Art in everyday life

Hello friends!

I have a real treat of a post today and some beautiful pictures.
I have a friend in blog land called Tonya from Hillbilly Handiworks.
You can see her blog HERE

I approached her to make some picnic sets for myself and my husband.
I knew she could make photo quilts, so I asked her if she could somehow make a photo picnic set, with a picture of each of our darling dogs in it.

She did it - and they arrived today!
My word, but they are beautiful. I love art that I can use as well as admire!

Tonya makes these from your own photo and she can make them any colour you want! They cost $20 each. (That's about £12 in sterling)
You aren't limited to dogs - you could have a photo of anything!

here they are

I should have waited to take pictures, so you could see them nice and flat, but I was too keen to show you all :)

And further in my parcel, was a surprise gift from my friend, Marie!
She had asked Tonya to make an arty gift for me.
This is a dual purpose roll - it holds my delicate brushes for doing fine work, to save them getting battered by the big brushes - and it also doubles up as a watercolour pencil holder! How neat is that!  I can't tell you what this cost, because it was a gift, but I'm sure if you contact Tonya, she'll quote you.
Here's my newest piece of art kit :)

an early present

When I sent for some more art supplies, I treated myself to a present - an instructional art book. I'm looking forward in the Christmas break to practising the demonstrations.



Then my hubby kindly bought the coloured pencils for me to practice with!




And a certain little girl was hoping she could play along too :)

Just a scribble...

Just a scribble?

Why yes. And no.

The scribble of the daffodils has a purpose. It whiled away a few spare minutes and gave me pleasure. That is purpose enough.
I show it to you to show you that not every time you take pencil to paper does it have to be a masterpiece.

Now, this scribble was done with Inktense pencils, so I can wet the drawing after it is finished and get a more painterly look. It still won't look like a masterpiece - but again - it doesn't have to!

If I really like the composition and think it might well make a masterpiece, I can always come back to my sketchbook another time and use it as a reference for when I want to draw the masterpiece on watercolour paper.

So get out and draw.
You'll enjoy it for its own sake.
Masterpieces come later !