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.

A bit of a mish mash...

I am SOOO excited about tonight's premiere of 'Desperate Romantics' on BBC2! I seriously can't wait! I have been a HUGE Pre-Raphaelite fan ever since I was little and have always wanted to see some kind of drama about these sexy dreamy artists from the Victorian era! The programme is being dubbed as sex drugs and paints, and focuses on the three main members of the PRB group all of who had pretty unconventional love lives including prostitutes, other men's wives and one very outrageous exhumation of a beloved wife! I love their work and my favourite artist from the movement is Dante Gabriel Rossetti! I love him! ( BTW he's the dark swarthy one second from the left above ).

Beata Beatrix by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Verticordia by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

It has often been my thought that the models seen in the paintings of the Pre-Raphaelites were the pin up girls of their day. They were sexy and provocative, a little bit on the naughty side and a million miles away from the stuffy conventions of the time. They were in essence the dream girls of the nubile minded Victorian man. I can imagine them gracing the garage walls of many a carriage repair crew.

I so hope this drama does my guys justice and doesn't play around with the facts too much. I'll find out tonight!
Desperate Romantics 9pm BBC 2

Nautical update:
I am very excited about the new purchases I made from ebay last week! I have decided to customise my own frames for my new nautical watercolour paintings and want to include little bits of the paintings narrative into the frame. I found some gorgeous little wooden ships wheel buttons and some miniture gold anchors.

I'm now on the look out for old frames of the correct dimensions to customise with pearls and shells. I am also hoping to use my new skill of applying metal leaf to give some of the frames gold and silver details! You can see my first attempt at this material on my painting Parfait Amour:

I'm hoping to get some new images of what I've been working on up next week!

Tart anyone?...

You can now see some of my other work in a brand new online exhibition at The Tart Gallery on Second Life! The collaborative show of international artists is called 'Burlesque' and had it's official opening last night. One of my pieces 'After Eight' sold seven times! It's well worth the visit to see beautiful work by some very talanted artists! But remember you must be a member to walk around: www.secondlife.com

Good read!

I'm also really happy to share I was listed as a great read by fellow blogger Erin of Follow the Tide!

Thanks very much Erin! In the same spirit of things I highly recommend her blog which features great images and thoughtful musings by an inquisitive 1940's loving nautical mind!

Stay tuned for my top blogs! I'm fast running out of typing time... until next time ***