I won!

Well there is some exciting news: I won the deckchair competition! In case you hadn't read it before, I entered one of my pictures into a competition run by Clevedon Pier; 24 winners would get their design printed onto 2 deckchairs, one for the artist to keep and one to be auctioned for charity, and I am one of those 24! The deckchairs will be in an exhibition at the Tollhouse Gallery for a while so that should be a good bit of publicity and it just feels so good. Here, in case you haven't seen it already, is my design:-



I can also now reveal another little job I was working on last week. It was a birthday present for my dear friend Jenny and I couldn't mention it earlier as I know she pops in here every so often. Last year she took some fantastic photos of a storm on a beach near her Devon home:-



And I immediately wanted to do something based on them for her. It felt a bit risky as stormy skies can so often look terrible in pictures, and the colour scheme was uncharted territory for me. I couldn't ever get the lovely reflective qualities that were in the photos but I did my best to do them justice:-



Actually now seeing it so close to the photos, it looks a bit poor, but on its own I was rather pleased with the textures and the rustic colours, and there is something reminiscent of layers of rock formation in it for me. I am still not sure about the sky. But Jenny is happy and that is what counts.