My last print that I made for Trinity Hospice is customised by hand, and what most people don’t realise is that I do them to order, so I have a draw full of prints that I have signed and put the title on and numbered them. And then they sit in that draw until I need them. I then grab a print and alter it when they are sold. I have a few ideas for my next print, and have ideas on how to improve the experience for customers too.
The next batch will be printed on different paper and will probably be Fleetwood Ferry, although I have some ideas for tea cups, and I will be looking for volunteers to try the new process out on in the future. Watch this space!
Or: How I am raising money for my Trinity Hospice Blackpool
So what I have done
At the start of 2021 I made a painting of the Ice Cream shop next to the Ferry in Fleetwood, I got 100 printed on A3 paper and one on a absolutely massive A1 paper. I have then drawn on the prints and added extra watercolour so each one of the prints is a unique piece of art, ready to be framed. They really are amazing work (if I say so myself) bright and colourful and making these has brought me some comfort a year after her passing.
Fleetwood Market Days can get quite busy, though not as busy as they were in the days of the ferries where lorries and coaches would compete for space on dock street. During the Covid 19 Pandemic it has felt very empty in the town at times.
I can’t personally recommend the fish and chips here as I have never eaten from this shop myself. The combination of buildings along the Blackpool Seafront are fascinating, so I wanted to just draw the buildings and not worry about painting so I grabbed a sheet of kraft card and just drew it all.
The drawing is A3 on kraft card done initially with pencil for the basic forms and then working up the drawings in Posca Marker, for something a little bit different.
It’s a cold wet Friday Bank Holiday in June, it is also the middle of half term for my children. A few years ago and it would have been my half term too. I would have had four weeks left till summer which was mainly spent cleaning the classrooms and workshops in the school I worked at so if there were visitors over the summer then the spaces would be tidy and safe.
I did that job for many years, there was a time and a season for everything. First term in the September was spent preparing all the projects and materials for the first three years of the high school, whilst they settled into the theory. The second term was a hectic one of ordering materials for GCSE and A-levels, helping them with their projects, it was all hands on deck and I ended up working a lot of Saturday mornings too to help them get through all the practical elements of their course. The Third term was exam prep for the A-levels and GCSEs so I had some support in the first three years of the high schools ages but with all the course work being finished my hectic schedule died down to getting everything neat and tidy.
But what does this have to do with art you may ask. Well I find working easier when I have the house alone, especially as it means I’m not always having to monitor my youngest who is type 1 diabetic but it means I can crank up the music, immerse myself in the noise and paint.
But once the painting is finished , there is a flow of things, photography, editing in Photoshop, writing copy, copy and more copy and then sharing everything on social media and uploading it here to the website. I dreamt for years that I could get someone to do it for me, to get my work out into the world, as I am a quiet sort and don’t really enjoy drawing attention to myself.
What I mean to say is that I think I need to create a time and a season for marketing, for actually getting my work out into the world. To get more people seeing my work, as if they don’t see it they can’t know it exists, they can’t buy it.
On this rainy day all I the thoughts I can think is that my old way of trying to just use social media isn’t working out for me, I need to switch it up, I’m not doing this for fame or fortune, I am doing it as I enjoy it and each painting that I sell allows me to keep making, as painting can be expensive from frames, to paints and canvas, it all adds up. And the more I sell the more I can get my head down and just keep painting and drawing.
So yes, if you are reading this please consider buying something from the shop, even if it is just a print.
If you are interested in purchasing please contact me
Origami Water Bomb
Or how I caused trouble in high school
When I was in high school or at least my last two years of high school, I was fed up, didn’t feel like I was making any progress, so I started entertaining myself in classes by making origami models. The thing is the only one I had actually memorised from my older brothers book was for a “water bomb”.
They wouldn’t that effective for holding water, as generally filling them from a tap, water would spill all over them as the hole was so small. they would just end up soggy.
So what I did instead was make them to all different sizes and colours, and with any paper I could get my hands on, even tiny little ones smaller than a centimetre cube that I built with the assistance of a pair of compasses. I would then hide them with my co-conspirators in classrooms to be discovered when we weren’t there.
No one ever questioned me about it, and having worked in education I can only imagine that they weren’t bothered as at the end of the day a lot of stuff just gets swept into the bin.
This water bomb is drawn on A4 Cartridge Paper and drawn in pencil crayon.
