Life, Loves, and Lipstick

I never thought I'd be writing this, but I have officially stood up on a stage in front of an audience and danced a burlesque routine all on my own to a room full of people with all of their eyes on me... more than once now. How!? I genuinely don't know so if anyone can explain please do! Back when I lived in Liverpool I went to something called Dr Sketchy's, a burlesque life drawing class where performers do a routine in front of an audience of artists then pose to be drawn in their costumes, it was great. The costumes were so beautiful and that vintage style was a joy to draw. It got me into doing illustrations for performers as a bit of income for myself and began my own interest in vintage style fashion. I admired their grace and confidence, how wonderful they looked, like showgirls of another era, I'd love to look like that! When I moved to Derbyshire in 2011 I had contact with a few performers through my art stuff, and I ended up having a beginners burlesque class...

Hi blog world. Wow it's been a long time since I blogged.  There's a bunch of stuff I want to write about, serious life stuff like family relationships, anxiety, moving house, health stress and some light hearted stuff like pursuing a new hobby, interior design planning and some new shows we've given a go recently that I'd like to recommend. For now, I'm going to do a little summing up blog post about the above, and things I'll go into more detail on separately. So, main updates from the past (almost) 12 months... In 2020 we started to talk about what we both want in the future, and starting a family came up, something neither of us thought we'd genuinely wanted previously, but it was lovely to realise we had both started to feel that we'd like to take our relationship to another level. However, it wouldn't be an option where we couldn't live really due to lack of space.  So, we decided to put our/my house on the market early 2021 and should be m...

Did a bit more work on the portrait this morning, and I think it's done. Scanned, and with a bit of colour added digitally... Missy Malone Biro and white pencil 2012

Got my 5th piece for the exhibition started today (the others are generally unfinished though so it's not like I have several completely pieces, there's still plenty of work to be done...) This one is a biro portrait of Missy Malone. I just scanned it and can see so many things standing out as being wrong. The eyes, the eyebrows, her ear, her jaw/side of neck... going to try rectify it as best I can tomorrow. It doesn't half help when you scan something, you notice flaws that you don't see by just looking at it on the page really...which is a good thing I guess as the people who see it in person may not be as struck by the things that are wrong as I am... Having said that, I am overall happy with this one, and I'm also feeling more confident about having work for the exhibition :) Here's a preview of the other four... I know I want to do at least one more, so that will make it 6, shall see if I do any further ones. Also have a commission...