Christmas Card

 This year's card has more... joyful silliness about it. A combination of the moose and my mother-in-law's anaglypta wallpaper. The previous five had more of a feel of hoping for future brightness about them. This one just seems happier, despite mooses being so lugubrious. Maybe I can see a kind of light in the distance now, maybe the tide has turned. Maybe.

More fun with local landmarks

 I added another couple of foregrounds that I could use with the local landmark prints I made for the Diwali thing. This time vaguely Christmas themed. The first with shepherd and sheep. The second with a moose. Very Christmas. These three are the only ones I've got left. Will add more if/when I reprint.

Rugby Open 2024

 First time I've got the three prints I entered accepted. At first, I felt a bit gloomy about the prospect of entering, a feeling that I hadn't done enough good work this year. My wife suggested I put forward my two successful entries to the Leamington Open at the beginning of the year. Seemed like a plan. But I swapped out Blackthorn, Cemex for Artist's Bedroom, Cemex - as the latter is a bona fide 2024 print - and stuck with Skinny Woman. I then decided to add Close Work (the colour version) - it's one I wrestled with, and came good in the end.

Eric Gaskell felt that having Eileen Cooper RA on the judging panel would be good for me, as we're both artisss that have a narrative approach to people in their art. Looks like he was right.

The show runs from 30 November to 20 February next year.

Leave it to Jerome...

 We have received a number of donated books at the Alex, so we thought if we had a library of arty-ish books people could read, that would be cool. So this is my first try at a book plate. I thought St Jerome would be suitably bookish, and his lion would offer an admonishment to anyone who wanted to walk off with it. I think this one needs a couple of small tweaks, but I;m not sure C will like it.

Inktober 2024

 I had a touch of artist's block at the start of the month, so Inktober forced me to actually sit down and draw every day. This year's words struck me as some kind of adventure, so they turned into a story...

Close Work revisited

 This last couple of weekends I worked on some woodblocks to add colour to the black-and-white version of Close Work, I used some plywood from an old wardrobe that had a rough and open grain to it. To give a nice textured effect. I'm happier with it now,

Elephant and Cemex

 

Another elephant made for the Library's Fun Palace thing