Blood will Flow

I’m quite overdue a post, but I’ve been busy, busy, busy…

Yesterday I had my left eye lasered – a laser capsulotomy because the capsule behind the artificial lens was getting cloudy. I’d been warned this might happen, though I’d been under the impression it was because of the steroid drops, and that it was a kind of clean up thing. In fact it’s something that commonly happens with cataract ops, and it sounds like it should be a one off as it actually makes a hole in the capsule.

It really wasn’t a pleasant thing, even though numbing drops meant I couldn’t really feel much. She put a large contact lens over the eye and then held onto that to keep the eyeball still while she zapped with the laser. It took a while longer than I’d been told, presumably because my capsule was ‘a bit thick’ and I wasn’t enjoying it one bit.

Anyway , it’s done now, and I think it has helped, I’m pretty sure my vision in that eye is sharper now, so the clouding must have been more bothersome than I’d thought.

In happier news, I’ve finished my Bayduck Tapestry giant duck, and she’s gone to Hastings for the trail starting in June. Now I’m working on two giraffes for Edinburgh’s trail. One’s finished and varnished, the other is getting there.

Yes, they are tall! 2.5m, to be exact.

This time I'm painting in a really nice space called Makerspace - I knew the elephants were going to be problematic at nearly 3m long and 1.6m tall, so I'd been desperately looking around for somewhere to paint. My brother in law had offered up his garage which I'd used for the rocket, but fitting two elephants in there would have been really cramped. Anyhow, long story short, I posted on a creatives group on Facebook, and this Makerspace came up. I had heard of it before but I'd thought they only had the top floor of the premises, which last time I'd seen pictures were full of lathes and printers and laser cutting equipment. But it turned out they'd expanded into the ground floor - had two decent sized rooms with natural light and big double doors - flipping marvellous.

So I've made great progress! One is practically finished, I just need to get sign off from the trail organisers next week so I can varnish, and the second one just needs the special paint applied to the legs and some finishing touches and it too will be done. I'm really pleased. I'd thought they would take me much longer!

So here are a few sneak peeks. I know you won't, but please don't share anywhere, as the trails always want to keep the full designs secret until the launch dates.

This one is called It's a Holi Holiday, and is meant to be a representation of the Hindu Holi festival of colour.


It's all done with cans of spray paint apart from the flowers which were acrylic marker pens, and the hearts which I used a stencil brush. The hands are three different sized stencils I cut myself.

The second one is called We Will Rise, and has a more serious theme - the phoenixes are refugees/migrants, fleeing their homes to make new lives in our country. Luton, where this trail is going to be, has a large population of migrants of varying backgrounds. I got some special paint called Scorched Earth from Jackson Art, which they made for a charity called Migrate. It's a black acrylic, made from ash taken from Kurdish fields destroyed in Iraq. When I read about the making of the paint, I bought 2 tubes in the hopes of being able to use it on something meaningful, so I was really happy when this design got chosen.

I hope people will stop for a moment and think about the many reasons people have for leaving everything they know behind to try and start all over in a strange place.

Anyway, I haven't applied the Scorched Earth paint yet, that's what I need to do next week, so here's We Will Rise as of yesterday.
I can't get back far enough to get the whole side in from this direction

I've been busy, but for some reason, motivating myself to post has been lacking, so this is just a sample catch up really.
I've finished painting a giant hare for a sculpture trail in Southend, a book bench for a trail in Kings Lynn, and I'm now in the middle of painting a giant rocket for Leicester. The hare and the bench both fitted in the house fine, but the rocket is 1m wide at both base and belly, and all our doors are 90cm max. So I'm set up in my brother in law's garage, which was kind of him!
Rocket progress pics
For scale, with me (I'm 5'1")



It's a urban wildlife theme - so there's a night and a day side, and there'll be various critters featured.

Early days yet though.

In between times I'm trying to draw stuff. Any old stuff really. Here's a doodle page, trying out Zig Writers - I love the fine liner ends of the double ended pens.

I've done a watercolour for Meanttobe, hopefully posting with my author next week, and also in the pipeline are two elephants which will be arriving once the rocket is finished. Fingers crossed I can get them both in the garage! They are much bigger than the Elmers - 3m long!

Started painting my Cambridge cow this morning. It wasn't too bad in terms of temperature out in the garage, I wore thermals and fleeces and survived just fine, but it's pretty dirty in there, and I kept getting bits of dust and tiny fragments of dead leaves stuck on the wet paint because I had to work with the garage door open for the light. So that's a nuisance and I don't know what I can do about it. I hadn't noticed it being a problem last time I used their garage for the bee and the giraffe - maybe it's because I'm using lighter colours at the moment, for this base coat.
I was going to do a time lapse series but realised my camera battery was too low, so just took a couple of pics.( Read more... )

I did an afternoon on it and think the dolphins are finished. I've done a few more mackerel and will decide later if I need to do more. Tomorrow I really need to start work in the morning... LOL

Dolphins done

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Well that was a bad fan week - I lost my draft fic for spn_cinema somehow, no idea how, but I must have deleted it before I did my backups. DOH. So I missed the draft submission deadline for that one, while I also had to admit I'm not going to get my Dean Winchester Big Bang fic done either. So I've pulled out of two challenges in the same week. I hate doing that once, let alone twice.

On the up side, I'm happy to report that my hare raised £3400 for Break kids charity in Norwich, and even better, my giraffe went for £7000 (my personal record so far!) in the auction in Worcester. Wish me luck for the other two auctions this week - the bees are on Wednesday and the car bonnet on Saturday. I should tot up what my sculpture paintings have raised so far over the last couple of years and add it to my resume!

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Sunday I had David (aged 90) come supervise and talk about printing techniques, today I had Anne (aged 92) stop by to discuss what happened with my next door neighbours yesterday and check on my progress. They are both such sweeties.

After moving him to my neighbour's garage again (with the help of a wheely trolly and Paul and his little brother), I did nothing yesterday, but made good progress today.

Here's Bee-sy Rider on the move up the hill( Read more... )
And does ANYONE have any idea why LJ is wiping code again?????? FUCKING HELL!!!! Stupid bollocksy buggering thing!

I've finally started sketching out my references for the photo ops in Rome this year, and have also started painting my gift for Jared, though I haven't yet decided whether I'm going to give it to him in Birmingham or in Rome. It's a dilemma.

Then today I heard I am getting a giant bee to paint! Mind you, after the giraffe the bee is not that large - only 1.5m tall, a bit over 1.5m long and 85cm wide. I should be able to get him into our front room to paint, much to Paul's delight. LOL

So here are my ideas for my Alex and Jensen photo ops( Read more... )

The weather finally let up long enough for me to varnish Giraffic Park, one coat. It took ages to dry though, this sunshine only lasted a couple of hours this afternoon. Plus the light wa so bad this morning I missed patches all over the damn place! Hopefully the second coat will cover it all when I do it tomorrow. In my defense, it was a bit wobbly up the step ladder on that slope.

So here are a couple of outside sunny pics! Shiny, huh? ( Read more... )