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Amongst the many new additions in our house this week along with cute puppy herself, is this ugly (but much-needed) puppy crate which keeps her where we need her to be when necessary.
But it is ugly, and whilst the last few years have seen my houseproudness slowly compromise in increments as two children have grown up into (not always tidy) teenagers, this crate was within my control for a makeover and so a makeover it got.
So one gingham cover and dog blanket later and Lottie has had her first photo shoot. Now we have a cute dog and a cut(er) crate. Now it’s just the teenagers left to tackle…
I’d never heard of this artist until he was referenced on the Get Your Paint On course that I’m on. This is an amazingly simple but beautiful video and I can imagine a lot of people agreeing with me when I say “Seriously? He has people to do this while he watches and comments!’ Never-the-less there’s some good inspiration in there. Enjoy 
Yesterday we brought home Lottie, a nine month old British Springer Spaniel. Whatever did do with my time before her?!
© Claire Leggett Daffodils
Oh man! Daffodils will be fine on the kitchen table for the rest of the season but I don’t want to paint them again until I’ve forgotten the pain! Getting those colours right was hard. Getting the shapes right was difficult. Getting the colours and shapes looking great was tres tricky.
Don’t let anyone tell you that daffodils are yellow because they aren’t!
There’s some yellow in there but there is also a lot of grey, green and a mixture of all three. This week’s Get Your Paint On task was to look at colour and this was certainly a true test of whether I could mix what I saw.
Spring is in the air! The house is full of tulips and hyacinths and I’m painting daffodils.
And my lucky winning streak is holding fast as I have just won this beautifully hand embroidered heart from Helen Philips Sweet Hearts Giveaway. Go and take a look at Helen’s blog which is full of her wonderful hand sewing, bright flowers and corners of her beautiful, calm home – it’s delightful. Thank you so much Helen.
Those wonderful mac masters over at iedesign have had their talented hands on my blog – did you notice? Watch, this space is changing !
Still loving this grid composition. It really lent itself to this subject and made it a lot easier to visualise ‘lucky for Creative Tuesday. So here we have..lucky four leafed clover, lucky cow, lucky dice, lucky stars, lucky charm, lucky guess, lucky coin and lucky horseshoe.
Head over here to see how others got ‘lucky’.
Here is the continued story of this painting. I loved painting the top of this teapot – it went like a dream and has a lovely pattern when viewed from the top.
Likewise with this sugar bowl from Pip studio. I layered the tones underneath first and then put the flat white pattern on top which isn’t strictly speaking the way to get the shadows correct, but it worked for me this time. And boy was that white pattern fiddley to do !
© Claire Leggett "Teatime"
And here is the finished article. It’s a bit of new stretch for me to use a different perspective and a slightly asymmetrical layout. Some paintings make you drag them into being, this one wanted to be born and met me halfway. She’s a special thing.
This quilt below gave me inspiration to try out a new perspective on a still life by viewing it directly from above.
- Jane Burch Conchran “Paper plates”
I had a good rummage through my piles of tablecloths and plates, china, teapots etc and I found this tablecloth embroidered in a grid pattern which then prompted the layout of one item into each square.
It’s been tricky to draw from directly above and I am grumbling about backache now; but as they say ‘no pain, no gain’!
I gave it a background wash and then added deep and medium tone shadows into wet paint. I love doing this because it bleeds together in an unpredictable way (I don’t like sharp shadows) and this shows off the grain and texture of the water-colour paper.
I blocked all the objects in with simple colour washes and then painted in the embroidery.
And here it is at the end of the day, mid way thorough. I know some of you enjoy these step by step painting stories and this painting is being very compliant and photogenic. I’ll finish off by posting the ending tomorrow.
