Jessie Lilac Blog

I've been thinking about why I'm drawing cottages lately.  Maybe it's because there aren't many people around where we live and on our daily walks we rarely come across anyone else which I suppose is a good thing as we're still in Lockdown and have to practice Social Distancing which has now become a very well used phrase in our language! Maybe it's this lack of seeing people around that my mind is turning towards houses and flowers? The ones above are done in ink. I love the pearlescent inks, they're so beautiful when they catch the light. The paintings above and below are painted in acrylic. I've been obsessed with watercolour for a few weeks but I felt I'd like to get some acrylics out again. I've always been like this, going through phases of being obsessed with a particular medium thinking yes this is it! This is my final medium and then finding myself being drawn to changing once again to a different way of wor...

I'm not going to talk about the weirdness that's happened to the world because we all know about that already but one thing I noticed since lockdown is that my artwork has changed from drawing girls to drawing houses. I'm going to share my latest ones here.  They're all done in watercolour and with these first ones I used black pen too.  They're mainly based on cottages I've seen on visits to Cornwall and Dorset with the addition of my own imaginary flowers and colours. I'm not sure which style I prefer, the very traditional looking paintings or the more abstracty ones without any pen lines. I'm enjoying painting both styles and that's the most important thing. I hope you're staying safe and well.

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...

These paintings were done in my sketchbook just before a very busy time began a couple of weeks ago. The top one is done in watercolour and a black pen and the second one in Tombow markers. I love how you can add water to them to make them flow like watercolours.   A funeral in Wales took us near a beautiful part of the country where we saw these creatures carved from tree trunks. We stopped here for a cup of tea before the long journey home. What a lovely view. This waterfall looks magical to me, straight out of a fairy tale! 🍃 🌿 🍃🌿 🍃🌿  My birthday was in December and my son and his partner bought me a ticket to Kew Gardens . We waited until June to go because when you're visiting a garden you want to be able walk around at ease looking at all the glorious colour don't you? Well as it turned out we happened to go on the wettest and most rainiest day of the year! But it turned out to be the best thing because there w...