Jessie Lilac Blog

I've been busy making daily paintings and here are a few of my most recent ones. I also have some finished paintings for sale listed in my Etsy shop but more of that later. Sometimes it's nice to have a break and a few days ago we visited Tintinhull in Somerset. The house is very beautiful and because of its smaller scale than most National trust properties, very homely too.  The view from the house into the garden is very pretty. It's lovely to wander around the garden, arranged like little rooms that link one to another.  A feast for the eyes from the beautiful and delicately coloured pale lemon tulips and hyacinths  ♥   ♥ and the Heuchera Plum Royale. (I had to Google that!)  😉 How very perfect don't you think? A very pretty house and garden. So now I'd like to show you my newest paintings. This one above is called Marina and is painted on 300gsm (140lb) watercolour paper with inks. I've listed it in my Et...

I love a bit of sparkle don't you? I'm quite partial to a mermaid too so I decided to put the two together and make my mermaid of gold! I loved using the gold paint and seeing it shine when tilted to the light. She's painted on 10 x 7 canvas board and looks beautiful when caught in the light. Little golden fish swim with her and I've used touches of pale blue iridescent ink in the background too, creating a watery magical sea in which they swim. Her hair is a pure golden colour and swirls around in the water, decorated with tiny flowers. If you'd like to own this pretty mermaid of gold, please click here to see all the details. :) Thankyou for coming to visit today, I hope you're having a lovely week! xx

What's happened to the weather? It's raining and windy and my gas was switched of all day yesterday so it was cold too! This little sketch popped into my sketchbook from my windy head. I finished this painting on canvas above a few days ago, it's called 'Safe Harbour' and soon after finished the other painting (with the bird flying a kite) too. I didn't have a name for it until the end and I decided upon 'Summer Breeze'. That was a day when the sun was still shining but the wind was beginning to stir. Summer Breeze sounds quite soothing doesn't it and I quite like the song of the same name. :) That guitar intro takes me back to being 13 before teenage angst really set in! Windy and rainy it might be but my latest painting is filled with a peaceful setting of pattern and colour. I like textures and the effects of different painting techniques and I'm trying to balance randomness with pattern. Not an easy ta...

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.

No words today. ~  sight ~

This is my painting for this week's Illustration Friday word.  I first drew it with a black fineliner pen, added watercolour and finished the shading with coloured pencils. I don't know why I'm drawing fish recently, it could be the shape. They're similar to leaves aren't they, and teardrops or raindrops? I tend to draw a lot of spirals too.  What shapes do you have a tendency to draw? (close-up view) Don't forget I have a 10% discount in my Etsy shop this week! :)

The other evening I stood and watched the beautiful sea. and images of mermaids and fish started brewing in my mind.... 'Popularity' for Illustration friday . It's been a while since I've used pencil crayons and I had a lot of fun blending the colours. :o) The ones I use are WH Smith's own brand, soft and bright. Just how I like it!

White rabbits! :) Or do you say "A pinch and a punch, the first of the month!"? I have my favourite flowers, tulips on this sunny (but very cold !) 1st of February. It's nice to see the sun out, it's light enough to take a photo of the little phone pouch I made the other evening from some scraps of wool I had leftover that were too small for anything else, with a handy dandy cord so it doesn't fall out of my bag and a complete stranger has to tell me that I've dropped my phone. Again! So, here's my latest doodlings. I started the drawing with a fish, added the girl carrying it and she looked as though she'd quite like to tippy toe on a branch. The leaves are done using a little rubber stamp I found lurking in a cupboard when I was having a tidy up. I've liked how I've seen other people using stamps but looked at the price of them and they are a teeny bit too much for the amount of times I think I'd use them but this one (and a few others...

Here is the finished illustration for the magazine. It's drawn in ink with a watercolour wash. I did a spot of tweaking in Photoshop. Poor fish, I'm beginning to feel sorry for them. They don't look too happy do they?! Click to enlarge.

I'm waiting for paint to dry so while I have a moment, I thought I'd show you my painting corner. The circular pallette you see down near the books was once the packaging on a pizza. Those polystyrene ones are perfect for the job and they last for ages. There are a couple of tin lids there too that I use to put paint on but they're a bit bumpy, not that useful really but I couldn't bring myself to throw them in the bin. I've had to put my big brushes and canvases to one side today. I'm working on a magazine illustration which should really have been done by now but naughty me....I forgot all about it! I've made a start and will post it here when it's finished. I've never drawn a shark before! (That's not a cup of tea on my table, that's my murky paint water. Don't worry, I haven't drunk it by accident....yet.)

I've always wanted to try my hand at pottery. At school we had to choose between pottery or 'art' and I chose art. I remember going into the pottery class once to borrow the guillotine and looked enviously upon the impressive pots they were making! Many many years later, here I am going to a pottery class with hopes and aspirations in mind, imagining I'd love every second. In fact I haven't been enjoying it at all! I clock-watch the whole 2 hours I'm there and each week leave frustrated and relieved it's over. But this week a few of my pieces came out of the kiln and I was pleasantly surprised. Above is my very first effort, a mug. It's a lot smaller than it looks in the photo, quite cute really. The right size for an expresso? I think my favourite is my fish. I didn't intend it to look like a punk but happy accidents are good 'accidents'! Next week is the last session. I've a few more things I'm in the middle of making and I'll ...

At last I've finished the mermaid painting ! We took the hardboard side panel off of the bath so that I could paint her on there. It was an odd size to paint on and would hardly fit on my easel. I did some of the painting with it across a table because the hardboard was quite thin and bendy and some of the smaller details were impossible to do with it bending to and fro! I sprinkled some very fine glitter on the scaly parts, like the mermaid's tail and the fish and finished off with several coats of matte varnish over the whole thing. She's not fixed back on the bath just yet, but you can get an idea of how it'll look if I turn this photo around this way up. Thankyou to Violette for the inspiration of using glitter in the bathroom!