Sarah's Painting Journal

I got tired of having my little paintings festooning every window and door frame in the house. I actually made this very rudimentary rack to display some of them for a craft show I went to in the Fall, but it works very well as a place to dry my oils.

Here is my further progress on my pet portrait commission. I have tried to punch up the contrast a bit but I am still very unsure of the expressions. My source material is so scant and I barely know the annimals in question having only “met” them once. I guess I will let this dry [...]

I have always avoided commissions (usually by quoting such an exorbitant price that I manage to scare the client away).

I have been neglecting my Daily Painting recently, partly because I have been up to my ears in House painting. It isn’t as creative but it is very time consuming and very necessary. My house is 140 years old and original clapboard. We ended up re-siding the West wall because there wasn’t a board worth [...]

This is less a post than a question. I seem to be committed to taking part in a Christmas craft show. It is a local event organized by a bunch of Etsy sellers, so it will include jewellers, dressmakers etc. I have never done anything like this before and I find myself at a bit [...]

I spent some more time finishing off my pochade.
I replaced the hinges and clasp and made a brace from a couple of mending strips. I have an old camera tripod which is missing the block that is supposed to screw into the camera. So I made a mounting block out of three pieces of boxwood [...]

Well I made some progress today. Whether this will be worth the time I am putting into it remains to be seen. I must have spent two hours this morning seeking out the right hardware. Everything I have read insists that it is essential to replace the existing hardware with something sturdier, so I have [...]

I have been thinking for some time that I wanted to replace my antique pochade with something a little less precious. The one I have belonged to my grandfather and is at least 100 years old. I have looked at the commercially available ones and they are mostly too big, too expensive or too fancy. [...]