It has been such a long time since I have been able to get on with some painting.  I started this months ago hoping to complete three other designs as well ready for Christmas cards.  Unfortunately that plan has gone out of the window and I think I will keep the designs tucked away for next year.  School seems to have taken over and I am there far more than I should be.  Trouble is I love it as much as I love illustrating but trying to find the balance is tricky.  Who knows what next year will bring.

This weekend I went to The Printhaus in Cardiff to learn about photo emulsion screen printing AT LAST!!  I have been wanting to do this for so long.  It was a brilliant weekend and I picked up lots of tips for my paper cut screens as well.  They run all sorts of courses and their website is well worth a look if you are interested in printmaking.

I was reading the blog of an illustrator who was praising the re-discovery of observational drawing and the effect it had had on her work.  The strange thing is that before I entered the world of illustration I did nothing but observational drawing but now for some reason I hardly ever draw from observation so the time had come and it has been so good to sit and observe.  All those questions I have been trying to solve in my illustrations are beginning to find some answers.  I do have two partners in crime aged 6 and 8 and while doing the drawing above I had to contend with their arguing over what makes great art.  The 8 year old claims hers was better because she was really looking and drew what was there but the 6 year old felt that the addition of a little girl on a slide and a big splash of water in the pond made for a much better picture. An artistic dilemma I am constantly dealing with!!

I am passionate about paper.  Ever since my days as an etcher I have had a love of the perfect paper for the job but recently I have found myself rather comfortably beginning to churn stuff out and felt that I needed to step away from the paper and turn to a canvas.  Oh my word, it is so much fun.  For a start it is a lot bigger, secondly it really doesn't like gouache on it so you have to paint quite differently and thirdly it just makes a Friday a bit more interesting.  I tend to work with gouache as a flat colour but in order to place the paint I had to keep layering up and that is something I want to do more of.  I still love my paper but this just reminds me of how easy it is to keep doing stuff that works and how much you learn if you step away from the easy option.

I did this 'Sweet Dreams' in response to Illustration Friday's theme of 'sweet'.  I haven't done an illustration friday for ages but it is always good to turn to when you are having a bit of a blank moment and just need to make something, anything, rather than do nothing and worry that you are doing nothing!

I have just completed a set of birthday cards all ready now for the printers.  I am off to London next week for the biggest trade fair for the greetings card industry Progressive Greetings Live.  My aim is to take a stand there next year so I am off to pick up some tips and I am really quite excited.

I have designed a series of cards and I am now in the process of painting them.  It is so satisfying to see a whole group of images come together.  Really enjoying myself, it is such a lovely feeling when everything flows.

I had a great trip to London visiting friends and getting a really good dose of inspiration from lots of great exhibitions.  The Pick Me Up festival in Somerset House was visually really exciting.  I do love a bit of screen print and there was an awful lot at Pick Me Up.  I managed to finally sit down after two days and spend an hour making a newspaper with The Loop.  This is my front page.  It was so much fun coming up with ideas really really quickly and the joy of making something just for the sake of making it.  I haven't done that for quite a while.

My husband found me the most amazing table for my studio.  I love it!

It is amazing what a good sleep can do.  I wasn't very happy with this when I went to bed but now as I look at it with fresh eyes it isn't quite as bad as I thought.  It is the result of rushing and being distracted so next week when all is calm again, children are back in school, routines kick off, I shall return to this little chap and paint him as he should be.

My favourite five year old is six on Saturday so I have made her a card.  I hope she likes it!

I did some illustration workshops last week for World Book Day and the children (and teachers!) were brilliant asking lots of great questions and producing some lovely work.  These pictures are from Year 2 and 3.  They drew fairy tale/nursery rhyme characters reading their books in a library.  See if you can spot some of the characters Rapunzel, Little Red Riding Hood, Humpty Dumpty, Prince Charming, Pinocchio...they are all there somewhere!

Life is very busy at the moment but unfortunately it is not in the illustration world!  It is full on in the school I work at and I have been making costumes for the school production for what seems like months.  But, I have squeezed in a bit of my own work and I now have four new cards in my etsy shop Lettuce Celery.  I would love you all to go take a look and if you like what you see please tell your friends!  Slowly but surely I am building up the designs in the shop and I have a few more that I hope to paint up in the next couple of weeks.  Next term will be a lot calmer so watch out for a BURST of illustration activity!

Some of my new greeting card designs.  On sale soon at Lettuce Celery.

I have turned a couple of my designs into pin badges and just put them into my Etsy shop Lettuce Celery I really rather like the eyes.  I think I might do a green and a brown version as well.  

It has been a long time coming but at last I seem to be getting back into the swing of things after a busy Christmas and the start of a new term.  

This is where I want to be.  Snow outside, fire lit, music on and ideas flowing from my finger tips.  A collage of possibilities that over the next couple of weeks I hope to turn into prints and cards.