Yay for Saturday

It's Saturday! Yay! Time to attend my best friend daughter's 6th birthday party, help Jim take the photo's and look after little Ollie. Cake, face painting, balloon modeling....not sure I'll have time to take the photo's ;o)

Happy Saturday to you all!

Ps.....wonder if Bear can squeeze his way out of the Penguins to come along?

Forest Garden - painting in progress video

It's been a busy weekend what with nursery graduation for Daisy (nursery did a graduation party for the children leaving nursery and starting school), painting and doing more stuff to the house and of course keeping the kids entertained!

I did find time to finally put the video together of the progress of my Forest Garden painting, which I hope you enjoy.

Forest Garden - mixed media painting from Helen Mills on Vimeo.

Hope you have a good Monday!

Helen xx

Forest Garden

Here's my finished painting. It's like nothing I have painted before and I have used lots of different techniques and methods and really enjoyed the process.

I used inks, pencil, acrylic, surgical spirit and lots of water. I let the paint run, drip and splash. I had no agenda as to how I wanted the final picture to end up.....all I knew was that I wanted to be guided by instinct and that is what happened.

Anyway, here it is and it's also in time for Paint Party Friday - yay!

I will be posting more on this making of this painting soon, but in the meantime, take care and have a wonderful Friday.

Helen x x

ps - click on the picture for a larger image

Flower power

I've added some more flowers and things to the painting, but still have more to do. It's funny how in a painting there are some things you love and they are usually a result of a happy accident.

Feeling quite emotionally drained as the last few days have taken it out of me, so the comfort of painting is doing me good.

Enjoy your Tuesday!

Helen xx

Just can't get it right

I am finding this really hard and I don't know why. This scene is completely from my head and if I hadn't painted like this before, then I would think that is the problem.

I started to use a brush on the sky but I wasn't getting the look I was after. So I returned to the palette knife which was how I started off the painting and started laying on paint. Then I had an accident and smudged white paint on the dark part of the sky, so ended up painting over it. But I suddenly started painting really bold and slapped the paint on. I loved doing it. I had fun - which is the main thing - but I am still not happy with it. It feels like I have been painting this forever. I had to stop to let the paint dry as I was just smudging it all over the place.

Close up of the textures in the sky

So I left it for another night. I want to start on another painting but if I do then I know that this one will never be finished.

I'll get there I'm sure!