hold on to your sombrero...

My fabulous assistant, Andy, just picked a name from the sombrero.... and the winner is...

Giovanna

Print will be winging it's way to you soon! Thanks to everyone who left all the lovely comments. I plan to have another celebratory giveaway when (if!) I ever have 50 followers...

rain, rain, go away....

Thought you might like to see how my home town looked at midnight last night... We had a month's rain in a few hours, causing both rivers to burst their banks and invade the town centre (that is actually one of the main roads, not a river!). This has never happened before in living memory, perhaps we should be worried and maybe now it's time for our great leaders to take climate change a bit more seriously? I wish I could say I had faith in them to act! Luckily, for me at least, I live up the hill...

New roughs over on the Growing Boy.

happy halloween

all change

I've been busy streamlining and reworking my illustration website. A long way still to go but I think it reflects me a bit more now and will be much simpler to navigate around - it had become a bit of a labyrinth!

sshhhh...

Can you keep a secret? I'd like to keep it all very hush, hush until it's absolutely confirmed and the agreements are signed, but it looks as though I may have myself an agent...

falling

Update: Isaiah complete (above).

"...as if he were shielding himself from the little spotlight shining on him, is if the snow were
a window through which he has caught sight of something deep inside the earth."

from Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow

Two posts in one day! It's because it is so dark, too dark to work. The rain has been falling in a steady torrent since yesterday, shows no sign of stopping, and has kindly let us know that we have a leaky roof too...

This is the first stage of Isaiah, done with watercolour, pencil and a little salt ;-)

As soon as day breaks, I will start to work over this. It still looks like night outside, even though it's noon.

i colori del sacro

By a strange coincidence, I have just found out that the The Jumis Tree (the original painting of the print in my giveaway) has not been selected for the Italian exhibition. I have to say I'm a little disappointed, mainly because my last selected work was well-received (and in fact was bought at the exhibition) and I liked this new work far more! But also because, having been personally invited to submit work, it was rejected with a generic 'Dear illustrator' letter. It would have been nice to receive some feedback at least...

I recently read a quote from artist Chris Cyprus on changing his style from landscape watercolours to a far more personal illustrative depiction of allotments. He said, quite gleefully "when I started the project I knew I was on to something, because no one wanted to buy them". I guess that's a little how I feel today!

So, if you'd still like to win the first print of this painting, which now has the non-distinction of not being selected (!), make the artist happy and enter here!