The eggs are gone, so now I have been catching up on other stuff!  I finished reading The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins (contemporary and friend of Charles Dickens), a whodunnit that I thoroughly enjoyed.  I have also just finished reading Steal Like an Artist  for the second time in 30 days!  I have been preparing images for the update of the lorjames art website, including the following:

The above is entitled Chicago Thumb Wars from the Moments series of paintings on raw canvas.  I started this body of work last year (for more details go to ART link on right bar).  Below is Auspices -- both of these paintings were inspired by our visit to Chicago in 2010.  I'll be starting back to work on this series next week.

Eggs Cartoned!

Before packing up the eggs today, James took some closeup details of my egg "Wild Roses".  Here are two of them:

James puts the last bit of tape on my egg box.

And I helped wrap his egg too. :)

The eggs are ready to go, and this is me now at the computer doing one of my favourite things -- that is, planning a vacation, hahaha.

Eggs over easy!

Well it wasn't actually easy.  It was a lot of work, but now it is done; it was also lots of fun to do and a great way to start the year off.  Here I am yesterday, almost finished!  I felt like I was painting continents and oceans...

Today James was taking proper shots of us with our finished eggs.  Here's me and mine!

James put images of the four sides altogether.

Eggs-austed!

So I have been very busy since last Tuesday, working on this egg.  A little more detail after blocking.

 With the blue background it is starting to give more of a sense of what it may look like when finished. 

Since I'm up in the attic (my studio garret) my working soundtrack is provided by the dvd player, which means one cd at a time.  I alternate between 2 cds all day long -- PJ Harvey's "Let England Shake" and Tindersticks's "The Something Rain".  They are both fantastic cds, energetic and thoughtful - perfect for painting to.

Eggs-citement!

Yesterday was a very exciting day as the giant eggs arrived...Okay, I will start at the beginning. Last Thursday night James (my husband) saw a facebook posting calling for artists to decorate eggs for The Big Egg Hunt in Dublin in aid of The Jack & Jill Foundation children's charity. We had been talking of getting more involved with things going on and saw this as an opportunity. Enquiries were made on Friday and by the end of the day we knew we were going to get eggs early this week, especially as there was a very short deadline involved (unknown to us, this event was launched in October last!).  So here I am after gessoing my  egg yesterday.

Today of course, I set to as soon as my daughter was off to school.  Here I am blocking in the flowers, leaves and the rosehips of my design (based on Irish wild roses). I always start a painting with a ground of quinacridone violet, and use yellow as a block. I will be very busy until this is finished, so just about everything else is on hold!

Ready, steady, go!

One of my xmas presents to my husband was Austin Kleon's book Steal Like an Artist (link in sidebar), which both of us read very quickly and were inspired by. For the new year I decided I would follow some of his recommendations. I have been making sketchbooks for friends and family for about 20 years, so finally decided to gift myself one I made a few years ago. I always find it daunting to start a new sketchbook, especially one which seems like a precious object, but I will start it this week! I have also started a point-form journal -- it's a French date book which was picked up in the local recycling centre. It has fabulous pictures from around the world and I am actually able to translate the textual blurbs with what French I have.

I am also getting myself more involved in the outside world (I'm a bit of a creative hermit) but more of that next posting!