while I was making the owl ACEO so when the this week's word for Illustration Friday was 'sky' it inspired me to do some more ACEOs. Here's the first one I've finished. It's painted with inks on heavy watercolour paper and will be in the shop very soon. :) I've a few more in the pipeline and will have them to show you in the next day or so. Please come back and see!

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!

Doodling in my sketchbook I kept to a restrained palette of purple and lime green with my two ladies. Which one do you like the best? :) I'm having to relearn how to scan my pictures because I'm using my new laptop and trying to get used to the programmes on it. Apparently on my old one (that died unexpectedly one day,) I was using an 11 year old programme, Microsoft Office Picture Manager which I could do almost blindfolded! This new laptop doesn't have it but at least I've worked out how to make them smaller so they don't cover your entire computer screen. ;) And some good news, I have a clever son who rescued my old hard-drive from the abyss and I have all my pictures back again,  hooray!

I don't like secrets. Even when told a nice secret I get too over excited and find it almost painful keeping it to myself as I can't stand the suspense! If I'm asked by someone to keep any sort of secret, I take that very seriously and won't tell a soul. I'll ask permission to reveal it to others and only then will tell those closest to me and trust that they know they are the chosen few. The picture that I've painted (above) for Illustration Friday is a page form my art journal.   (close-up detail) It has its own secrets.  The first layer was writing about how I felt, private thoughts that needed to pour out. I layered gesso and inks over the top to disguise what I'd written and in some way to heal too. It seemed to work. :)

I like to paint intuitively and leave the interpretation open to the viewer.  Quite often, I don't know what they're about myself until a while after they're finished, a bit like dreams.  The best way to describe it is that they spring from a place inside my mind in the same way that dreams come from the subconscious and I become just the bystander watching it happen. Now having said that, the last two pictures you've seen here were purposefully made to look happy. I've had some major life issues to deal with lately and felt the need to see bright cheery colours, smily girls and sunshine. I can do that.

It must be spring because my garden is beginning to come to life again. Time to do some tidying up, to make space for all  the new flowers to grow!  Thankyou for your lovely comments about my fish-loving daughter! It's amazing how her interest was there all along, who'd have known?  Blogger have allowed me to have my bloglist back hooray! You can now see it at last in the right hand sidebar. What with the Facebook changes and Blogger changes I've had a lot to learn lately! I hope you haven't had difficulties too. :)

Was that winter then? We had a very brief scattering of snow but by the end of the day it was gone. The innocent sun continues to shine,  casting rainbows  oblivious to the cold. I sit and doodle in my sketchbook. Lost in my own created world.  

Stream of Consciousness As I painted I let the picture tell me what to do. I pour myself onto the page and wait until tomorrow for the answer.

First of all let me show you my illustration for this week. 'Twirl' for Illustration Friday . **** Look what arrived in my letterbox this morning. My parcel from Micki has arrived! Micki Wilde from the Secret Hermit has been running an art swap this month and today her painting arrived at my house! Do you remember last week I told you about the one I was working on to send to her? I hope she likes it. I love hers! Around the edge of the painting it says, 'She had a deep desire to unleash her imagination for the all the world to see.' Thankyou Micki, I am now the happy owner of 2 of your lovely paintings! :)) The one on the left I bought myself for a treat a few weeks ago. It's called 'Fly Free' . Two lovely ladies to watch me as I paint! :)

Awareness is a choice. I'm still enjoying a more subdued pallette of colours (for me.) I did limit this to two but I think another one wanted to get in on the act, must be a couple of accidental splashes of paint from an earlier drawing. The little splash peeping from behind the tree looks like a pink heart doesn't it?! I wish I'd noticed it before, I could have put a sweet little face on it.

I've been making a painting for the art swap that Micki Wilde is organising over at The Secret Hermit . I'm not going to show the whole picture yet until she's received it because I want it to be a surprise. I'll reveal all in a few days! Why do some people not like January? I love January! It's like a new beginning, a new page, the start of fresh ideas and a brand new year. Today the sun has shone all day. Packed lunch and camera in hand there were some lovely sights to behold on this sunny January day. The first robin I've seen this year sitting confidantly close to the path, all puffed up like a woolly pom-pom to keep warm.  The first bulbs emerging from the ground. I think I've seen more snowdrops today than I've ever done. Trees of different sizes  and shapes.  Glorious colour  and trees with a heart. See? January is a beautiful month. : )