Selling Seashells

"She sells seashells on the seashore" goes the old song.
And being a shell collector of many years, it's only natural that I want to capture their wonderful shapes and colours in paintings.

My favourites to paint are the cowries and the other kinds which have a natural high sheen, almost as if they've been varnished.


I made a collection of 8 double studies giving their latin names - but stupidly forgot to photograph them before they were framed. Duh!


These went into my first exhibition and - boy oh boy! - was I nervous!

At the preview the night before, the husband of a friend remarked that they were an odd subject to choose for a painting, as in his opinion only a marine biologist would be interested in having something like that hanging on their wall. Oh dear.

As you can imagine, my confidence - already shaky - plummeted at hearing this and I almost pulled them from the show.

Much to my delighted surprise, when the exhibition opened they were the amongst the first to get red stickers, which taught me the valuable lesson of how subjective art can be and how not to listen to any single opinion.

So, fellow art creators - don't be disheartened by the odd stray comment. You thought it was a good idea to paint that subject in the first place so stick to your convictions and hang it with pride!

Doors and more doors

Dakhla Door

I enjoy painting doors. It takes the viewer's imagination one step further as they wonder what goes on behind it.

The one above was inspired by a stroll down a country lane in the remote oasis village of Dakhla which is at the edge of the Western Desert here in Egypt.

It was one of those lovely mornings which make you glad to be alive - birds singing, sun shining.

We turned a corner and came upon this wonderful door set into an ancient drystone wall, made from what's known locally as "gereed" which is the hard centre stem of date palm fronds.

As usual I did sketches and took a couple of photos so that it was fixed in my memory, then painted it using watercolours at my leisure in the studio.


Old El Kasr Door

This door was in another oasis village a bit further north in the now deserted covered village of El Kasr, which happily is being preserved as a monument.

The whole place had an amazing atmosphere and you could so easily imagine the previous inhabitants over the centuries.

This door must have seen so much history. The names written in Arabic around it were probably of the inhabitants but in a remote place at that time there would have been very few who could read.
There are also hand prints - most likely made using the natural minerals found locally, though even today they are often made from the blood of a freshly-slaughtered goat or sheep to celebrate a joyous occasion such as the birth of a child.

Luxor Door

I had seen a collection of photos of the many beautiful doors to be found on the West Bank of theNile, so on one of my trips down south I went to seek them out and was rewarded with this lovely one which I painted in watercolours.

Bahraini Door

Doors need not even have to be working.

This one was rescued when I first went to live in Bahrain.

At the time nobody had any sense of the value of antiquities, and when an old traditional house was being bulldozed to make way for the horrible buildings of the 1970s, I managed to buy it from the site foreman for next to nothing.

It's hand carved and probably at least 350 years old.

After a lot of TLC it now lives in our house in Egypt and it's beauty has made it the subject of several paintings. This one is in acrylics and coloured pencil.

S0 start looking for interesting doors in your neighbourhood. It can be a new opening for your art (pun very much intended! sorry!)

Don't let thinking BIG scare you!

MURAL ON A WINDOWLESS WALL (ACRYLICS)

Want to add a unique touch to your house? Feeling brave and energetic?

Then why not try painting a mural?

The only difference between this and an ordinary painting is obviously size, so if you first sketch out what you plan to paint to scale on a sheet of paper, it looks far less scary.

Before you start, make sure that the wall surface is clean and sound.

Also find out what sort of paint has been used - is it oil or water-based?

If you use acrylics on an oil-based wall or piece of furniture, the paint won't adhere - as I found out when I began a mural for a client who assured me that the wall which I was to work on had been painted with an acrylic emulsion.

When I arrived on site next morning, to my utter horror the soft blue sky and clouds - which I'd spent the previous day working so hard on - had begun to form large cracks.
The entire surface had to be stripped down to the plaster (thankfully by the decorating company who were still working in the palace).

The ideal surface is one which has been painted with an ordinary acrylic wall paint as either artist's oils or acrylics will adhere well.

How to get the outline on the wall is a matter of preference. Some artists like the traditional method of resizing your design by squaring it up (there's lots of detailed descriptions of how to do this on the internet) while others prefer to use a photo projector to beam the outline onto the wall. The choice is yours.

Here are a few tips:

1) Collect all your paints and equipment together before you start and don't forget to have a pot of the base wall colour handy just in case you make a mistake and need to cover it up fast! ;-)

2) Try not to let anyone else see it till it begins to take shape. A comment such as "What's that supposed to be?" tends to dent the enthusiasm of most artists.

3) Make your first projects small - such as a flower "growing" in a pot - before you try to tackle life-sized false windows and doors.

So - start looking around now to find an area of your house needing a little extra "something". Get out those paints and brushes and unleash your inner creativity!

Oh and don't forget to send me photos of the results!

Art Rocks

I was sitting on our beach admiring the lovely smooth white stones that had been washed in after a few high tides and it occurred to me that they might benefit from a bit of decoration.

So armed with a Rotring architect's pen filled with black ink, I started doodling on one of them and one week later - after a spray of varnish - this is the result. You may have gathered by now that this has become my latest obsession.

They can be quite effective arranged in a group plus they make very useful paperweights.

And if I gave a large rock the same treatment, it would make a good doorstop.

There's no stopping this girlie now! Rock on!!!

Benji - a character portrait

Sometimes there are animals whose personalities are so strong that it automatically shows when you paint them.

This little guy - Benji, a Yorkie x Norfolk Terrier - thought he was the size of a Rottweiler even if he happened to be small!

This was foremost in my mind while I was painting him, trying to capture his feisty character.

Painting from photos

Time and time again I've heard the pros and cons of painting from photos.

Personally I think that the camera can be a useful tool and as long as you don't just copy a photo slavishly, it can help remind you of how a subject looks when you're back in the studio.

In the case of "Blackie" on the left, this commission came from a lady whose cat I had never met so I had no option.

She sent me several photos of her, gave me hints as to her personality and said that she would like to me to add some Middle Eastern details in the picture.

I pinned the photos all around my drawing board so that I wouldn't just paint from only one. This gave a much more natural feeling to the painting, just as if she had been sitting in front of me.


Some of my own "props" in the form of locally made kilim cushions gave colour to the painting and I added the red curtain on the right to take the viewer's eyes around the picture.

I was told that Madame Blackie approved of her portrait!

Painted table

All my life I've had pets. I grew up in a family of animal-lovers and wherever I've lived there's always been at least one cat and/or dog as an important part of the household.

I also like interior decor so sometimes there's a clash of interests - such as why does a cat always choose a rug on which to deposit a hairball rather than the tiled floor beside it?

Or ignore the cat scratching post and attack the corner of the sofa?

Why do the dogs always have to jump up at the closed door as I'm getting ready to put on their leashes prior to going for a walk, leaving deep gouges in the paintwork?

I love my four-legged kids dearly which is why I tend to sigh and accept it rather than get angry.

The top of the dining table in the picture above is an example of how to get around the problem.

An attractive table runner was laid across it when we weren't eating but it would get covered with cat hairs as my little furballs loved to sit on it and gaze out of the window. Or it would end up on the floor during a game of kitty wrestling.

The idea came to my mind that if I painted a fake cloth onto the table top I'd just be able to wipe it over and as it was only made from cheap wood, I wasn't worried about spoiling a beautiful wood grain.

I first gave it a good sanding to remove old polish and varnish then used a good strong acrylic base coat to ensure the paint would adhere.

The entire surface was painted in a white, super-tough acrylic wall paint and when it was thoroughly dry I sketched in the basics of the cloth with a pencil.

Using Liquitex acrylics in shades of brown I painted in the woodgrain around the edges, then applied two thick coats of a creamy beige for the cloth.

To give it the look of woven fabric I laid the first coat horizontally and the second vertically. I painted in the tassels next on top of the "wood", arranged unevenly so that they would look natural.

I cut a stencil for the design on the "cloth" to ensure that the pattern would be uniform, using acrylics and a very dry brush so that the paint would not seep underneath.

To give the final touch of realism I added a darker brown transparent shadow at the edges of the cloth and under the tassels.

Finally it was given two thin coats of a good quality matte acrylic household varnish.

And the kitties played happily on it ever after!

Getting inspired

I've often found that some of my best inspirations for a painting are right under my nose.

I was wandering around one day wondering what to paint and cursing my Muse for deserting me, when I passed by the display cupboard in our sitting room, and realised that in there was a painting waiting to happen.

All of the subjects in the watercolour above have been collected over the years from various places on our travels.

So the flat basket from Egypt, the small tagine pot from Morocco, the brass coffee pot from Bahrain and the little tasselled woven hanging from Saudi Arabia - were all waiting to be arranged and lovingly painted.

I used mostly Winsor Newton watercolours with accents of coloured pencil for the finer details and called the painting "My Favourite Things".