Exciting Times

By Lorna Smith

I've had a very exciting week of creativity and it's only Tuesday! It started off on Sunday night with a two hour mammoth session of chatting with fellow members of Etsy from around Scotland. We are reviving our Etsy group McEtsy with a fervent passion, so watch this space for our new adventures.

I have had my second glove commission order within the past month going to Australia, so I am desperately thinking of ways to promote my knitted wares to the good people of Oz....any ideas would be appreciated.

I have also posted some new items to my KnitTwits Etsy shop, my favourite being these cute pink chunky knit gloves with assorted buttons... cute as a button!

My lazy butt has also been motivated to pick up my paint brushes as I have two commission that have been hanging over my head since Christmas! I thought I would show you how I go about painting one of my paintings with Acrylic paint...

First of all I paint a monochromatic under painting with black, white and a brown (Raw Umber). This gives me my very darks and very lights and helps me plot where everything goes. This is the hardest part for me and the most frustrating...I just want to paint with the pretty colours! But the most valuable.

I then do a wash of colour using different colours over different parts of the painting. Here I use the watered down colour straight out of the tube and nice bright colours. This acts as a another base to the paintings and makes sure I get some paint into all of the dips in the canvas. As it is watered down you can see the monochromatic under painting still. I love seeing some of these bright colours creep out when I put the next layer of paint on. These layers give the painting real depth and interest. I have just started adding the next layer of colour. As I have my under paintings it's almost like painting with numbers and is my favourite part. I love colour and will show you how I get on in the next few days.

Hope you all had a good weekend. Get up to anything nice? We went to have a nosy around the grounds of Glasgow University...i want to go back to Uni now! x