I have been working on a new abstract meadow painting. This one is bringing me much joy. I LOVE the colours and it has been a dream to work with. One of those paintings where everything just seemed to fall in place nicely. I don’t think I am quite finished with it yet. I will let it sit for a while and gaze at it from time to time to see if our conversation is over.
Here is how it began.
And here are a few little close ups showing some of the details.
I have been very poor at updating my website of late and focussing on Instagram which is so easy to add quick updates. I am endeavouring to make more time to update the blog pages here more often and show my painting process. But in the meantime do take a look at my Instagram page for lots more updates. I try to add posts daily
#lesley.boost.arthappyme
One of the great things about Instagram is that I can add videos easily. If you are interested in my painting process you will find videos there on my posts and IGTV.
You will also find lots of tips and ideas on my IG pages and close ups of some of my work.
There is more of me too, which may or may not be a good thing. Ha Ha! I will let you be the judge of that. I will be adding more posts here soon and updating my gallery pages to showcase more of my art. I have already added a couple more photos of my latest abstract meadow paintings on the Buy Art page. My abstract meadows are now the focus of my work. I hope you like them. Let me know what you think.
And if you should come and visit me on Instagram please do leave me a comment to say hello. And I hope you enjoy my IG page enough to follow me.
I will be adding more content to the website here too, so stay tuned!
At last I have my art for sale on my website Buy Art Yay!
I have just realised that I have not blogged about my art here for 3 months now. Where does the time go? Probably because I spend all my free time painting, which isn’t a bad thing, is it? But if you want to hear from me more frequently and see what I am up to with my art I do try to post every day on Instagram #arthappyme and also on my Facebook page ArtHappyMe
[easy-image-collage id=901]
I have been focussing recently on my Abstract Meadows paintings which I cannot tear myself away from at present.
They feed my need for colour and intuitive painting and I am currently enjoying working with negative space. Like most artists I have been searching for my own style since I began painting and I think I have finally found it. I love that my abstract meadows have no initial ideas, neither in composition or colour, but just slowly emerge. I literally start of with a blank canvas and just go for it. It is great fun and takes off any pressure for a painting to live up to a pre-conceived idea. And each finished piece is a total surprise to me! It’s like opening up a wrapped present very time. 😊
I now have my art for sale up here on my website here Abstract Meadows . I will ship internationally. Here are some close up snippets of some of the juicy bits.
I have only recently begun to sell my art and have been flattered and honoured that so many people like what I do.
I found that my Beach Babes series of acrylic paintings have been proving very popular and I just can’t paint them quickly enough.
My good friend Karen (and my mentor) advised me to try having some gicleé prints done. So I have been making enquiries. However, because the initial cost is a little expensive I thought I would just try out having some prints of just one of my paintings. But, which one to choose???? I kept procrastinating and changing my mind when I suddenly came up with the idea of posting pictures of the originals on to different Facebook Art Groups that I belong to plus my own Facebook page asking for people’s opinions. I must say I was overwhelmed with the response. In two days I must have had over 200 comments and endless likes.
So, what was the result? Well I am pleased to say that it was this one that proved overwhelmingly the most popular.
And this one came a fairly close second.
I was actually very happy with this result as I had favoured the purple one myself.
I should point out that my first ever Beach Babe was originally inspired by the artwork of Carol Carmichael who seems to paint a number of beach scenes. As I have progressed through my paintings I have found my own style and learned a lot about painting the body and movement. As the purple and orange ladies (the one chosen) was my latest painting of six paintings that I have done I feel that this is more me.
So where do I go from here? Well next month I plan to have some gicleé prints done and will see how they sell.
I would like to thanks everyone who commented on my paintings which was a huge influence on my final decision. I had such lovely comments from you all. And lots of advice too. A few had suggested I have them made into greetings cards and I will be looking into that too.
If all goes well I hope to have them for sale here on my website soon. So watch this space! Or sign up for my newsletter updates (top right).
I have just completed a new painting. It is an acrylic painting with a collaged background. This is branching out for me as I usually do faces not bodies. But I must say I did enjoy it and I am pleased with the final result.
The idea for the ladies just sprang into my head and I couldn’t wait to make a start. I wasn’t sure if they would be a success. It was a little out of my comfort zone. I often find that the ideas in my head do not generally turn out the same in the end result. But I was splendidly pleased with the outcome.
First I sketched out a couple of Quirky Ladies in my sketch pad and once I was happy with them I drew them out again on my 12 inch square piece of wood that I had previously gessoed in preparation.
I collaged the background areas avoiding the drawn centre area. 
Then I painted the ladies and the background with acrylic paints.
Lovely ladies I am very happy with you. I may have to paint another.
I do love to paint Quirky Portraits and every so often I have to get one out of my system. And today was one of those days.
I have named her Patty. Mainly because her plaits gave me a bit of a problem but I couldn’t call her Plaity. 🙂
Here is the process of how she developed.
First I sketched out my idea.
I decided to use a 12 inch square wooden board which I painted with white gesso. I collaged on some papers for the background. There is no plan here. I just randomly paste them on but I do try to leave a space in the centre for the portrait.
After this I sketch out my portrait on to the prepared background.
Sometimes I paint the face first and sometimes I paint the background first. On this occasion I painted the background first using acrylic paints.
After this I went on to paint the face.
Finally the hair, hat, body and finishing touches.
And voila, Patty was born!
I hope you like her.
SaveSaveSaveSave
I have finally got around to finishing another Quirky Portrait today.
I started her in October. Here is her sketch drawing.
Then I prepared her background.
And here is the sketched girl drawn on to the collaged background.
So today I had some time at last to take out my paints and finish her off.
She is painted in acrylics on 10″ x 10″ fibreboard.
Now I am presently calling her Library Girl, because she looks to me like she would be very happy swotting in the library but I am hoping someone can come up with a name for her. I would really welcome your suggestions in Comments please. A quirky name that sounds librarian like. Ha ha!
I am still away from my art studio and only have limited supplies with me. So, I am having to console myself with sketching quirky portraits with pencil in my tiny sketchbook. 
Now I can’t wait to get back to my art supplies so that I can collage some large backgrounds and transform these gals with some paint and colour.
With very little supplies and limited time it was fun to do a blind contour drawing. This was a photo that I found on the internet that I used as my inspiration.
Then with pencil on paper and only by looking at the reference photo and not looking down at my drawing I placed my pen on paper and drew. Then a little bit of colouring in with my Neocolor 11 crayons.
Then I painted on a little water to activate the crayons. And voila!
Great fun to do and lovely quirky results. And fulfilled my yearning for a quick fix of art.
Today I have been painting more of my Quirky Portraits and I have finished one already. The background I had already painted with acrylic paints back in April last year. That’s more than a year ago! I had prepared these three 10″ square canvases which were sitting on a shelf in my art room and to be honest I hadn’t known what to do with them.
So I took them off the shelf and decided they would make great backgrounds for one of my Quirky Portraits. It was a different way of working for me though. Normally I have decided what I am going to paint before I prepare my backgrounds and then the background is prepared accordingly. So this was a little scary for me and I was very dubious that it might not work out. But in fact I am very happy with it.
I chose to work on this prepared background first.First of all I painted her face.
Then those white fanned brush marks above her head appealed to me so I added more to give the appearance of a headless.
Then I added a Cleopatra inspired hairstyle.
I have named her Cleo (for hairstyle reasons).
I thought you might like to see the sides of the canvas too.
As you can see I have used a deep edged canvas and I take the painting around to the sides, including the top and bottom. I like to do this so that a painting can be enjoyed from any angle.
So now I need to work on the other two of these prepared canvases. Let’s hope they work out for me too.
