art by ailbhe

We’re still working up to the toddler’s op. After which she’ll breathe again. It’s tomorrow week, unless the cough she has turns out to be a chest infection, in which case they’ll postpone it.

So I’m tired and cross, and after dinner this evening I fled from my house in tears and took refuge in the little blue studio at the end of the garden.

And I made some little tactile paintings for toddlers to touch. And adults, I suppose.

I’ll take decent photos soon, but this is what I got with the camera in my laptop inside my studio in the late evening. Suboptimal conditions, I think you’ll agree.

I felt much better afterwards. Thick, gloopy, bright, strong paint. Balm for the soul.

Also a local institution. Maybe I should try to go.

The new studio seems to have ants. And I’ve read on the Winsor & Newton website that I need a bigger house, because the studio isn’t good enough to store my paintings. Boo. Maybe I’ll sell them all and the problem will cease to exist.

I’ve been removing some from sale because I’m going to paint over them to save on canvases. But I’ve also created a Father’s Day discount code FATHER2013 – 20% off any purchase over £10. And a new listing! Conversation as tweeted earlier.

I also still have greetings cards, eminently suitable for Father’s Day, birthdays, Wednesdays, etc.

I painted this with Winsor & Newton Oilbars today, and stepped out into the garden to photograph it. This was extremely easy because I painted it in…
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Ten minute oil pastel sketch of someone dressed entirely in black whom I could only see partially through a doorway. I am SO not thinking these things through.

I’m going to do something that stays still soon before I lose all my confidence. Cats and children are unwise learner choices.

All I did today to further my glittering international art career was heave up the bricks from under the garden bench to make them into a step for MY NEW STUDIO did I tell you I had a NEW STUDIO?

And I did some more drawing in Draw Something, which I like because it’s about very quickly communicating with drawing, rather than about honing perfection, so it practices something I find important.

And I’m trying to learn to draw, mainly by remembering to sketch things. The toddler and I made this, though sadly when I got to the ear the cat ran away.

And I drew this in soft pastel for #Mondaypaint and it was very messy and very interesting.

I really, really enjoyed painting this. I don’t remember what I felt I was “supposed” to be working on at the time, but it wasn’t flowing, whatever it was, and I took out this canvas and slathered on the paint and went at it with the palette knife, making waves and peaks and letting the colours blend in together – I was looking for that feeling of “The paint is doing the thing! It’s doing the thing!” and I got it, with this one.

This is one for stroking. I touch all sorts of bits of it every time I handle it. BUMPS and SMOOTH BITS and ROUGH BITS and BARE BITS.

16″ square Ripples by ailbhel on Etsy.

Something else listed on Etsy! Two days in a row! At this rate I’ll be listing things I painted in December before the end of the month! The backlog is not inconsiderable.

10.5×7.5cm Tiny house with distant neighbour by ailbhel on Etsy.

It’s the tiniest studio ever, possibly! It’s five feet on a side and not quite five feet to the inside of the eaves. It’s not quite six feet to the inside of the apex, too. That window faces south and so on a sunny day it gets quite warm. You can see the big easel with a 60cm square canvas board seascape in acrylics, on the right a box with some tabletop easels balanced on top of it, on the left the kitchen trolley from IKEA behind My First Easel, a Daler Rowney sketching easel which I’ve used for work from 5 inches to 5 feet, though the latter involved a lot of wire to fix the canvas frame on so that the whole thing didn’t crash down. It has lighter duties now I have the big H-Frame one designed to take canvases up to 72″ high (not in that house!). The box labelled FRAGILE has unused canvases in it, bulk-bought from one of the online discount suppliers.

After the jump, photos of the building and inside. Lots of photos, because I’m VERY ENTHUSIASTIC about this little house and SO HAPPY to have it. I can PAINT more and STORE fewer unused materials, I hope.

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