Paint on my hands

It's been a while since I have posted and painted.  Both of which I have missed.  Let's just say that right now I have too many stressful things going on in my life and I am hoping that very soon they will come to an end.  It's affected my blogging but more importantly my painting time.

Little Ollie was 4 yesterday and I promised to create an Octonauts banner for his party this weekend.  As usual I have left things to the last minute so I am now frantically painting like mad in every spare moment.  The best thing is that I have had paint on my hands and felt it on my fingers which I find so comforting.  It's been just what my soul has needed.  Plus I have been listening to Absolute 80's as I paint and singing rather badly.  Why is it that belting out a great song that brings back great memories makes you feel so much better.  I apologise now to my lovely Jim.  He had to wear his headphones last night to block out the wailing noise coming from my studio.

I hope you are all having a good week and not letting the rain dampen your spirits.  Although right now as I type this, the sun is shining!

Take care ~ Helen

Colour swatches

A few years ago when I did a painting class in St Ives, the tutor suggested that we try mixing our colours up to see what they actually produced, as cool yellows with cool blues give you a different shade of green than warm yellows with a warm blue. I took it one step further and decided to try and mix almost all the colours in my paint palette to see what I would get. This resulted in the swatch above, which I still have to this day, albeit slightly faded and is stuck up on my side unit.

Accomplished artists know exactly what colours work and what ones don't but sometimes I think even the best can forget just how well two colours mixed together can produce one great colour. It's also great to see which pigments granulate and which ones don't as it can be cool to let paints do their own thing on the paper.

I don't know about you but I tend to keep my watercolours laid out in the same location in my paint box, so in order to help me pick just the right shade, I painted a bit of each colour onto some watercolour paper and stuck it up on the wall above my art desk. Even though I have been using these colours for years, I still find it useful to cast my mind over the colours to make sure I pick the right one if I am looking for a particular shade.

Last Christmas I was given a wonderful gouache paint box with the most beautiful vibrant colours in it so I am now getting used to different colours and how adding white affects them. I decided to do the same exercise with these paints to help me. I love how you can see the effect of adding white (it's the smaller line above each colour).

It's well worth experimenting if you haven't already.

Happy Thursday xx

A photo from the archives...

Yesterday I was thinking about the painting holiday in St Ives I went on some time ago....July 07 to be precise and how invigorating it was. How much fun I had being with creative souls, none of whom I knew at the start and how we all painted the same scene so very differently.

I need another painting holiday and I think St Ives is just the ticket. I mean just look at their studio (although I think it has been revamped now). Can you feel the history of the place.....smell the paint.....drink in the atmosphere? Heaven.

Have a lovely Tuesday!

Painting, it's Friday and a new book

Last night I dusted off my half finished canvases (literally) and carried on with some painting. After a long day at work and commuting to and from London I was a bit tired, so didn't get as much done as I had hoped......but boy did I enjoy myself.

I have a box full of things to make marks with instead of a brush. Old credit cards, string, feathers, hair slides and empty toilet rolls to name a few.

And this morning I treated myself to a new book and sat in Starbucks to have a read before the madness of the day begins.

Happy Friday to you all :o)

Alan Oliver

I've been going through old issues of my painting magazines so that I can add the pictures I find inspirational into my scrapbook and then discard the magazine. I used to keep them.....all of them, every single one......and all I ended up with was a pile gathering dust that I never looked at again. So the scrapbook is a much better idea. It's also really interesting to look at the pattern that emerges.....it really helps define your style.

Anyway I digress. In the October 2010 issue of The Leisure Painter magazine there was an article on Alan Oliver and his use of gouache. Perfect timing to go through this magazine as I have just received a lovely gouache paint box. So I read on in earnest.

I must say I really liked Alan's style. I loved his loose expressive brush strokes and his use of colour. He paints mainly on mount board and he suggested for anyone who would like to try this to visit their local framers to see if they could purchase any scrap mount board - some even give it for free.


The colours in the painting above are wonderful - I just love the lilacs and blues against the white.

I am struggling to find a favourite painting and the one above and below are on par with each other. I love the abstract look to the above snowscape, how Alan scraped the paint on and off the board to get the desired effect. Again I love the lilacs....but then again for some reason I am always drawn to paintings with this colour in it.

The painting below is called Thatched Cottage and Alan has used Indian Ink to draw in the dark shapes. I love the way the paint has merged into each other to create this beautiful soft effect. I am seriously in awe of these two paintings.

I will definitely be adding these to my scrapbook and I really couldn't recommend creating one of these for yourself. Very inspiring.

If you want to find out more about Alan, then please check out his website.

Hope you are all having a good Tuesday :o) xx

Alicia Padrón

I love watching other artists paint. No matter the subject or if I am familiar with the techniques, I still find it so wonderful to watch a fellow artist put paint to paper/canvas/wood/or whichever medium they choose. It is also incredibly inspiring and I am grateful to those that have the time and the technology to share their process.

I have recently stumbled across Alicia Padrón and I loved her little teddy bear illustration above. You can find her website here and her blog here.

Enjoy!

Helen xx

Agnes Cecile

You tube is great for finding inspiration and seeing artists at work. I recently found the work of Agnes Cecile and her work is amazing.

I love the drips, the emotions you feel from her work and the colours. I tip my hat to her (if I wore one).

I hope you enjoy watching this as much as I did and admire her talent!

This time next week it'll be a few days until Christmas......think I need to get a move on and get everything sorted out. Thankfully I have cut the spending down quite a bit this year which makes life so much easier. I know I keep on saying this but it really is about being with those you love - that is the gift.

A craft store trip

It's been a lovely weekend and the only thing missing really was seeing my mum. I normally visit on a Saturday, but I just had too much to get sorted out ready for Christmas, so I am looking forward to seeing her next week.

On Saturday I managed to finally visit the new Hobbycraft that had opened up in Staines. Since moving this is now my nearest one. I know they are a bit overpriced but I went in determined not to spend any more than I needed. The thing with Hobbycraft is that it pretty much covers most hobbies which means there's tonnes to look at, touch and sigh over. But I was good and only bought what was on my list.

I wanted to make some felt decorations for the kiddies presents (ours and my friends) so I picked up some felt and thread. I will use them to decorate the present with and hopefully if they are good enough they can be used as tree decorations. Least that's the plan. I bought 10 sheets of felt but does anyone know where you can buy this any cheaper in larger sizes? They weren't really expensive but I just feel I could get a better deal (I'm asking as I really want to make more things with felt).

I also wanted to make stockings this year for us all, but my sewing machine is buried in stuff at the house which I am still doing up, so I thought I would buy these and personalise them. They are not brilliant stockings, but I didn't want to spend a fortune as I really want to spend time making lovely, long lasting ones. I guess that will have to be next year now. Still, I plan on making these look nice by giving them an individual look so I will use some of the felt I bought to add names etc to these.

I desperately needed some pinking shears and debated whether to buy Fiskars ones as my dressmaking shears are by them and really good quality. I mulled it over and ended up buying the Hobbycraft ones at half the price. I just hope they are not half the quality either. I also bought a pen to mark out my design on the felt and apparently the ink vanishes by air after 24 hours. Has anyone else used this? I hope it works.

At then Hobbycraft got me at the till. As I queued up they had chocolate bells in a big tub and I gave in and purchased them....still that was the only thing that wasn't on the list so I patted myself on the back!!

I put these on the tree when the kids were in bed and within 30 minutes of Ollie waking up he walked around the tree, stood on tiptoe, held one in his hands and said 'that is locklat'. It's amazing how at 3 and a half children can sniff out chocolate.

I don't know if it's to do with Christmas or not, but I really feel like making and learning lots and lots of crafts. It may have to do with Kirstie's Handmade Britain or all of the lovely Facebook pages I have found recently, but I really want to paint, take photo's, sew, bake and just totally lose myself in crafty things.

Hope you all had a great weekend and that your week is wonderful.

Helen

A painting from the archives

The other day I posted a photograph from my archives - one that I used to sell a lot of. So today I thought I would share one of my life drawing paintings. This was done using pastels and I remember my tutor, Fran, pushing me to use the colours of the sarong on her skin, as almost a reflection. I tended to do a lot of my nudes in charcoal and this was the first one I did in pastels. I had THE most amazing time. I felt like I was just touching the surface of what I could achieve. Shortly after this session the classes stopped for a while and then I couldn't make the new term

I really did enjoy creating this study and I hope to join another life class in the not too distant future.

Hope you had a nice evening last night and are looking forward to the weekend. I missed Kirstie's Handmade Britain as for some reason our telly as decided to remove quite a few channels from it's selection....Channel 4 being one of them. Thanks heavens for catch up tv.

Have a great day!

Helen xx

Ivan Vesley

I came across this video the other day and found it fascinating. Just goes to show that you can use anything to make a painting.

Hope you're having a good day so far.

Helen xx

Paint Party Friday

I am in the process of painting two more pictures with the Forest Garden theme and this is one of them. It's not finished yet but I've let it sit for a bit until I decided what else I would like to do to it. I will share the other one with you in another post, but you can see it here on my workdesk.

I'm off to check out the other Paint Party Friday paintings and I hope you all have a lovely weekend!

Helen xx

My work desk

I looked at my desk tonight and thought I would share a picture of what it currently looks like.

I love being nosy at other people's workspaces so thought I would share mine, especially as it is relatively tidy. Click on the picture for a larger image.

I am thinking up ideas for Christmas cards at the moment and would love to use my new pen tablet to draw on the pc but I am just getting used to the way it works. It feels a bit weird at the moment! I am sure this will pass once I start to use it.

Hope you are all having a good week so far. It's mild here but has been raining today and right now I am feeling a bit chilly so might cuddle up on the sofa for a bit!

Artist D.D Gadjanski

I stumbled across this lady on You Tube and wanted to share it. I love the looseness of her demonstration and her accent is just wonderful!

Have a great day

Watch out there's a Gruffalo about!

Ages ago I created a Charlie and Lola party invite for my best friends daughters 5th Birthday party. And I loved every minute of it. I learned lots in photoshop thanks to my lovely Jim and I was quite pleased with the invite. You can see it here. It's now approaching her 2 year olds birthday party and I have been given the task of producing a Gruffalo themed invite, so last night I got stuck in!

As I was waiting for the wash to dry I looked around and my other paintings winked at me.....so I got out my yellow acrylic ink and did some drizzling. Then sprayed water over it and tilted the canvas until I liked how it looked.

I also decided where I wanted the flowers to be and used the children's numbered tubs to draw round for perfect circles. And to think I nearly chucked these away - these are perfect as you have all different size circles!

And once done, I laid the canvas flat to dry.

I will do some more to the invites tonight as my 'client' is very demanding :o)

Hello!

It's been a crazy busy week which always means my art and blogging suffer. However I did find time to go the the BP Portrait Exhibition 2011 at the National Gallery last week before the exhibition ended. Considering I walk past the Gallery every day it took me a while to make it!

This painting of George O'Dowd aka Boy George by Layla Lyons just blew me away. This photograph does not do it justice as it is far more colourful in person, and at almost 2 metres in height it really has an amazing impact. If I was Boy George, I would be over the moon with this portrait. What I loved most was seeing it up close, seeing the brush strokes and then standing back and feeling blown away by it! Very Inspirational!

I hope to have more painting time this week and an update on some works in progress.

Happy Monday.

Helen xx

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

I am in love

I was looking online last week for ideas for my wedding. I love the idea of a 50's themed wedding but I am not too sure I would suit the dress. However, it doesn't stop me from falling in love with them. I will post my findings as and when I can and right now I have to show you this dress. I can imagine Carrie Bradshaw from SITC wearing it. It just made me gasp when I saw it!

I am so in love with this dress. The designer and creator of this dreamy dress is Brighton based Joanne Fleming. You can find her blog here and also if you search Joanne Fleming Design on Facebook you can find her page. I highly suggest you like it!

I have to say that her dresses are just wonderful and all so individual. I am all for supporting local artists, whether they are potters, knitters, dressmakers, musicians or painters. And I am blown away at the talent we have in this country.

Talking of art, I have been cleaning out my studio space the last few nights as it's incredibly messy, and as I don't mind working in a mess it gets to the point where eventually I can't stand it any more. I will post up some more pictures soon of the paintings I started last week.

Have a good Thursday....almost the weekend!

Two more on the go

An observation
When I don’t paint or create I feel like something major is missing from my life. I feel restless, frustrated and sometimes miserable.

Solution
Paint more (simple!)

Problem
Time (Life sometimes gets in the way)

What needs to go?
Internet time

Wise words from countless successful artists.....paint every day or as often as you can. It doesn’t always matter what but the fact that you are taking action generates activities which can in turn generate success.

So it seems I need to paint more, stop wasting time on the internet and do a little every day.

My new mantra I reckon.....

The start of two new paintings......

Have a good weekend!

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

I just love this

I came across this dress on the make something blog. I love it....from the hand-dyed silk to the actual style of it. So simple but utterly wonderful.

For more pictures and information, please click here.

Hope you're having a good week. I attended my online Paint Free class last night and I really enjoyed myself. I'm looking forward to seeing where this course takes me and my art.

I have also finished my recent painting which I intend to call 'Forest Garden' and I will post pictures of that in the next day or so.

I wish I could paint all day....

xox