Patience Brewster

My newest discovery. Such charming, heart warming illustrations :)

Beatriz Martin Vidal

Singing "Three Blind Mice" to my little son, I was counting in my head all the nursery rhymes which are quite dark in my opinion. I have counted a lot of them. Just the falling theme alone repeats itself over an over - baby falling from the tree top, Jack and Jill, Humpty Dumpty, monkeys falling off the bed... And then of course, three blind mice with their tails chopped off. How horrid, I thought. And then I was thinking back to my own childhood and the book I loved dearly. It was a collection of French fairy tales. Many of the tales were quite bloody, dark and scary. These were the ones I loved the most. I guess we all need a bit of darkness, suspense and thrill. When it comes to art, Beatriz Martin Vidal's illustrations satisfy this need for me. Her images are so beautiful, yet eerie and sometimes even creepy. Wonderful and haunting.

Petra Brown

Petra Brown's illustrations never fail to make me smile :)

Mother of Pearl

Oh yes, she is literally a Mother of Pearl. I love playing with words :)

Dedicated to all Mummies.

Acrylics on paper. Prints are available here prints

Peter Callesen

I wanted to have a pretty flowery wallpaper as a background for one of my paintings. I thought that trying to freehand a precise pattern would be very difficult so I decided to quickly cut out a stencil. A very simple pattern of a flower with.a few leaves took me absolute ages! I cursed the idea about 40 minutes in but decided to keep going simply because I've already spent that long on the silly thing.

When I look at Peter Callesen artwork, my mind boggles. And it's not just his crazy scissors skills!
Have a look at these beauties. Aren't they clever?

I almost feel like getting my tiny scissors out again.... On a second thought... maybe not.

Elodie Coudray

Elodie Coudray's illustrations are like jewels - so bright and light and pretty. Absolutely divine.

Mermaid

Here's my newest acrylic painting.

And this is how she came to life.

I start with a very detailed sketch. I try to not just outline but also shade as much as possible. Unfortunately, my scanner "ate" most of the shading here.

Decide on a color scheme... At this stage I don't worry about being neat and precise as I will be adding layers and more layers of paint later on.

Paint the background, down to the very last detail. Start "shaping" face and body with color pencils. I find it easier to do skin with color pencils rather than with paint.  This is a safer method for me - I color skin with pencils and then lightly blend with either water or very watered down paint.

At this stage I was struggling with the fish head so I have painted over the head and tail. Originally they were white with red spots. I definitely prefer the final version. I've used watered down white paint to blend color pencils to create smooth skin texture.

Tadaaaa! Only some seven or eight hours later the pretty (if a little snooty)  Mermaid girl is finished :)

The print is now available in my Etsy shop prints