Total Art Soul - for artists

We have a building attached to our house which could be a gite eventually. To our astonishment we found a 'fouine' in there. Translated this means a stone marten. It is so beautiful! It wasn't scared of us, it happily sat there and we stared at each other for a while.

This image is not the actual one but just to show you the animal.

The cats were not impressed. They ran in, all 3 of them, trying to get through the cat flap at the same time! It was very funny as they all had bushy tails! Silly things.

I've not had much training as an artist but I did take a few courses over several years. My very first one was botanical watercolours and this totally sparked my interest in painting. I have been playing around with botanical subjects ever since. In botanical painting you literally spend hours staring at your subject and noticing things you had no idea were there. It makes you look at nature in a diffent light and you no longer take things for granted.  I've collated some of my favourite paintings from other artists which has inspired me so much. I just can't wait to pick up my paintbrush!

You can visit these shops by clicking on the images.

Oscar is one of our boys and just loves my partner! He's quite happy being carried around on his shoulders all day. The funny thing was that they both seemed to be admiring one of my paintings! lol

I've been working on another peacock feather painting, a little different to this one so I thought I'd share with you the steps taken to arrive at the finished result.

Peacock Feather - string/acrylic/iridescent medium on wood - SOLD

This is a technique I've invented myself over the years.  First of all I start off with a piece of wood as this is easier to cut the string on (as opposed to canvas).  I apply a layer of papier maché to create some texture but also to create a barrier as the wood is quite porous.

Once dry, I paint the base with acrylic paints. Then I can start to draw out the subject in chalks and start to work out the direction of the string.  For feathers this is relatively easy because feathers are like tiny little bits of string held together in any case. After this I can start to glue the string.  For this work I'm using cotton.

I will continue working this way to match the left hand side.  After this process I will apply a product which will seal the string.  Once this is thoroughly dry, then I can start to paint in the normal way using either oils or acrylics, it doesn't matter.  This one is in acrylics to which I have also mixed an iridescent medium so that the light plays with the colours.

Here's the finished article.