Overheard

Year 4 are having a special visit to the Road Safety centre for some invaluable lessons about keeping themselves safe.  There are several police officers to welcome them, they are part of the education team.  Chantelle is holding onto her teacher's hand, she is excited, she doesn't get to go out to places much and 'Miss' likes to encourage her and keep a special eye on her.  As they go into the centre Chantelle becomes even more excited,
"Miss, miss, look!" she implores her teacher.
"What is it Chantelle?"
"That policeman Miss, I know him."
"Do you Chantelle, are you sure?" Miss asks.
"Yes Miss, I recognise him, he arrested my Mum! For swearing at him!"

A recent story from the school where I taught for so many years - there was enough material for endless blogs, some funny, some sad, and some enough to make you mad!!
I thought I'd share this little gem with you. 

(Unrelated police officer I photographed at this year's carnival)

Work in progress

I loved these musk thistles I photographed last month.  They are so viciously spiny and yet thistledown is so soft. I am working on some ideas.

This is my first sketch - pigment liner and colour pencil

and this is what I am working on at the moment which I thought I'd share

acrylic with some gel pen. It could be left like this or I may work in creating more textures. I like to live with something a few days.

An invitation to see my etchings

I had a wonderful day at an etching workshop run by Karen Cameron at Great Linford Arts Workshop which is in Milton Keynes. So let me take you through my day.

I decided to use the sketch I had made of some echinacea which I have already posted in my blog

here. So here I am revealing the first print from my plate...

... and here it is

 (if you click on it you can see all the detail)

I haven't explained stage two, which means covering the plate with a soft wax and then adding some texture. I experimented with pressing some leaves and fibres into the soft ground and making sure the flowers were masked, gave it another acid bath.  Here is the plate inked up.

You can see the textured surface, which resulted in this print...

I had such a great time I decided to go again.

Here's my friend Sally who told me all about the course, working on her plate...

and here is Karen (on the left) and another view of the workshop. It is in a wonderful setting and Karen was a great tutor, inspiring and instilling confidence.

Ooops

Duncan and Cathy I seem to have delete your comments accidently - nothing personal, I didn't even get to read them all through )-:

Nothing better to do

This is Marvin, my rather large very friendly ginger cat. He talks to me a lot, and here he is sitting at the top of the stairs having a chat. I used 'Paint' to convert him into a painting - it took rather a long time but at the time there was some really boring TV!!

Achoooo!

Might be best to give me a miss - don't want you catching anything!

Three little spotty frogs

Sorry they are a bit out of focus, but I was having to kneel down, hanging over the pond sideways on, with the macro lens - a point and shoot camera may have been better in this situation!