All At Sea

Here's a pictoral update of one of my nautical paintings; All At Sea. I have been really inspired by classic tattoo artists but my main influence has been from photographers such as Madame Yevonde who's work made me think more theatrically and the artists Pierre and Giles who have helped direct my work in a decidedly French and melancholy direction.

Firstly I found that using a tracing of my image really helped with sizing and composition and placement, very much like tattoo artists when designing a piece of tattoo art. It also allowed me to make multiples of the same image.

I found that rather than outlining in ink lastly it really helped to draw the lines in first and then work the colour in. Here you can see the maleble nature of water colour paint. The dense pink on the girl's cheek was applied to a wet field and then spread out and difused.

Yet here the paint has been applied thickly in red to give a more matt look.

Here is the painting almost finished and still very wet. I plan to frame this in an oval frame and customise the frame with nautical paraphanalia. I'm working on several pieces at different stages and will keep you informed on how I'm getting on.

Other News:

I am now Tart of the Month on The Tart Gallery website! You can see examples of my work and I am thrilled to be listed amongst other artists such as the fabulous Angelique Houtkamp who I have covered earlier this year and the retro cool Mitch O Connell: www.thetartgallery.com

New Website:

I am also happy to share with you a new website by a great film maker, Hilary Easter Jones. Hilary was the director and producer of the wonderful film of The Chantilly Belles made for The Lowry's Express Yourself dance exhibition which you can watch HERE.
Wynter Productions make educational films for exhibitions and gallery spaces as well as providing bespoke films for artists wishing to promote themselves! www.wynterproductions.co.uk

Reading list:

Last week I was listed as a great read by Erin of Follow the Tide blog. So this week I thought I'd list my top reads as follows:

The Candy Pitch is a great blog with regular profiles of internationl burlesque performers called The Candy Gram. It also posts burlesque news and videos. It's author Kelly DiNardo even did piece about me and my art work and burlesque performing!

Diary of a Vintage Girl is an informative blog about the everyday exploits of pin up model and 1940's lover Fleur de Guerre. She has some great vintage clothing finds and is happy to share her info.

LOVE KYLIE is as you'd expect a blog all about the legend that is Kylie Minogue. It's slick and up to date and full of great pics of the pocket rocket!

Blonde and Red is a lovely blog from Rosanna and is all about her loves; Marilyn Monroe and 50's pin ups included.