This is my latest drawing exploring this theme made on Tuesday. I’m still playing with layering colour and marks. This time I laid down patches of oil pastel first to go under the graphite and dark pastel marks. I’m letting the blue and turquoise slide from under the marks. Don’t forget to click on images to enlarge to see the marks folks!I may make a painting developing these ideas over the Easter holidays, watch this space. I’m grappling my way towards something!

Here is the logo for my new collaboration with Artipeeps for this year. It is based on Norse Myth and the artists, poets and musicians contributing have each been assigned a realm to respond to. Mine is Vanaheim, and I have shared my explorations thus far and field visits on this blog. Really enjoying it all as I did the Transformations work last year. Will be painting this Easter hols in response, although I may have already made my final piece! Not sure, watch this space.

I made this large A1 study of Frejyr’s necklace as a further development of my collaborative work on the Vanaheim theme for the Nine Realms project for the Cambridge based arts group Artipeeps. I’m never sure if I’ve finished my investigations so am just going with the flow. I knew I wanted to make a larger piece with the necklace as a real focal point as it is so important in Frejyr’s story. The fact she had something so precious to her taken  by Loki from around her neck as she slept fascinated me. The story goes that Loki turned himself into a fly to get through the keyhole in the door of her room. She wore the precious necklace even as she slept and had the clasp against the pillow as she lay on her back. So Loki turned himself into a flea to get to the fastening and undo it and steal the necklace away which led to a whole bunch of other trouble. I love the imagery in this story and it stays with me. So that’s the motivation behind this piece. I loved making the marks and seeing what wanted to be brought forward and what wanted to disappear. The knitted motifs seem to be fading too. I’ll see if this takes me into a painting over the Easter holidays.

I made this little acrylic and pencil study today on this glorious spring day in the afternoon sun. I had thought I wouldn’t be able to fit it in as I had several appointments earlier in the day (pleasant!) and thought I may miss the glorious light to work in, but no managed to fit this one in. It’s on the wonderful rabbit skin glue sized linen that I prepared last summer. A delight to work on. I used pencil and acrylic this time. I love all the stages cut flowers go through in a vase, this is probably the final one before they have to go out. Don’t forget to click to enlarge and see the marks.

I made this study this afternoon whilst I had the light. I’ve always loved these flowers and their jewel-like quality. Don’t forget to click the image to see the marks in more detail folks! This may become a gift, or I may do more we’ll see.

This large A1 drawing is an exploration of part of the repeating woven pattern at the base of the cross. There is a distinct feminine aspect it seems to me, and the cross is know as ‘ Shelagh’s Cross’ sometimes as I have been discovering in my reading of the book ‘The Stone of Shame’ about Eskdale and the cross discussed on previous blogs. I’m leaving my work on this for a while now and letting it just be with me a while whilst I do other things. It’s never forgotten though so watch this space. This may be it for my Vanaheim responses, or maybe not, staying open as ever!