Nellie Windmill

Before I share with you my latest interweb fruit finds, I want to introduce to you three French Sheep. They’re singing the French lullaby “Frere Jacques” (or “Brother John” in the English version). They’re also sleeping and counting themselves, because they’re good at multi-tasking that way.

Every now and then, I write a post with a list of things I wish somebody had told me as a newbie artist. If I never say anything on this topic again, I’ll be satisfied that I have at least shared this, because this one’s a woppa. I absolutely wish someone had told me this. Not right away. Maybe at that point when I’d been creating long enough to be hooked and determined to learn, yet a little

Pinterest is a magical land of everything that is good and pretty on the internet, but you all probably know this already because I’m late to the party. If you’re even later than me, clear your schedule and head on over now to devour the eye-candy that awaits! Or if you’re wondering what the hell I’m talking about, you can read what it’s all about first.

Early adopter I’m not. I’ve finally scraped together a Nellie Windmill facebook page, just in time for the mass exodus to Google+. This feels very grown-up and a little scary. So if you’re like me and are hoping our Geek Overlords will fail in their evil attempts to foist yet another social media site on us, and you want to hang out with fellow reactionaries, come on over.

I’ve almost finished a painting that was done entirely with dry brushing! Do you have any idea how long a painting done entirely with dry brushing takes?! Nothing has ever taken this long. At the moment it’s my favourite way to create shading, but I’ve learnt from this experience to avoid it for fine detail work — bloody nightmare.

It always surprises me, the direction a painting takes. It’s rather delightful ending up with something that I couldn’t have dreamt up from a standing start. Sleepy French sheep certainly never would have crossed my mind!

The exquisite beauty of Lauren Gray’s art makes me ache. A while back, I wrote about how It would hurt to look at beautiful things I didn’t create in the days before I had found my way back to art making. I’m pretty sure if I had’ve lain eyes on the artwork of Lauren Gray during this time I would have torn asunder. I want to touch them, and smell them and hang them somewhere I will see every single day. I have a dear little list of artists whose original work I look forward to collecting when I have a house again and Lauren Gray shot to the top of that list as soon as I set eyes on her figurative work.

There are a few facets to my life. Most of you will already know that I used to be a social worker back in Australia before moving to Europe to live in a motorhome and paint like a vagabonding gypsy. What you probably don’t know is that I run an iPhone and Mac software development business with my partner, who’s a computer wizard (although I have mentioned our business a couple of times on the blog they’re the type of posts that get hidden deep within its labyrinthine bowels). It wasn’t always the plan that I’d help run the business but it just naturally emerged over time as the sensible thing to do.

There’s something really vulnerable about posting work-in-progress shots, isn’t there? It’s a lot less vulnerable once the work is complete and you can point to the finished piece and say, “see, it didn’t turn out so bad”. I’m learning to be more comfortable with the ugly stages of a painting. I used to get really down on myself whilst working on a piece because I didn’t know to expect ugly stages. This meant that for a time, I actually didn’t enjoy painting very much at all! That was a very strange time – I yearned to make art but wasn’t enjoying the process so I experienced a lot of shame about that. It was very confusing. It would’ve been nice to have someone to talk to about that at the time, but then I guess that’s what this blog is for. I vow to be braver with sharing my insecurities on this blog in the future.

I began these little guys in Wales when we were house-sitting over winter, finished them in Scotland, and I’m now posting them in Belgium! I think I’ve wanted to paint owls since I started painting but somehow have only just gotten around to it. I’m really looking forward to painting many, many more.

I was inspired by this blog article over at Imaginative Bloom, to create a collection of some of the yummiest wearables I’ve seen on the internet. Also, it’s my birthday month so, you know…