Summer End

If I have been quiet all over again it is because this summer has been pretty busy for me. No news is usually good news and mine is pretty much the summer standard. Summer holidays primarily mean entertaining my boys, so only shreds of my time are actually spent on artistic pursuits (photography excluded seeing as this is so portable). 

So that I don't bore you with the full account, here are some notable moments as recorded in sketchbook or camera:
- a visit to Longleat left me in awe of the estate. I am yet to write a blog about it for my husband's tourist guiding website but the photo opportunities were marvellous. This is a collage I added to his instgram feed back in July. 

 - I was lucky enough to have a photo featured on Instagram by @igerssurrey (once again, thank you), be briefly followed by the Director of the National Portrait Gallery (who also liked a couple of my photos) and have my Landmark Trust holiday logbook drawing of the ruins of Dunmore House Scotland featured in the Trust's Friday email news to staff. Copies of the first and latter are displayed below :)

As a bit of a tangent, there is a massive debate out there about how much weight should be given to Instagram likes and follows / unfollows. Before anyone jumps to the wrong conclusion, I certainly don't place more weight on them than reasonable, not forgetting the social aspect of a social media platform, i.e. I will always be delighted to network across the platform for the furthering of my artistic career and will gladly take feedback on board.  (Tiny confession: on a couple of occasions said feedback has resulted in me producing interesting work, such as the 'portrait of unfollower' posted on 22 August or the 'human layers' image posted on the 20th June, both of which I am quite fond of. )

Some examples of my holiday sketches in Northumberland and Scotland are collaged below.

- we went to a wedding in early July and it gave me loads of pleasure to take photos of the bride and groom and their lovely guests. Whilst I am sure the official photographer took loads of beautiful photos, I took the opportunity for a creative exercise and made a small book out of my collection. Tip: there are plenty of good options for self-publishing out on the internet and the software is easy to use, resulting in a fabulous wedding gift.

- I have also continued to work on producing my first collection of birthday cards which I have been testing fairly randomly on most summer born friends of my sons. While I love the print quality of the cards, I was sad to notice the white rim around the images when they were delivered. This slight glitch means that I am back to the drawing board trying to re-arrange the image in such a way that it fills the frame in the final printed product.
At this point I need a bit of help from you all - please comment below or by private message with your thoughts on whether the selection is sufficiently consistent in style. I have been trying to keep things alike but in the end I chose to print the version I liked best from each card possibly losing sight of the need to present stylistic consistency. See below for a preview of the collection (not my finest photograph I am afraid).

That is it for now. I would love to hear from you on your latest creative projects or in response to my request for comments on my birthday cards collection. 

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