Lemonade Mermaid

Ever wondered what happens if you don't drink your lemonade by the 'use by' date?

Well, usually not much. It might go a bit flat and lose a bit of zing... but did you know that if you add 147 strawberry seeds and a pinch of fairy dust, you might just find one of these little ladies taking up residence?

It's true. Nobody knows if they grow or just appear, since none have seen it happen. They just find her there swishing about in the bottle and singing of the sea and lemon meringue pie.

They are quite the conversationalists. This one is called Flossie (something to do with her hair I'm guessing, rather than her teeth). She told me that her sister, Svetlana, was once mixed with Vodka and ice and nearly drunk. Well, actually, she was drunk but in the inebriated sense, rather than swallowed whole.

I'm not quite sure what I'm supposed to do with her now. She seems quite happy swimming around the bottle, but the cats keep showing her more than a passing interest and there's only so many renditions of Bye Bye Lemon Meringue Pie that a girl can take...

Be careful what you do with fairy dust I say - and always consume your lemonade well before the 'use by' date.

Flossie is for The Summer of Ice Cream Colour - this week it's Strawberry Lemonade Punch.

Err...

Eva

Well, it looks like I just can't stop drawing these girls on book pages... Last night I wasted a lot of time working on a bird piece that was collaged and painted and waxed and tweaked... But in the end, it just didn't tweet it for me.

Then, just as I was about to go to bed, the Muse gently nudged me back to the art table. "Go on... just one..." she urged. What could I say? When the Muse calls you listen (or she sulks for days refusing to come out to play). Then one face turned into two and the clock ticked way past my bedtime...

I love how I can get away with giving these girls messed up hair. In this sense they are very self-portrait. I have never been able to tame my fine mane. That's 'fine' as in thin and weedy, rather than a spectacle of luxurious coiffure.

Still there's plenty of other parts of me that chug along happily without being tamed. My imagination certainly enjoys being free to roam. Last night I scored a golfing hole in one in my dream. Everyone bought me a drink. It was very jolly... But later I was trying to find my way home and lost in Brighton while looking for Waterloo Station. It promised to be a long search as it's about 60 miles further north in London! Then before I knew it, suddenly I had match-side seats to watch Liverpool play some other team at football, but all the guys I was with said they'd prefer to go to the cinema... It's a strange old world that subconscious...

Samphire

(I knew it wouldn't be too long before a mermaid demanded to be included in this set!)

Day 5 of Art Every Day Month - I'm having so much fun!! It's never too late to join in.

The Muse in disguise

It's funny, I've written so many posts about my Muse over the years, yet as soon as I find a writing prompt to do so, she deserts me. I can hear her now, laughing hysterically in the background, at my foolish belief that she'd bend to my will. Fickle creature. I have a cunning plan though... I will leave this post for a while and sneak back when she is least expecting...

You see the Muse might be her own woman, but she does have a tendency to turn up while you are creating. She's nosy. Once you've got her in your thrall then she just can't help giving you a little idea or inspiring thought here and there. Suddenly from nowhere, the word feather will appear and you'll realise it's just what you needed to finish your piece.

The Muse loves mermaids. Perhaps that's where she goes when sneaks off - to swim with sirens? This mermaid wanted to go to the Reef Masked Ball. It's a sumptous affair with everyone having a whale of a time proudly displaying their coral and pearl jewels. Melissa wanted to be a little different so had a word with Freddy the Flying Fish (he's well known to be able to procure anything and he owed Melissa a favour after she got him out of trouble with the loan shark).

Melissa's mask has feathers thanks to Freddy (probably best not to ask where he got them from... although have you seen that parrot without a tail?

Shh.... the Muse is back and she's in a playful mood...

We made this together but can't quite decide if we prefer the original (immediately above) or the one with a little PhotoShopped texture (up top). Freddy says he likes the first one, but he would as he supplied the texture.

It's disguise theme at Illustration Friday this week. We're sneaking in under cover...

Water creature from the Aegean

Some holiday art - not that I did much. I don't think I've ever done so little on holiday. One day it was all I could do to move from sunbed by the pool to its sister by the beach. Even an annoying bug tickling my knee was too much trouble to flick off.

Luckily for the indolent creature I had become, my son had found himself a friend in the form of a pretty Danish girl. They spent almost the whole week together, playing in the pool, fishing in the sea, running, laughing, drawing, chasing.... and all done without a common language. Just goes to show the power of unspoken communication.

So, back to the sea creature. She came from a splodge of paint that my sketchbook acquired from an overladen palette. Some inspiration from the surrounding seas, pencil sketching and a few bubbles from Photoshop and she is perfect for Inspiration Avenue's 'purple & green' challenge.

Siren Sketches

Following my Magical Mythical Makings course I am once more wrapped up in a mermaid world and just can't seem to get enough of these mystical creatures.

I did these sketches over a week ago now in preparation for a potential painting, but this is as far as I got before the virus got me! I'm leaning more towards the first one as a composition. I want the richest of colours swirling around her though on a big canvas. Deep acrylics, fibres, glitter and shell shards. I'm starting to grow in confidence with using bigger materials to paint on (if only they weren't so expensive!). I even had a crazy idea of painting a wall in my bathroom (with a big pot of white emulsion ready... just in case). I wonder if that's how Michaelangelo started. Bet he got into trouble with his Mama!

I am getting more and more excited about the art retreat and the workshops with Flora Bowley. Her use of colour is phenomenal - so rich you want to dive in and hug it!

For those of you who are regular followers, I must apologise for all the whining about being ill this week - you may have gathered that I am not a good, or even patient, patient. Thank you for all the get well wishes - though I might need a few more cause they haven't worked yet.... Oops, there I go again. Whinge whinge... Just be grateful it's not catching down the wire(less)!

I'm off now to visit the other Sunday Sketchers over at Blue Chair Diary

A deep blue breath

As I swam deeper and deeper among the coral I couldn't help but follow that beautiful music, as if a seashell orchestra was luring me in. Then as I rounded the old wreck and despite the oxygen tanks on my back, I found it suddenly impossible to draw breath. There before swam a shoal of mermaids, laughing and playing with the fishes and tangling an octopus' legs. They saw me and stopped and stared bemused. I finally gulped down some air but movement was impossible as fear kept my limbs from movement.

Mermaids are stories, fiction.... No one had ever really seen one.... or at least lived to tell the tale. What would be my fate?

As I floated in that deep palace of greens and blues, the beautiful creatures pulled at my tanks and played with my flippers but with no real strength or aggression. They were fascinated by the bubbles my spent breath leaked out into the ocean and chased them toward the surface before racing back down and pulling at my arms encouraging me to join in their games.

Their sweet smiles and gentle natures thawed my fear frozen limbs and I began to swim alongside them, joining in their games in the same way I had raced the dolphins the day before. They took me deeper, in and out of caves and crevices. We swam, span and swirled in the currents and laughed at the startled sea creatures that fled from our path.

Time lost all meaning and I did not notice my tanks empty; I just kept on swimming and diving and playing and splashing and swishing my tail and undulating my body like the waves above that had now become my home...

My entry for 'breathe' the Inspiration Avenue challenge this week - and also some of the work I've been doing for Tam's Mythical art class on Willowing.ning.

I'm kinda liking these sea creatures. Expect to see more...

While we are on the subject of 'breath'... Seven years ago today, my son took his first as he popped into the world full of love and wonder. Happy Birthday my little Munchkin! xxxx

What price Art?

How do you price a piece of your creativity?

Naturally you can pay yourself an hourly rate and attempt to add on a cost for supplies (1/100th of a tube of cerulean blue, 3mm of peach pencil, one sheet of acrylic paper etc..). Then there’s depreciation – how long will that paintbrush last (especially if I forget to clean it)?

But what about your talent? The originality of the idea? The skills involved in execution? How on earth do you place a price on the contents of your imagination and the splashes of your soul that end up in some pieces? Artists like Van Gogh put their heart and soul into every painting, I think that man in particular gave more than he had.

It’s a grey old area make no mistake.

Take this piece. While I didn’t time it, I guess she took around three hours. I used paints, pencils, modelling paste, fibres, wax (I even had to buy an iron as melting wax on the same iron I use for pressing my delicates is obviously going to end in tears. Mind you £3.50 for a bog basic steam number from Tesco can’t be scoffed at!).

Then there’s the costs I wasn’t anticipating. Redecoration and carpet cleaning... Using a pump spray to give that delicate coat of speckled paint to her face caused not just a blue face my friends. The language was not so clean as the stream shot out at a bizarre angle covering everything on the table and finishing up all over the magnolia walls.

Attempt two took me outside into the garden... and back in again with muddy feet all over the carpet.

And so, as I ponder putting her for sale in my shop. What exactly should I be charging?

This is my first ever entry to Illustration Friday – a challenge site I’ve been meaning to join in with for about a year. Well, finally I managed! The theme is ‘Beneath’. My mermaid lies beneath the waves waiting patiently for her prey. I liked the eventual effect of the watery face – trying to imagine what mermaid skin might look like – a touch of camouflage perhaps. If I’d painted her tail, you might spot a barnacle or two!

Homework

I'm amazed at how much my life has been changed by my art and how influenced and helped by the online tribe I belong to. I'm awake early on a Sunday and diligently doing my Suzi Blu Siren class homework - sketching out some mermaids and familiarising myself with drawing a body and a tail! It's an absolute pleasure just playing with pencils and trying to form a 'realistic' shape. Neither sketch is perfect, but that doesn't matter - it's all the fun of experimenting and sharing those results with your friends online. It's all part of the journey... (gosh, I'm starting to sound like someone on a talent show...).

Mermaid 1 was based on a picture of a lady I found sitting clutching her knees in a magazine. She was in a bath and clearly dreaming of being a siren of the sea, so I indulged her in her fantasy. I thought a rear view might be an easy one to try (but it wasn't!). Adding a tail instead of legs was also 'interesting' and I ran out of paper as you can see, but I loved the idea of the mermaid looking out to see and dreaming... Perhaps she is dreaming of being a lady seated in a bath clutching her knees?

Ha! After posting, I realised she's missing something vital - her other arm!

Mermie 2 was proper Suzi homework based on her instruction. The interesting colour scheme leaked through from the other side of the page where I've been experimenting in background techniques! I think this creature may be a little wide on the hips. Perhaps she's been indulging in one too many oysters... I think the trick here is clearly to get your tail length in proportion, too short and she'll look stumpy and have trouble swimming away from sharks.

I think I should mention here that this is an Irish freshwater mermaid. Of course, you can't actually hear the music where you are, but I can. She's playing Riverdance and perfecting her Mermie moves...

Naturally, as it is Sunday and these are Sketches, I am posting them over on Sophia's site where you can swim along and take a look at what the other participants are creating with their pencils and pens...

Splish

Mermaid class begins today at Suzi Blu. I'm very excited. To celebrate (and contain my excitement while the first video downloads), I thought I'd have a bit of practice with bodies for Sunday Sketches. Most mermaids I draw only have top halves, so it's time to 'tell a tail'.

I own a beautiful book by Stephanie Pui-Mun Law called Dreamscapes. She teaches how to draw and paint watercolour fairies, angels and... yes... mermaids! I definitely need to practice bodies more. I'm rather hooked on magical and mythical creatures right now but they get most cross when I don't do them justice. There's a lady coming up tomorrow from a nursery rhyme... she was not happy with her hands. One looks like a claw and the other as if it's been mashed! I've had nothing but complaints all afternoon - so much so that she completely forgot about the eight-legged creature dangling down dangerously close to her shoulder.

I must also apologise for my less-than-helpful writing yesterday on my Hope piece. The work-in-progress I posted was in fact for that actual painting. First collage layer and initial sketch. Sorry for confusion! If you enlarge the finished piece you might be able to spot this layer!

Cupcakes and things

A busy week but I'm still smiling which is surely a good thing and therefore worthy of a Happy Friday post. And why not I say, why not?

Happy taste buds (not so happy waistline)

I've just eaten my fourth of these cupcakes. Not in one go, I hasten to add although I did eat three yesterday. What can I say? There were there... They were tasty... They called to me... Hosted an employee event at work and these were part of the refreshments. My excuses for consuming three in the space of a few short hours was a) naturally it was essential that I tested then to make sure they were suitable for general consumption; and b) there was a great deal of manual labour involved with lugging chairs, tables, bottles, glasses and general bits and pieces, so clearly I worke them off!

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Happy mail

Earlier in the week I answered the door to the postie to find a neat little package all for me! I was so lucky to win a giveaway on Claire Barone's Curious Emporium blog. This cute little bunny girl and a fancy brooch. You must check out her artwork which is adorable. Hers is one of those blogs I recently stumbled upon (but haven't a clue how I found her!), but now make regular visits. She has an Etsy shop too.

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Happy art

Although the back end of this week has been a little dry in terms of artistic output, last weekend certainly made up for it and the warm feelings of so much productivity persist! Here's another fairy! She was the sketchbook try out for what eventually became my Butterfly girl.

Now, I've written before about how so often I'll find mermaids appearing on the page when they were never intended, well from next week they can splash their way into my art as often as they desire for I shall be partaking of Suzi Blu's Sirens course. Week one will see us working on colour matching. My pencils are itching to get started. My bank balance is crying (for some new paint seemed entirely necessary). Watch this space for scales, tails and mermaid wails!

Dripping into Photoshop

Hot on the heels of my previous post, written while once more in a mood that belongs more to a bear with a sore head, I return fresh from a bout of restorative creativity.

I have been pondering what to create all week for the IA Water challenge. I had high hopes for an abstract acrylic, but the week is running away with me and I have many plans yet to fulfill, so I turned instead to my stash of 'not quite sure what to do with this' creations and my old and trusty friend Photoshop.

Last week I painted a watery moon at sunset, but it was a very half-hearted attempt that never amounted to much. This week however, it was viewed in a new light - the beginnings of an idea began to unfurl. Into the scanner went the moon where she reappeared magically in Photoshop. Now to play... A spot of duplication and she was now reflecting perfectly in a sea sparkling with moon dust. Was this enough? Well, no. How about some play with the ocean ripple filter... And what about a bit of blending? Very nice I'm sure but lacking a focal point.

Hold on, can you hear singing? The sirens are calling. I landed one of my friendly creations and she dripped her way onto the screen. Can you see her appearing through the phosphoresce?

Happy Creativity

I have been so creative this week. I have become surgically attached to my coloured pencils and sketch book. I can't get enough. I work hard all day only to come alive at dusk when the graphite scrapes across the paper and faces appear to me from the white pages urging me to listen to their stories.

The last year has been the most creatively prolific of my life. I'm like a woman possessed. I am not sure that I have ever been so dedicated to a cause or maybe the word should be 'addicted'. Is it a high I am experiencing? A rush of endorphins dancing through my veins into my creative soul? Whatever, I love it. It makes me happy and gives me such a giddy rush.

It's a shame I didn't feel like this while studying art for A Level back in my youth. Why did I allow the bare minimum to be enough? Where was my passion then? My drive, my fire? Was it the lack of inspiration from my teachers, or was inspiration missing?

Well, let's take those as two questions.

1. My art teachers were pretty rubbish. This week Suzi Blu has been teaching me. No contest. The woman is my hero.

2. Inspiration. Again. No contest. How lucky the youth of today are to have an entire world at their fingertips. I can reach out from everyone from the great Masters to new arty friends I met through blogging in seconds. I can type a simple keyword and be bombarded with colours, textures and dreamscapes. It is the most incredible thing and I love it as I love my new friends and this wonderful tribe of creatives I have become a part of.

This is my Friday Happy post for the Happy Book Group. Yesterday, our tribal leader Jamie wrote an interesting piece on how even little nibbles on the creative delicacies can be so good for our souls. It had me leaping around in my seat with agreement. Now I am off to paint some more. For now, I'll you with a work in progress, a finished mermaid (prompted by so many positive comments on my original post last week and originally inspired by artistic blog hopping) and a little sketching experimentation...

Have a wonderful weekend.

Recurring mermaids

If there's a theme that's recurring frequently in my work (this week's prompt at MMM) it has to be mermaids, and what's most interesting about these sea sirens is that most times they are never what I intended to create. They just sort of appear, rather like their mythical counterparts.

Take this purple creature. I was sitting on a balcony facing the sea last week watching the sun set and searching for a little artistic inspiration. I began by loosely copying a fabric pattern from a magazine but it lacked interest. However, I had planned for this and so with a swish of water rubbed in with fingers, the watersoluble wax pastels began to lift from the page and form little pools of colour. A squish of the pages together left and a delightfully soft mix of deep sea colour that just called out to be... well... mermaid... I drew her in with coloured pencils.

Other mermaids have grown from the page unexpectedly too. One began life as an angel, but she kept getting her wings wet. Another's dress took on such a scaled effect that she slithered off the page into the water before I could catch her. And a third simply wasn't happy until I'd painted out her legs and dripped diamond and pearl drops into her beautiful mane.

Of course, one shouldn't restrict ourselves to the female of the species. Here's a rather handsome merman I made last week too!

A-tissue

Do mermaids ever catch colds I wonder? What do they blow their nose on?

I've been meaning to hook up on this great challenge site for ages and finally am participating in Michelle Ward's GPP Street Team. This month we're 'grabbing a tissue'.

I love using tissue paper in my mixed media work - in fact, it was one of the first additional media I experimented with when I began this exciting artistic foray. For this piece I had in mind to conjure an angel. I have some lovely tissue paper covered with cupids and some sparkly globes as well as some thicker golden samples. I gave her strong wings and soft hair but somehow the picture just wasn't working. The wings did not look like they would ever unfurl, much less fly. It's funny because I was working on this Monday night, just as I had written my post about being 'prepared to change our paintings', where I was talking about life as well as art. So, undaunted I quite literally ripped the wings off* and angelic creature of the stars became siren of the sea instead. I like this. There's so much texture and layered colour from the tissue - in fact, I can't actually close my journal now owing to the layers of tissue and the addition of some real shells. Well, a mermaid must have adornment mustn't she?

I'm still not happy with my noses. I want them to look all cutesy but instead she looks like she's been slapped around the face with a shark's tail. I think I may just practice nose after nose in my journal until I form one I'm happy with. I guess I would never make a terribly good plastic surgeon.

Mixed media journal page (well, sketchbook really since I rarely write in it!). Coloured pencil, acrylics, tissue papers, oil pastel, clear gesso, shells.

* No angels or mermaids were harmed in the creation of this painting.

Five words

Some like to channel surf, some get wet in the waves. Me, I love a bit of blog surfing. Every so often you catch a big one that thrills you all the way to shore. One day I hopped on Carmen’s blog wave. Sea stories are rather appropriate because (and I must whisper this because it’s a bit magical), she is actually a mermaid. Yes, a real one. She has also perfected the art of transforming herself into human form and pottering about on the Californian coastline (but, it seems, never too far away from the sea, she has to swim occasionally). We are glad of this because it means she can blog without electrocuting herself – computers and sea water … never a good mix.

Without the wonder of blogs we would miss so many networking opportunities. So, I sit here often in the English rain networking and reading the adventurous words of my mermaid chica spreading her bliss far across the oceans.

Words in bold are a bit of fun – Carmen challenged me to write something including these five words. And so... I have!

If you’d like a five word challenge, please leave a request in the comments!

The picture is not Carmen, it is her mermaid friend Sandy. I made her on a Cornish beach back in the balmy English summertime... It seems so long ago now...

What magic?

What magic lurks on this distant shore? What treasure from the deep is this? Who is she? What does she want?

"Write" she whispers through her sea drenched tendrills. "Write from the heart and soul. Set your imagination free to ride the winds of fancy.

"Run with the elves through the verdant woodland, soar with sprites and come swim with me in the phosphorescence."

She has inspired me, my damp maiden - sending my thoughts back to the land of fantasy where my lonely book characters await my tender ministrations. Yes, I will write... or maybe just quickly paint you a friend...

When the muse strikes

I keep staring at this blank page. I am not normally at a loss for words when it comes to blogging, but yesterday I made a dreadful mistake. I told someone that 'there is a story in anything; you just need to find the right angle'. But where is my story tonight? Why is there so much white on this page? Instead, I shall share with you a little creation I was rather chuffed with. Experimenting once again with the plethora of materials I have so thoughtfully stored for art supply shops over the years, I had a bash at a technique new to me.

I've never been happy with my figure drawing, so imagine my joy when I learnt that creating a mermaid could be as easy as ripping a page out of a magazine. This lady started off in a silver sequined evening dress strutting her stuff on a page of high fashion. Now she resides in a watery palace, a siren of the sea. She seems quite enamoured of her new home and I think has her eye on a sexy merman, or maybe she just wants to nibble on a lobster or mollusk or two. She loves her flowing tresses and thinks I made her eyes up most prettily. Off she swims to find her muse again...