Category: Studio Diary
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Refining the Eyes
I spent most of my painting time today on the eyes and lips. They still need some adjusting, but they are getting there. I also blocked in the dress. This is an interesting challenge, not least because I don’t often paint clothes, and this dress is covered in crystals. It’s also a little bit see-through,…
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Drama Queen
This was looking absolutely terrible to me, I mean leaving the room in a flounce considering pouring gesso over it terrible. I’m invested in doing this one well. I came back and mixed a close-to black and used the palette knife to put it on the background, and it immediately looked much better, and I…
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Painting a Queen
I spent a chunk of time fiddling with the charcoal sketch today, before starting to apply paint. There are still some proportions that need to be fiddled with, but I am happy with the way this one is going. Til the morn, Suzanne 327/400
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It’s very pink, darling
After a lot of pottering cleaning gel plates, and gel plate storage clamshells, and cleaning stencils, and brayers, and brushes, and brush pots, and then sorting out the cat litter bucket for all my acrylic water, ready for collection tomorrow, I got stuck in to working on a 16×20″ canvas. For some reason this pic…
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Girl in this world
First finished painting of 2025. Yay! Acrylic on paper, 16×12″ 300gsm watercolour paper. This is my response to the first class in Let’s Face It 2025, with Kara Bullock. I decided to use the same reference as Kara (from Museum app) but do my own thing with the colour palette, composition, and style. Instead of…
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Looking Up Or Eye Rolling
I spent some time yesterday making collage fodder with a view to using it for this class project, and then got up and did something completely different from the plan. I made the background, then sketched this cute quine in with a few charcoal marks, and then did my underpainting with caput mortuum. Next I…
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Art Journal Progress
I have this A5 journal that I have been playing with for months. The project started with sessions of random mark-making, stencilling, stamping, scribbling, and whatever came to hand, until every page was no longer blank. In the meantime I have also used up excess paint, written in phrases, and occasionally worked a spread to…
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Sketching Ideas
Today I had another not-good day. It seems the festive season has gifted me with a sharp lurch into the next phase of perimenopause, and by fuck is it a complete and utter bastard. I did manage to spend some hot sweaty time in my sketchbook marvelling at how hot and sweaty I am as…
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Happy New Year
Happy New Year! I started early with the first art of the year, not least because some bam was letting off fireworks nearby, despite it being horrific weather with 40-50mph wind gusts. Since I wasn’t settling to sleep, I got up and made some art. The paper is 12×16″ 140lb hot press, and I used…
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Happy Hogmanay!
I spent Hogmanay tidying my studio room, cleaning brushes, and sorting out the big shelf with portfolios and larger paper sheets. My intention was to make space to slot in the large box of A1 paper that arrived yesterday, and it fits in perfectly, while being easy to pull out to grab a sheet of…

