Mats Bootcamp February Mini - Magnolia's

I have always adored Chinoiserie, so much so that I would love to create my own. Imagine how utterly elated I was then, when I discovered that for this months mini exercise in Bootcamp my mission was to paint magnolia’s.

I decided for that reason that I’d like to keep my flowers for this assignment relatively representational and I thoroughly enjoyed getting back into my watercolour paints, after several months of learning new processes in the textile print room at college. I also decided to try two new colours that have been sitting in my palette all this time and yet I never use them!

Admittedly, I probably don’t have time to develop this into a Chinese style wallpaper design just yet, but most certainly have visions of coming back to it in future months.

Magnolias Watercolour Painting by Susie Batsford

Hoorah! Onwards We Shall Go...

Hoorah! College assessment completed, so happy to have it out of the way, although next week we receive an essay brief and our new module.  No rest for the wicked eh!  I did much better in my assessment than I had expected too, I'd resigned myself to receiving lower marks than usual as I didn't think my sketch book was up to scratch, so am a very happy bunny.

This weekend I've started work on a fourth anthropomorphic piece, a zebra.  I'm playing around with ideas for a name.  At some point, I'll post some progression images so if you have any thoughts please let me know.

On Monday I begin an online course; 'Reflections: An Art Journaling Workshop', this is happening over on the wonderful Jeanne Oliver website and I'm really looking forward to it as I always find my art evolves in some way after doing a workshop.  It may be a while before I post what I'm up to here on my blog, but meanwhile, if you're interested: http://jeanneoliver.ning.com

Just one more week to go until the free online Etsy course begins, which will help me massively in setting up my Etsy shop in the future.  At the moment I simply haven't got a clue so getting some guidance will be amazing.  If you're thinking about setting up an Etsy shop and want to join in (and I highly recommend it), then here's the link: http://etsy.com/resolution

Right, well I guess I'm going to be kept busy for the next few weeks then.  Did I mention my very active two year old Herbie who needs constant observation since he just loves playing with anything other than his actual toys?  Or my ten year old Finnian with his multiple extra curricular activities, or my own piano practice come to that?  I'm working towards Grade V, I took it up again about a year ago because Finn wanted to learn to play and I thought it would be fun if we learnt together.

Goodness I suddenly feel quite tired just thinking about it all... must be why my house is in a perpetual state of disarray.  Creativity is so much more fun than cleaning though...  don't you think?