Recent work

I have been busy painting a new collection of miniatures to submit to the RMS exhibition of miniature paintings, I hope to see you there! All work will be for sale at the Bankside Gallery in London and later online as soon as the exhibition opens, for more details please visit the Society's website. The exhibition opens on Tuesday 18th November and finishes on 22nd November at The Bankside Gallery, Riverside, London, SE1 9JH

The Royal Miniature Society's 125th Anniversary Exhibition

Yesterday we travelled down to London for the day to see the RMS exhibition at The Mall Gallery. I had entered seven paintings and was delighted to have all paintings accepted for the show. I was delighted to learn that I had won two awards. 

The first award was the Society's award for the best collection of five or more works. I entered a set of six gilded bird paintings which I had been working on earlier in the year. 

The second award was an Honourable Mention for the Golden Memorial Bowl. This was for my painting Wren with Ivy, shown above.

It was lovely to meet up with friends old and new and to see close up all the wonderful miniature exhibits.

The exhibition runs until December 5th, details are on the Society's website. Entry is free but you need to book a ticket.

Most of the paintings are for sale and would make the most beautiful gifts, also on sale are greetings cards featuring the artworks of our members. Please visit if you are able, I think you would be entranced.

So this is Christmas...

As always, December arrives and as usual I am unprepared for the Christmas festivities. I tell myself there is plenty of time and then find myself running around like a headless turkey! Decorating the house was something of a challenge this year due to our new four legged friend and a squeaky toy has been bought, wrapped and hidden.

Most of this years artworks have been executed in watercolour but I have enjoyed returning to print making. The “Stellar Hare” relief print above has been proofed and this one is having some festive gold paint applied by hand. I printed a small edition and have sold several through my Etsy shop Acornmoon which is now closed until the New Year in order to give me time to enjoy friends and family gatherings.

At the end of November and into December I took part in the annual exhibition of The Royal Miniature Society at the Mall galleries in London. As a full member I was allowed to exhibit not only miniature but also some larger works. It was a very enjoyable event and a good time to meet up with friends and family visiting London.

I decided to use some of the images from my miniature paintings to produce a small collection of ceramic brooches and pendants, also available via my Etsy shop.

      

Welsh Border Life Magasine very kindly featured my artwork in their December edition.

Our granddaughter delighted us all by producing this very charming and detailed drawing of the nativity. She worked entirely unaided and I think it remarkable for a five year old to show such a great sense of design, not that I am in any way biased ;-)

I would like to thank all the people who have followed and supported my work throughout the year and I wish you all a Happy and Joyous Christmas.

Autumn News

Our big news is we have a puppy; he is a small but very lively Jack Russell of sorts. I say “of sorts” because he is very different to our dear departed Ted. He is black and tan with white paws and a bent tail and we love him, he has brought much joy into our lives. As soon as we were able we took him on a trip to The Lake District where we enjoyed a brief interlude of sunshine between the showers. He proved to be an enthusiastic walker and found many admirers in the dog walking community. I had forgotten how many people stop and talk if you have a dog!

We visited Buttermere, possibly one of the most beautiful lakes in Cumbria. The colours in the landscape were beginning to change and added a sense of warmth to the reflections in the water. I loved the woodland walks and found inspiration in the tiny ferns and mosses growing in the crevices in walls and trees. We spotted several moths and butterflies, berries and fungi, some of which made their way into my new painting “Moths and Moonshine”.

This year I will be submitting a couple of larger paintings into this years R.M.S, exhibition. You can see details of this over on my website. “Moths and Moonshine” is one of these larger works; it is watercolour with gold leaf inspired by our recent trip. The barn owl was one I met earlier; he was so tame I was able to take lots of photographs of him for reference.

Some of you may have noticed that I have reluctantly removed the comments section form my blog. I do genuinely miss the interaction with my blog friends but have found that I spend more time on other platforms like Instagram and my neglected blog was attracting too many spam posts. I do hope a few of you still find this space interesting enough to visit despite recent changes.

December RMS news.

Earlier this month I took part in the Royal Miniature Society annual exhibition at The Mall Gallery in London. The exhibition is now online and you can view it here

I was thrilled to be awarded full membership (RMS) and received this wonderful news "Due to the exceptional quality and consistency of your work the President and Council members are delighted to grant you full membership".

Also included was a separate exhibition of portrait miniatures from The Granville Family Tree. I was commissioned to paint four miniatures, see below no 2,3, 9 and 10.

This was quite a difficult challenge for me, especially trying to capture the detail on the lace and embroidery details on the ladies dress. Each miniature was a copy of a much larger original painting and we were given a small copy for reference. As you can imagine these paintings have been disseminated over the centuries, it was the desire of present Mr Granville to have a way of exhibiting the family collection as a whole. The commission was carried out by various members of the society over several years and was a huge undertaking.

It was a great pleasure to be invited to a champagne reception hosted by Mr Granville and it was fun to meet the many family members and to hear their stories and memories of the original full sized paintings.

Despite the obvious difficulties I really enjoyed the challenge, sometimes it is good to work outside your comfort zone. It was a mixture of relief and pride to hear that all four paintings met with approval.

Autumn on the Welsh border

I have been busy painting new miniatures for submission into this year Royal Miniature Society show. As an associate member I am allowed to submit six miniatures. The sheep painting was inspired by an apple picking excursion to the home of a friend who has a beautiful orchard and farm on the Shropshire/Wales border.

The tiny water colour painting called "Hare Hill" was painted a few months ago.

The sheep painting was also painted in watercolour and has a gold leaf border.

As you can see my submissions this year vary in size, the rabbit and hare paintings are 3ins by 2.5 inches. The largest miniature features an owl and a pussycat and is entitled "They sailed away". It measures 4.5 ins by 4 ins. The portrait of my granddaughter is not for sale.

 If you are in London from 28th November until Sunday 9th December you are welcome to visit the exhibition at The Mall Galleries in London. If you are unable to visit the exhibition will be online and paintings and sculptures will be for available sale. Further details are available on the RMS website.

Royal Miniature Society Exhibition 2017

I took part once again in this year's RMS annual exhibition at the Mall Gallery in London. This was my fourth time to exhibit with the Society and as an Associate Member I was allowed to enter six paintings.

Anyone can enter their miniature paintings or pieces of sculpture, the details of entry can be found on the Society's website. All entries have to be approved by the committee and it is always an anxious time waiting to see if your work has been accepted. You can enter up to five pieces as a non member, if you have all five pieces accepted in two consecutive years you can become a candidate. If the committee approves you can then become elected as an Associate Member. After a further three years you can apply to become a full member but this is by no means automatic. The Society also has members who are friends, people who may not be artists but who support the Society in other ways.

Many of the entries arrive in boxes by post, others are handed in by person, all of which involves a huge undertaking. Before I became a member I don't think I realised just how much work is involved in making the exhibition possible. Artworks have to be unwrapped, listed, judged and exhibited and all of this work is carried out by the members themselves who give up their time and energies to make it all happen. This year we helped at "hand in" day, unpacking precious artworks amidst mountains of bubble wrap, being careful not to miss any of the tiny entries in the process. It was both fun and enlightening to take part behind the scenes.

I was delighted to have sold four paintings at the exhibition, see below. All are watercolour; the owl has some additional gilding around the border in gold leaf.

The little portrait is our grandson; this is the first time I have entered a portrait. This was painted on vellum, another new departure from my familiar watercolour paper. Although the exhibition is now closed you can still see the exhibition and some of the award winning paintings on the society's website. 

The most coveted prize is The Gold Memorial Bowl which was won this year by an artist called Raoof Haghighi for his stunning portrait "Linda". I think I am correct in believing that this was the artist's very first and only entry to the exhibition which makes it a truly remarkable achievement. Many congratulations Raoof and to all the other award winners. If you are interested in learning more about the society please click this link.

Miniature Art Exhibition

This year I entered five of my miniature paintings into The Royal Society Of Miniature Painters Sculptors and Gravers Exhibition and was delighted to learn that they had all been accepted. 

We travelled down to London to see the exhibition at The Mall Galleries. Two of my paintings won awards. The little Jack Russell painting entitled "Millie's Garden" won the Elizabeth Meek Award and the border terrier painting "Beautiful Dreamer" was awarded a "Gold Memorial Bowl Honourable Mention".

The awards were presented by antiques expert Lennox Cato who will be familiar to anyone who watches The Antiques Roadshow. 

If you are in London do visit, there are some 700 or so miniatures on show including portraits, still life subjects and landscapes and miniature pieces of sculpture. You might even buy something special for a Christmas gift and the wonderful thing about investing in miniatures is you don't need too much room! 

Happy Halloween

With each year that passes Halloween becomes more of a tradition here, our house was no exception with family parties, pumpkins, fake spiders-the list goes on. When I was a child the focal point of the season was Bonfire Night with treacle and toffee apples.

I do love this time of year with its abundance of fruit and berries. It has been a good year for apples this year and my little Malus Gorgeous has been on top form. This tiny crab apple tree produces fruit no bigger than a large cherry. We never try to cook them, preferring to leave them for the birds to enjoy.

I made this little study with coloured pencils.

We went down to London to visit The Royal Miniature Society's exhibition at the Mall Gallery to see this years annual exhibition. I was thrilled to have five pieces accepted. The exhibition is now closed but you can still see the whole thing on their website, many pieces are still for sale and would make lovely gifts for Christmas perhaps? My work is numbered 229-233.

I made some new greeting cards from the artwork created for the miniatures, some are in my Etsy shop and there are more on the way. 

A quick hop over the border into Wales enabled us to use the facilities at the Print Centre in Wrexham. I managed to finish two editions, one intaglio and one linoprint. It was suggested that I try hand colouring some of the dry point prints and found that using water colour pencils worked well.

The Halloween print at the top of this post, the drawings, cards and prints all found their way here-https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/acornmoon

Mereside- New Miniature Paintings

I recently completed a set of five miniature paintings, this time based on the flora and fauna around our local Meres; these are naturally occurring lakes which support a wide range of species of birds, reptiles, insects and flowers.

Last week I took my little bundle of paintings down to London and handed them in for submission to The Royal Miniature SocietyAnnual Exhibition. This is a juried show and so an anxious wait ensued until the results were announced. I was delighted to find that all five paintings had been accepted for this year's show. If you are in London you might want to come along?

The show runs from 13th October to the 25th October and will be at the Mall Gallery. You can find more details by following this link.

Each miniature is hand painted onto paper with watercolour and gouache. I used some metallic colours in this series to give a rich medieval flavour. Each design has a decorative border which combines some decorative elements, flowers, leaves etc. chosen to complement each subject.

The design process begins by working out the composition, starting with a pencil drawing. The border design is worked out separately in much the same way I would begin a textile design. 

The design is then transferred onto hot pressed extra smooth watercolour paper. I like to use "The Langton" by Daler Rowney. I use tracing paper to transfer the design using a very sharp HB pencil. I then go round the outline using a very fine pen and watercolour before rubbing out the pencil line. 

The painting then progresses in much the same way a larger piece would, the difference being the size of the brush strokes. The work is completed using very many teeny tiny brushstrokes, layer upon layer.

The painting is then trimmed to size and placed inside a special frame which has bevelled glass. 

The Royal Society of Miniature Painters, Sculptors and Gravers

"Full Moon Hare"

This year I decided to submit two miniature paintings for possible selection for The Royal Society of Miniature Painters, Sculptors and Gravers annual exhibition. After being inspired by an earlier trip to Wells to see the work of The Hilliard Society and reading other artist's blogs such as Tracy Hall's Watercolour Diary I finally plucked up the courage and entered my paintings for the first time.

This entailed a trip to London to submit the artwork followed by an anxious wait, checking the website to see if my work had been accepted. I was both surprised and delighted to see my two registration numbers amongst the list of accepted works, in fact I had to ask my husband to double check to see if my eyes were not deceiving me!

The paintings I submitted were “Full Moon Hare” shown above and “Tawny Owl in Oak Wood” shown in a previous post.

If you feel inspired to do the same yourself you can find all the details on the RSM website together with the exhibition schedule.

The exhibition opens on Tuesday October 14th daily until October 26^th at The Mall Galleries in London.