Ah, this blogging thing has been taking a backseat...

I have been quite busy, and now I will catch you up on what I have been painting. This fabric for instance, completed WEEKS ago!

 It starts off as usual with a painterly grounding of colour and texture...this design is going to be quite simple. It is for upholstery onto various furniture.

Here are some close ups:

 Here is a subsequent section; the background is a lot of fun to paint.

Later on, you will see a mirror frame I have just painted to match this fabric...but first, I want to show you all the pottery I have been working on, too. Next entry!

Fish,Fish Fish!

I am still busy painting this fabric yardage with the fish theme, 11 yards total, I think I am almost done!

I have the cat fooled....

This is Bomba, he is always such a helpful presence, ceramics being his usual specialty....

You might ask if painting so many fish, on so many yards becomes tedious?

Well, I try to avoid that feeling, by working fast and keeping up the energy. It never helps to drag it out, and feel as though it will never end... however, when I see the faces develop on these little guys, I get quite caught up in the whole thing, and want to do MORE.

Must be a Pisces thing....

Lots Of Fabric To Paint

So here is how the fabric project starts....I will be painting many yards of each of the sample designs shown here. Here is my lovely bolt of new fabric. I use 200 thread count muslin, usually unbleached, for better application of the paint and a very soft silky feel to the finished fabric.

I like to be bold and have a lot of fun with the colour wash that underlies the detailed painting. Contrast and movement make for much more depth later. A lot of this simply disappears under later motifs, and gets blended into the overall, but its always worth it to see some lovely shape or texture peek out between the later additions to the painting. Something always shows.

It is wonderful to watch the colours blend and separate. I have learned to let this happen, and not smooth it away, from painting and firing the ceramics, and seeing the cool things that happen when colour blends and melts and shifts into its neighbour.

Time for a tea break! One of my painted mugs with fish all over it too...I couldn't resist the photo op.I was in a great hurry last night to finish this piece, and get a new piece on the table, and do the colour wash so it was ready to paint on today. Otherwise much of the morning would have been wasted waiting for this next section to dry, if I had done the wash then. I didnt take any pictures of the finished first piece on the table last night, but here you can see where I have advanced the fabric, and begun the process all over again for another 2 1/2 yrds....Over the edge of the table its too dark for proper pictures, but its a nice effect!

Child's Rocking Chair, Last Furniture For A While....

This adorable child's rocker has been very fun to paint...

Funny thing about rockers, though, they rock. They move. Its was constantly surprising me when the thing moved as I tried to paint it....Hilarious.

I learned to cope.

The rocker is vintage. It has a damaged, no longer functioning music box on the back. The client asked me to leave it, and not paint it, I also left the vintage "Stork" label unpainted (not shown here. I should get a picture of that!)

This piece marks the end of a long furniture painting jag.

Next up: 20 yards plus of fabric with little fish, and dragonflies, for a client....I'm always pretty psyched by the variety my work brings me...no boredom here ever!!! Stay tuned!

Chest Finished, And One More Chair

After a very bright start, I toned the whole thing down with an ''antique'', tea-stained look... The bright colours are there as a base, and to give life to the more subtle finishing touches. I tidied up the floral painting, trying to leave as much as possible of the original painting from the 1920's.

On the top especially, you can see that hot red shimmer through the subsequent layers of paint. Very nice.

And her is another great chair! It is an antique, I think, has a very pretty shape.

This chair, and many of the others I have painted recently are for sale in my ETSY shop (see link on this blog, left hand side.)