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.