2016 - The year that wasn't

I had big plans for 2016, but my back and several doses of flu etc had other ideas. I would no sooner get through one then the other would hit. So I am putting 2016 down as the year I did lots of self examination, processed ideas in my head and did a lot of research, with occasional bouts of activity!


I am now focusing on 2017 and have put into motion many of the ideas I came up with while unwell.  The first of these is a 'My useful shit book'   This will have all my ideas, research, and information.  Much of which is floating around in my head, on pieces of paper all over the house etc,.

I am also going to focus on drawing etc, so have been pre-painting pages with Gesso, which I make myself.  I have been experimenting with homemade Alcohol Inks. 

 Doing a lot of Gesso pages, I tend to do them in batches so I have them on hand

 Setting up.  These inks I made with Rubbing Alcohol and Texta Inserts. 30mls Alcohol, place insert in and leave for 24 hours, I occasionally tipped the inserts up the other way, so that the Alcohol ran back down the tube, into the bottle.

 Some I did on dry paper, others like these I wet the paper first to help spread and blend colours easier





This is a cake cooling rack that I wired together and use as my paint drying rack

Below are templates I designed and then printed on the prepainted pages.  These I plan to use for drawing practise.  Sometimes a large blank page, no matter how pretty, can be intimidating. So I break them up and just focus on one square at a time, by then the boxes are full and I just decorate with swirls, vines and other bits and pieces around the edges.

New Beginnings

2015 was a challenge.

Moving house twice made life very disorganised and disruptive.

Moved the second time just before Christmas and am slowly settling in and setting up space to start my experiments again.

So here is to 2016, the start of a New Year and the start of many new experiments to come