spring is coming.... really....

My friend Katarina is a talented painter, and, it turns out, also a great teacher! I signed up for a Thursday evening acrylic painting class with her, and indulged in a whole delicious evening of playing in paint last night. Behold the results, above. Yes, I am learning and having fun!!

This is all part of my year of Transformation; getting out of the house, out of my comfort zone, into my creativity and joy.  It's working!

What did you do this week to indulge your creativity?

Oh, and go check out Katarina's 'drawing a day' blog, The Slow Studio, here. You'll love it!

Painting a Handmade Tile

Hello Beautiful,

While playing around and uploading some stuff onto Vimeo for my blogging e-course, I came across this video I made a couple of years ago of me painting a hand-made tile with slips and underglazes. I thought it might be a fun thing to share here on a Sunday, for artistic inspiration... so here it is.


 This video shows me working on a 6" tile with a rustic songbird motif. This motif was inspired by the frescoes of Pompeii which I visited in 2001. I especially loved the garden murals in the Villa of Venus, with their worn surfaces and naive, charming songbirds and flowers. I wanted to capture that naive charm and something of that mysterious, aged surface in my hand painted, hand made songbird tiles. These hand cut tiles are rustic red earthenware. In the video, I have already covered the unfired tile with a coat of pale yellow slip, and worked back into the slip to create an antiqued, distressed surface. The colours in the paintbox are not watercolours as they appear, but specially prepared underglazes. After painting, the tile will be fired, then glazed with a clear crackle glaze, and fired again. You can visit our studio and see more art tile at linguaterratile.com