Fox on a Boat

It's been a while since I last updated.. I spent the holidays with some good friends and of course wanted to make every moment count, so no blogging.. Since then, it seems the days are going quite quickly, even if they don't pass as quickly as the holidays.. I'm already looking forward to my next holidays, where I'll be landing in Morocco - so will definitely write about that! I've not been writing much save for December's poem, but I've been drawing a lot more, and painting digitally. Here are some of the pieces I created in the last few weeks. And some sketches..

In the past two weeks, I've gone back to painting in acrylics, and produced these three new paintings of lighthouses. The first one I am quite happy with, though of course it could always be improved. For the other two, I had set myself a small challenge. I only used a palette knife to paint, and I only used two blues, black, and white. I'm not entirely happy with them but I was glad to have worked on a new technique. -- To read specifically about my year abroad, please visit my side blog here.

Recently I've been painting a lot more, which I'm quite happy about, as I often end up neglecting one or more of my hobbies/ creative outlets and get caught up in Life (with a dramatic capital L). I hope to transition to inks soon - I've tried them already and enjoy using them, but haven't quite mastered the technique yet. After buying a pack of inks on sale last year, and then being gifted another pack, I feel I really should start using them!  The advantage of watercolours is that they are 'erasable' to a certain degree, so mistakes are not always the end of the world. Not so with inks! I am hoping that my extra watercolour practice will help me when I start painting with the inks again.  I have quite a few project ideas, so will definitely be updating the blog with some new paintings soon. You can check the gallery , which I try to update fairly regularly, to see all the paintings I've posted so far.

"The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls." -Pablo Picasso Postcards now available for purchase.

A few days ago I bought myself a nice new watercolour box - I do prefer that to the tubes, plus it's portable! I'm sort of getting back into watercolour - haven't really used it in a long time as I was using acrylics during college - so I've only painted a few easy scenes to try out some techniques. The trees were painted following a youtube video tutorial. Blue Cat Trees in a Poppy Field  Summer Tree All images  ©  Kerridwen. Do not use without permission

   ©  Kerridwen - Please do not repost or use without permission As promised, here is the first page of my book! Well, to clarify, this is a first draft of a first page of what might become a little book I might do just for fun.. So there it is, the radish that speaks Finnish.. I do like the idea so I might work out a painting schedule.. This was done in acrylics and ideally I'd like to work in watercolour, so I'll have to stock up. In the final draft I plan to have more space for words and I'll put the translation at the bottom of the page or something. I won't say anymore yet, but stay tuned for more pages and sneak peeks!

I saw a lovely oil painting of a cat the other day, it inspired me to try and paint some 'blocky cats'. I like them when they look simple. They are both watercolour paintings, but I am working on some acrylic ones, too. :) I plan to paint more often and will be adding paintings to my 'Block Cats' collection in the next weeks or so. :)