LARA'S NEW BOOK !

I am so excited and very proud of my daughter Lara, she has just published her first book  Danger in the Darkness. It is a fantasy novel set in another world and the characters are not human as you would expect, ( that is unless you know my daughter ) . Lara has also done all the art work in the book including both the front and back cover, as she is an artist and I enjoyed proof reading the book for her and look forward to doing the same for the next book which she is getting ready to write.

Lara has created a new web site for the book  http://gryphiesaga.co.uk/  if you would like to take a look, I know there are some of you on my blog list that have also written books, below is a picture of the front cover of Lara's book.

~Jackie~

SPECIAL OFFERS AT KYDO JEWELLERY

I have decided to keep the sale going a little longer at the web site http://www.kydojewellery.co.uk so please do take a look many iterms are deeply discounted some at half price!

It has not been a good start to 2013 for our family, I have not seen my sister or her husband since before Christmas as they were both ill then no sooner had that started to go than they both picked up the dreaded Noro Virus with all it entails, that got better, then last Thursday I phoned my sister and her husband was in bed in agony with back and stomach pains and vomiting violently. I phoned yesterday and he had felt better Saturday then Sunday back to square one! My sister phoned this morning to let me know last night he was taken to hospital now the doctors think he has possible kidney disfunction...!!!

Its a lot to take in and I had hoped so much for the New Year  that things would pick up and maybe even a few sales to cheer me. This was to be a year of trying new things and putting the old behind me if that meant giving up the jewellery so be it; although I will always be making things just for the sake of it, as I can't imagine giving up art in some form it has been a part of my life since I was a small child.

I would love it if you left me a comment or two, I don't often feel so low but right now lots of things seem to be piling up, I expect you know how it is we all get those times! I will leave this post with a picture of a bracelet and earrings I worked on for a wedding.

I hope your New Year has got off to a flying start and I wish you only good things for 2013.

~Jackie~

Painting of Glenveagh

This is the watercolour I painted of Glenveagh gardens with the castle in the background. I really enjoyed doing paintings of the different places I visited. It was a long time since I had got out the paints, being involved with other things these days. I do notice some strange shadow lines on the left of the painting, I have no idea what made them as they are not part of the painting, very weird!

I tend to leave the art side of things to my daughter Lara she takes commisions for pet portraits and fantasy art also small clay sculptures she finished a set of cartoon style Dr Who sculptures before Christmas which were very detailed.

There are so many things I would like to do and try but time passes so quickly these days and I will never be able to fit them all in, maybe tomorrow!

Lara's Art

Today I wanted to share with you my daughters art, Lara took a diploma course at the London Art College in Pet Portraiture and received a pass with merit at the end of 2008, needless to say her dad and I were very proud of her and she has had many commissions since, though mostly fantasy art, in fact her fantasy work and cartoons are all over the net lol. So I thought it would be rather nice to showcase some of the non fantasy pictures Lara did to win her diploma.

The horses head I really like as I love horses and used to ride a lot when younger, it was also the first horse she had ever drawn. The Borzoi is not one of ours and I have asked her to do portraits of our Borzois all sadly passed away now, I still miss them, both these portraits are in Derwent coloured pencil her medium of choice.

The third portrait is a rather thoughtful forest Gorilla in Acrylic it was the final piece submitted for her exam.

I hope you enjoy these pictures as much as I enjoyed sharing them with you.

Dragon sculpture

Hey everyone!

First let me thank you who have left nice comments on here. I'm sorry I can't reply to them individually, Blogger doesn't seem to have a feature that allows you to reply which I think is pretty silly. I think I might write to them and suggest that they make a feature where you can reply. The other weblogs I'm on have a reply thing, so why not here?

Anyway, today I would like to show you a dragon sculpture I made a couple of days ago.

Click on it to see the full size version. I am working on my sculptures slowly but surely. To do this I have been making a wide variety of characters, both those that belong to my friends and also my own. I wanted to make a dragon sculpture so this is not a character I have but just a random dragon. Afterwards, it occured to me that I could have made one of my own dragon characters so next time I make one, it will be one of those.

This one is called Augustus P. Drake. I don't know what the P stands for and the name is just one I made up. He's the biggest sculpture I've made so far and one of the most detailed. I didn't use armatures although I should have really because I had to prop bits of him up while he baked. I need to use armatures in wings so they don't flop around as much. He is holding a crystal and I am happy with how his paws came out since usually I make paws too big and clunky and they just look fat and silly.

I love how I did his head and for once I can say that I am happy with the sculpture as a whole. Usually there are various parts I think I could have done better or that didn't come out very well. The only small niggle I have is that one of his wings should have been higher and it was when I put him in the oven to bake, it must have slipped down so that was disappointing. Once again, I really need armatures.

As I said before, I have another dragon in mind and I want to make another of the characters from my book too. I have already made one which came out nicely (except for the front legs) and is in my deviantART gallery but if I do another, sadly I won't be able to show it since my book characters are pretty unique. It will be a test to see if I can make a reptilian character standing on all fours with a wire armature.

I hope you like Augustus anyway, I've come a long way since I first started with polymer clay.

~Lara

Pet Portraits

Hi guys,
it's Lara here. I thought I'd make a post and tell you about some of the artwork I'm doing. I have a variety of talents artwise. I can make things in clay, draw, paint (although I prefer to paint on things like t-shirts and figures as opposed to just canvas or paper), I do some digital art, I can needlefelt and mostly I work in traditional media.

I thought I would tell you about my pet portraits course in this post. I started the course last year with London Art College, for a diploma in pet portraits and it finishes next month. I've come pretty far since then and although I still struggle sometimes, I am getting the hang of it for the most part.
A few of my images can be seen on my Storm Artists gallery, those are the ones I'm most proud of. My latest piece that I sent off to be marked by my tutor (the course is one you do from home) is this, a 5 picture montage of my cat, Borris.
I think you can click on it for a bigger one although I did resize it. The full sized version is in my gallery.
I am proud of this, I like the top two images and the middle coloured one. The bottom two images aren't as good. I captured his personality in the coloured one very well even though the head's symmetry is a little off. I am very critical of my work as you can tell lol!
I worked from photos for this. I had prepared quite a while ago for this particular piece of coursework, it involved taking a lot of photos of the animal and choosing five favourites. I always take lot of photos of my cat and make videos of him too. A few of the photos have been just by chance and I've caught him in lots of cute poses.
This is one of the pieces I sent in for marking, along with a portrait of a horses' head. You can also see the horses' head in my gallery.
I hope to be good enough to sell these since I love drawing animals and I always have ever since I was a small child. I have three more pieces of coursework to do before the course ends and I'm waiting to see what my tutor thinks of my cat, Borris and the horse!
Please let me know what you think! I don't get many comments on my pet portraits since I only really post them on Storm Artists and not many people watch me there just yet.

~Lara