Cotswold Life

Here is the article about the Equine Art Exhibition in Cotswold Life, very exciting! Top left is me and my lovely friend Xanthe, it's quite strange seeing us in a magazine! Here's hoping it encourages lots of people to go to the exhibition and buy my paintings... we're running out of space to store them here!

Limited Edition Prints

I have two more Limited Edition Prints available which will hopefully be added to my shop tonight if Chris gets time. They are The Grey and Silhouette and will be individually signed and numbered by myself so please stop by my shop if you'd like to buy one and also view the others I have available. More will be joining them when I can afford it!

Honey & Cassie

These two are Honey & Cassie who are sadly no longer with us. This was quite a tricky painting as the photo was quite old and lacked in the kind of detail you can capture in digital photography so I wasn't able to put as much into their fur as I normally like. Also, in the original photo the white fur had a green tinge which I have removed and tried to replace with a more natural colouring. I'm very much a paint what I see kind of person so always struggle when I have to change things. I wish I was more creative!

Reggie

Here is Reggie, my latest commission. I normally include all the neck and chest but realised I'd made a huge mistake when taking the photos for this painting and had forgotten to get Reggie's stable rug taken off! So, to make my life easier I decided to crop his neck and chest slightly with a soft edge.

I always take photos of my paintings outside in decent light. Our house is cream in colour so I stand my easel at a slight angle facing the house so that the sunlight bounces back from the house onto the painting, but the angle means it's not direct light reducing the chance of light reflection. Also, now that I varnish my paintings (thanks Laura!! :-D) with matt varnish, this has dramatically decreased the problems I had with light reflection as I take the photos after at least the first coat of varnish.

Another exhibition

I got a call today from a local gallery inviting me to exhibit in an animal related exhibition starting 26 April. That'll be exhibition no 7 this year! Very exciting but I now desperately need to find some horses that have been clipped so not all fluffy and for it to be warm and sunny enough for them to be out without their rugs so I can get together more photos to work from as I've run out! And some extra time would be helpful too as I need to fit in doing more exhibition paintings around my commission pieces. Hmmmm......

Latest Commission

Here is my latest commission, Holly and Freddy. They are such gorgeous Springer Spaniels and it was a real pleasure doing this painting. I handed the painting over on Saturday and the owner is extremely excited about giving it to his wife as her birthday present today.

Today I have started on my next commission of Reggie, a very handsome horse. I'll hopefully be able to post the finished painting by the end of the week.

The Exhibition Press Launch

Yesterday lunch time was the press launch for the exhibition and I was so nervous! I'm not the most confident person in the world and because my husband was in a meeting, I had to go on my own and couldn't even take advantage of the free champagne because I was driving. Luckily, when I turned up the other artist Elizabeth Armstrong was there already and then a lady from Cotswold Style appeared to take our photos so I didn't have too much time to worry about it all. Cotswold Life and Gloucestershire Echo also turned up to take photos so I'll keep an eye out for the publications they featured us in. I'm also terrible at small talk and never know what to say to people so I managed quite a few stilted conversations with different people but let's hope I didn't put them off my paintings!!

Finished!

At last, I finished the final painting last night, just in time as I went to hang the paintings this morning! Sadly this was the best photo I managed to take but you get the gist! I really struggled with this painting but could not figure out why. I found getting the colour strong enough whilst adding highlights really tricky but at least I got there in the end! And now I can concentrate on the commissions I have lined up, a lot of which have birthday deadlines, 3 in April, so I won't be taking it leisurely with these either.

The press launch and opening day is Monday 3 March for this exhibition so I'll let you know how it goes. I've always been part of larger exhibitions with lots of other artists so it feels a bit strange seeing my name as one of the headline act! The other two artists involved are Elizabeth Armstrong and Alan Beers, two fantastic artists making me feel a little new to the game but I'm sure I'll settle in soon.