I'm heading off to a convention in London in the middle of August. It's called For the Love of Fantasy, and it's one of those multi-fandom affairs, and for once I'm not actually going for the Supernatural guests, It's not that I don't love seeing them, but just once I thought I'd have a bit of variety, so I'm having a Lord of the Rings weekend.
I'm going to get up close and personal with four hobbits and Gandalf!
So, I've been cracking on with some artwork for hobbit autos, and so far I have a brace of hobbits - otherwise known and Samwise Gamgee and Mister Frodo !
I've been doing a bit of artwork to give my newly repaired eye a trial run. I'm thrilled to say all seems as it should be and that my (correct) eyesight hasn't altered much, if at all.
I based this little character on one of my two fluffy little freeloaders, and because I was so excited about doing this, I posted progress reports on my Facebook.
So here they are, from first draft through to finished product!
Apologies for my 'radio silence' for a few days. I've been over on the Isle of Wight, visiting my parents, and also participating in Open Studios.
I don't know if Open Studios is something that has travelled outside the shores of the UK, but if not, it's an event that takes place every year where people can visit artists at work in their studios and check out their work and maybe even buy some!
I've never taken part in Open Studios before because my house in Surrey is not set up to have strangers coming in off the street to look at my studio and my work (mainly because it's all upstairs) and because my parents' house in the Isle of Wight is — well, it's my parents' house — and I can't expect them to play host to a bunch of strangers!
However, now that dapplegrey art has a permanent home in the Imaginarium in West Wight, I have a base for Open Studios!
So, I have been spending three days being one of seven artists in situ at the Imaginarium, doing some arting, doing a bit of 'workshoppy' stuff, and generally just having three wonderful days just talking non-stop about art. I even sold a couple of prints!
So, back in February, I mentioned that I was doing a picture of my God-daughter, Amy, competing on her horse, Enzo.
This picture has dragged on so long, mainly due to everything else that's been going on in my life, both from a practical point of view with me travelling here there and everywhere, but also from a mental point of view, because more often than not, my art inspiration switch has been well and truly set at the 'off' position for most of the last few weeks now. And that's the main part of the reason it's taken so long, I've been dipping in and out of it when the muse has been awake, rather than trying to force it and produce something sub-standard.
But, I've finally finished it. Amy is aware of the situation and has been just awesome, bearing with me, even though I missed her birthday (which was four days ago).
This will be going in the post to New Zealand next week. I hope I've done Amy and Enzo justice :)
With all the craziness that's been going on over the last few months, my arty inspiration has been at an all-time low. But as I have a long-awaited four-time rearranged convention finally going ahead in Paris this coming weekend, I decided to have a bash at producing one picture to take with me for signing.
And so, as Mark P is going to be there and I haven't done a picture of Lucifer for a while, I decided on a very sinister looking Luci for an autograph.
I enjoyed doing this and it felt good to be 'back in the saddle' again!
So, it's been far too long ... two years to be precise, but I have two art exhibitions in September. I am so excited, just to be on the road, get my pictures out of mothballs and see some fellow stallholders again. I just can't wait! (Obviously, it would be nice to sell some stuff as well, but let's worry about that on the day!)
But in the meantime, I have been keeping busy and I've just finished my latest commission for a lady who wanted a birthday gift for her father. His beloved puppy, Jed.
Jed went to his new home this morning, but won't actually be presented until the middle of September on said birthday!
It's Mental Health Awareness Week in a couple of weeks' time, and my work wants to do a few things to mark it.
One of the things they want to do is invite people to showcase their hobbies. Hobbies are so important in looking after mental health. They're so good for the soul, and they asked me if I would be able to make a little video of me drawing a picture to showcase te benefits of having a hobby.
The thing is, I'm just not in a great frame of mind at the moment; just not in a creative headspace. I had a go at doing it last weekend and trying to multi-task for the video, talking and drawing at the same time, was just not working.
So I've decided to go down a different route with an existing 'work in progress' series of pictures, and see if somene far cleverer than me can make them into some kind of video!
So, I'm trying them out on you guys first. What do you think? Are they positive? Do they make you want to take up art? Do they make you happy?
Having a few days off over Easter has given me a bit of headspace and a bit of time which has been nice after a manic few weeks at work!
I'd been invited to join a great series of art workshops called 'Sketchbook Revival' on Facebook by amberdreams and this was the first opportunity I've had to play in that sandbox.
So far, I've only managed to participate in two of the workshops, but without a single pastel in sight! It was fun to step outside of my comfort zone for a bit.
amberdreams introduced me to a charity event, twitterartexhibit which is an art exhibition in aid of leukaemia and Intensive Chemotherapy fund.
Artists are asked to produce postcard-sized (16 cm x 12 cm) pieces of artwork which are then exhibited for sale in aid of the charity.
So, I had a little think about what to produce, and as the emphasis is on selling the art, I decided to reimagine one of dapplegrey art's best-selling pictures.
And then I had a phone call yesterday - commission number three has come along! That's Jack, a Welsh Section D Pony who I shall be going to meet next week!
I was doing a bit of spring cleaning this morning (yes, that's right, it takes a global catastrophe for me to galvanise my arse into spring cleaning), and I came across a bag of papers stashed away under our spare bed.
When I opened it up, I found the artwork I submitted for my Art O Level way back in 1984. I'd totally forgotten it was there!
Just for those who might not know; here in the UK, O Levels were the exams kids took at 16 before leaving school, and before going on to whatever they were going to do next, whether it be sixth form college, tech college or, like me, straight out to hard labour!
O Levels were discontinued the year after I took mine and replaced by another type of exam.
Anyhow, so my O Level was Fine Art, and it was (I think) a 14 hour exam over 3 days. The main artwork was a still life over 10 hours, and the subsidiary paper was a life study and it was over 4 hours. In addition to this, you had to do a lot of prep which was a good few extra hours.
I'm sorry I haven't been around that much this week. There's no sinister reason for that except that it's been a mad week in work. We've been moving our payroll over to a new payroll bureau, so over the last few weeks, after five parallel runs on the payrolls from June to October, finally we were ready in November to make the move.
We have 750 people relying on their paycheck going into the bank on Thursday next week, and so that's a whole lot of checking and balancing, then double checking and re-balancing. So it's been intense. My brain and eyes have been boggled beyond belief by the time I got home most evenings, and so I really wasn't up to writing anything - far less anything remotely entertaining!!!
I mentioned in my last post that I had a couple of art commitments on the go this week.
One, I can't show you yet, but the other is the third and final piece of artwork that I'm doing for my Torchwood convention next week. This is Rhys Williams, Gwen's cute and cuddly, long-suffering boyfriend/fiance/husband.
I've been away for a long weekend in beautiful Warwickshire (Shakespeare Country) with Mr D on a long weekend to belatedly celebrate our anniversary at Chesford Grange,our favourite lovely Manor House Hotel in Kenilworth.
We had nice days out just mooching around Leamington, Warwick and Stratford-upon-Avon, with a cooked breakfast in the morning. On Sunday Morning I booked myself a nice relaxing massage, and then each evening, after dinner, we just retired to the bar with a bottle of wine, and while Mr D Zoned out with his book, I zoned out over my Spn colouring book.
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amberdreams and this was the first opportunity I've had to play in that sandbox.
