“Half man, half bear, half pig.” (Al Gore, South Park, S10, E6)

It’s the Epiphany. You know, the 12th day of Christmas, the day the Magi arrived with their gifts. Nollaig na mBan.

Anyway, whatever. It’s time to catch up and display my wares, so to speak. Quite a lot of experimentation and some repeats. Some good. Some not so good. There were some terribly bad ones too but they’re not going to make it into this post!

Let’s start with a good one: a dreamcatcher, made for Vicky who works with me in the Irish Board …

Next, a not quite successful experiment in laminating a fuchsia from our garden that I dried in a book just before Christmas. The lack of success is more to do with the thickness of the card on which the fuchsia sits. It’s too thick and so the lamination isn’t a s smooth as it should be.

Having been drawing mandalas on a variety of surfaces over the last year, I’ve become more and more interested in Indian motifs and styles of decoration. This is a consequence. It’s not quite as neat as I’d like but it was enjoyable to draw and I’m going to do more of them. I’ve just ordered some red-black ink which might look good on tea-stained paper.

These are tuna cans. In time, they’ll become candles. The blue is background/sky for, probably, flowers.

And these are my experiments in painting flowers. I normally paint tiny ones, as anyone familiar with this blog will know. So bigger ones are a challenge. The first was painted with acrylic paint, not a medium with which I am entirely comfortable. The second was painted in watercolour. The bit you are seeing is the only acceptable part of a larger muddy mess. In both I was aiming for expression rather than realism and I think I achieved a little of that so that’s quite pleasing.

Apart from that, the break from work, even though it was otherwise quite busy, allowed me some headspace to generate other ideas. They’re fizzing away at the moment in my head. Exciting times.