Almost there

 

I have been doing a few more postcard sized Scotland inspired water colours in the lead up to our next trip to the cottage. I'm hoping that I might have a wee solo exhibition; and a pop-up exhibition with Fiona. I aim to take 25-30 framed works over when we go. The works will include some of different buildings etc from the village such as the one of the fishing huts in the opening photo.

Others that I have finished include those below.

And there are a couple more I would like to do - progress photos of these follow.

Of course it is not all about the painting. There are many other tasks to do before we go including; negotiating exhibition space, publicity brochure, price list and packing. But it will be fun to take a body of work back to the area that has inspired the work.

Gorgeousness after rain

 

I just love the freshness of blossoms after rain - droplets of pure rain clinging to petals - see above and below; and even the bees came out early to indulge.

A visit to G's orchid house was rewarded with beautiful orchids with droplets.

Such gorgeousness reminds me that all is not dark and that there is much to be grateful for.

Favourite fonts

 

Fiona and I have been on a mission to create a full cabinet of the metal letterpress type we like and use reasonably regularly. We had to select type from across 4 cabinets and our goal was to create a single cabinet. That goal was realised today after about 12 months of on and off effort - see the cabinet above. 

The cabinet is an antique that has had many many years of use - if you look closely you can see where type trays have been replaced and repaired; some are still damaged; and different  labelling has been done. 

Some process photos of the sifting, sorting and transferring from the past few weeks follow. 

To create each new tray of type in our cabinet it was necessary to empty out another tray that would live in one of the other 3 cabinets; and then transfer the type from one of those cabinets - which Fiona had marked with a white dot - into the vacant tray. It takes 1.5 to 2 hours to transfer each tray of type depending on the size of the font and volume of type. So  over the last 12 months many many hours have spent doing this task.

Completing this task just makes our letterpress printing life that bit more organised. the remaining task for me is to transfer some of our favourite Elongated Anglo Saxon type which we bought in an online auction into the cabinet. 

Recycled metal for functional art

 

Today I managed a couple of hours in the workshop. My leg and arm wounds have precluded my entry into a dirty environment for the last 4 weeks - but today I felt I could make a short foray.

The focus of the work was to cut blanks for Leafspoons, Leaf Tea Caddy Spoons and Leaf Spreaders (knives). I love the texture and light of some of the hand cut trimmings such as in the opening photo.

The work started with several silver-plated placemats (below) - I started with 3 but need 5. You can see from the photo below the pot of templates I end up with some sizeable offcuts that will later be used for leaf earrings and daily word leaves.

Some process photos follow including the pot of templates I keep for marking up the metal.

The final photo shows the trimmed and ground tea caddy spoon blanks - they are now ready for pressing, hammering, folding etc.

Hopefully over the weekend I will progress the 18 pieces of metal.

Beauty in the backyard

 

I have not been doing much walking in the last few weeks because of a slowly healing leg wound. Today I decided I would simply record some of the beauty near our home and from the back deck. Down the side of our home we have a western facing small wall of succulents including the above gorgeous black variety.

Some more of the beauty from the backyard follow.

And what a view from the back deck - pops of colour.

It does just go to show that beauty can be found in the most ordinary of setting and virtually under our feet.

Started in 2024 and finished in 2025

 

I started 4 small postcard sized water colours at the end of December and got to finish the last couple over the weekend. The two I completed are shown above.

These watercolours were done in/on the home studio aka dining room table.

A couple more images of these completed two and the two others finished earlier.

Looking forward to watercolour and ink painting being one of the mediums for the year ahead.