Category Archives: paintings

Homemade gifts

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Providing you have the time and sometimes, the talent, I think that homemade gifts are some of the best gifts you can give or receive. The other night I had a few friends over for a dinner party and I ended up making a couple of the gifts I gave them. I’m please to say the reactions to them were all positive! When Christmas is over I may do another post on homemade gifts that I received. One gift I have already opened is some black & white film from my friend Melanie. I am supposed to take photos with it over Christmas and then she’ll teach me how to develop the film in her darkroom! So providing that turns out well, that will be another post on here.

Anyway, for this Christmas, I painted Jarvis Cocker for my friend Jo. It was my first time painting Jarvis, and I made sure to get his tiny mouth and jaw line correct. That’s really all that mattered.




Then as my friend Kim is spending Christmas in New York and I lived there for 5 years, I made her a little New York guide, featuring my favourite places that I know are still around. This was accompanied by a mix CD (remember those? I’ve started to make them again!) featuring songs about New York or from artists in New York. Kim was pretty happy with these!


And ok, this isn’t homemade, but I love the idea of using magazine or newspaper clippings as wrapping paper, especially if a certain article reminds of you someone. So I wrapped my friend Melanie’s gift with a Christmas interview with Brian Cox, because why not?




I hope you are all enjoying the festive season so far… xoxoxox

New watercolours

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Hello, this past month has been pretty busy and a bit stressful at work, but tonight I finally did some watercolours. Here’s two of them – the first one is entitled “Autumn Lady” because of the colours I chose and the second one is “No Yes Free Why” obviously because of the words I chose to put in the painting. “Autumn Lady” will be posted off tomorrow, along with some sweets, tea and gifts, to the girl I’ve been partnered up with in Oh Comely magazine’s November Care Package Project. I hope she takes care of Ms. Autumn. xoxox



The final self-portrait

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My painting class is now completed, and while I have some mixed feelings about the course, I am really glad I took it. This is mostly because it taught me techniques that I normally would’ve never used, and I learned that “painting is creating your own language”, which I love.

Here is my final project, my self-portrait, in the studio last week:




and I finished it this weekend! Here it is:



It’s back in my room in New York. You can see my old MS-10 KORG synth and tambourine on the floor. I look sad as sometimes my life there was a bit rough/stressful, but because I also painted this while looking in a mirror, and I’m not going to be constantly smiling in a mirror. I’m always surprised how different my face looks when it’s smiling vs. not smiling. Maybe everyone thinks that about themselves?

I’m wearing a mod dress that I wore when I played with my first band, and the pink painting is a painting I did in 2001. It was on my wall in NY.

Overall, I’m proud of myself. I will treasure it and I’m glad that it remotely looks like me!

Also, when I’m willing to do another self-portrait on my own time, I think I will go for another time-piece, featuring an era of my life. It could end up being an interesting series. xoxox

Self-portrait – first sketch

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As some of you know, I’ve been taking an intermediate painting class. Now that we’ve gone through colour theory, mass, volume, etc…we are working on our final project. I accidentally ended up with the hardest final project one could do – a self-portrait! I’ve never attempted one before, but my first sketch isn’t too bad, is it? At least I got my wonky eyelids and eyebrows.



My instructor says I’m very close to starting the final painting – just have to think a bit more on colour theory and expressionism. Also, I need to paint a bit slower as I did the above in an hour. I’ve never taken my time with painting or drawing, so we’ll see what happens! xoxo