Merry Christmas Everyone!

My best ever Christmas present arrived this week, in the form of a finished studio!  I am so happy and can't wait to get in there and start painting.  Today I have been hauling tables and canvases and cabinets into the space and wondering where to put everything.  I am hoping to get some shelves built at some point, but that will have to wait.  I just want to get back to painting!  

Thanks to my lovely Aunt Agnes, who made it possible to have this beautiful studio built in our garden.  I think it's time to get that space filled with a bit more colour!  

Meanwhile it has been super busy in the print room with everyone trying to finish up their projects before the end of the semester. There is such a great atmosphere in the Cambridge School of Art print room... I love it.. in case you hadn't realised already!

Whilst waiting for my studio to be finished, I have been playing with a bit of acrylic paint and gold leaf.  I love messing around, and it makes me feel a little more Christmassy.  I rather like these..  

I have also been working on a new drypoint, continuing on from my plant series. 

This time snowdrops are the order of the day... it won't be long before they start showing their beautiful white flowers, but since we already have daffodils and narcissus blooming in the garden, I think the snowdrops might feel rather confused.  It has been far too warm this winter.. and the rain.. oh the rain.  I feel so badly for those living in Cumbria.  

Well, that's it for another year, so I shall wish you all a Merry Christmas and a truly Happy New Year!  

Sketching with acrylics

Barry and I have come back down to Cambridge so that I can pick up my portfolio from University and get some etchings framed.  I was hoping for the gorgeous weather we had a week or so ago, but as I write the wind is howling outside and it seems to have rained for three days solid!  I am tired of it now, so could it stop please?  We did manage to get out and paint on Grantchester Meadows, an area so beautiful and full of history, linked to the poet Lord Byron, Virginia Woolf and Rupert Brooke.

 

Taken from the Rupert Brooke Society pages:

  
Poems 1914
Brooke wrote these poems in the autumn following the outbreak of the First World War. Although The Solider is the most famous of these poems, Brooke's favourite was The Dead (IV). They were first published in New Numbers. The Soldier's fame and popularity was established three weeks before Brooke's death in April 1915, when the Dean of St Paul's Cathedral read it at the Easter Sunday service.
The Treasure was the first poem Brooke wrote after August 1914, and it acts as a preface to the five war sonnetts.


                     The Treasure
When colour goes home into the eyes,
   And lights that shine are shut again,
With dancing girls and sweet birds' cries
   Behind the gateways of the brain;
And that no-place which gave them birth, shall close
The rainbow and the rose: -
Still may Time hold some golden space
   Where I'll unpack that scented store
Of song and flower and sky and face,
   And count, and touch, and turn them o'er,
Musing upon them; as a mother, who
Has watched her children all the rich day through,
Sits, quiet-handed, in the fading light,
When children sleep, ere night.
August 1914

I have started painting with acrylics!!  I tried them once before and hated the fact that they dried so quickly, but now I am loving them!  Great for painting outside and much more versatile that I had originally thought and I enjoy the layering that you can obtain with such immediacy.   Below are some paintings taken from my sketch book.  I hope you enjoy them.