And the winner is...

I decided to roll a dice to find the winner of my Kells Bird Giveaway... We have quite a lot of multi sided dice knocking around at our house so I thought it would give this runic set a good excuse to get used again!
And so the winner is... number 4.... Christina, of Mermaid in the attic! Which means it will be going all the way to Australia... quite a flight for a small bird!
Well done Christina, and thankyou to all of you who left a comment, its always so nice to read your kind words - sorry you couldn't all get to win, but I'm sure I'll do another Giveaway at some future point... Thanks again everyone!

Last chance to enter my Giveaway! And last night's life session, more ink than I bargained for... !

30 minute pose, ink, gouache and water.

Last weeks life session was cancelled due to low numbers, so I was relieved that this weeks went ahead, actually a very full studio with several new faces which is very promising...
I enjoyed using the ink and dip pen so much last time that I thought I'd give it another go... however I got to the studio to find I'd left my ink at home. Helen, the lovely lady who runs the studios kindly lent me some chinese ink which I found behaved totally differently to the indian ink I had just gotten used to!
Anyway, although it felt more hit and miss than my last attempts I really enjoyed scratching away on my offcuts of mountboard snaffled from work, and threw in a bit of white gouache as well.
Here's the rest of what I scraped out last night...

5 minute pose

5 minute pose

This (above) was supposed to be a 7 minute pose that was going quite well, but then quite amusingly my dip pen nib fell out - PLOP into my pot of ink! I had to fish around for it getting covered in ink in the process. By the time I sorted out the mess the pose was over...

7 minute pose

And the final 30 minute pose which I quite like I think, the ink lines are reasonably clean anyway. At the moment getting used to the new medium my attention to measuring has gone a bit to the wayside... but that's ok for now, as I get more familiar with it the accuarcy will get better and at the moment I'm more interested in the energy of the drawings.
It's funny how different mediums have such wildly different effects on your drawing style... I feel with the ink I want to draw fast with deep bold energetic strokes, hence the lack of careful measuring, but I like it!
Those of you who draw, I'd be interested to hear whether your own drawing style or approach changes depending on the medium used...

And don't forget if you'd like to enter my 'Blog-Birthday-Giveaway' to win an original Kells inspired watercolour illustration, just leave a comment on my previous post here...
I will be drawing the names out of the hat as it were tomorrow evening, so get in there quick!

Windsongs and Wordhoards is one year old... time for a Giveaway!

This week happens to complete the circle of my first year of blogging (29th of March to be precise!)! It seems there is a bit of a tradition of having a giveaway on such occasions and I really rather like the gesture of that, so... I have spent this week painting a little something to give away...
It's a little original watercolour of a 'Book of Kells' inspired bird, you can see my lovely big 1970's first edition on my desk giving inspration as I painted it...
I really enjoy painting celtica, I can see what the monks got out of it I think... I just get happily lost in the hours, brush and water, seeing empty pencil lines slowly come to life with colour.

I got a bit carried away and triple mounted it too! (It's a handy thing as an artist to also run a framing business!)
So if you would like a chance to win this bright little creature, please leave me a comment on this post and I'll put you all in the hat to draw a winner next week!
Whoever wins it, its a way for me to say a huge thankyou to all of you who drop by here for a visit, encouraging me with your kind comments and showing an interest in my creative endeavours.

I began this blog to motivate myself to keep nurturing my art in a life that's become so busy I was in danger of losing my connection to it altogether, and to keep alive my aspirations of becoming an illustrator one day.
But in this strange world of like minded strangers I found much more than I expected. Discovering and visiting all of you I am constantly inspired, reassured and feel although I haven't met any of you in person that I've made some real friends here. It is such a vibrant, creative community of minds, I feel I am not striving alone.
So thankyou, everyone and I hope you like my little bird!