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Managed to do a bit of doodling this week in my moleskine journal. Have no idea of why candy emerged from my mind, but, there you go.

This doodle below is of a few of the many ideas that popped into a mind obviously looking forward to spring, though admittedly I've actually enjoyed the winter so far. Strangely enough.

I've also squeezed in the time to refresh my Painted Flowers from last year (pink and red), and work on a new colour variation (orange and yellow), also pretty and joyful for the coming spring ...

And added a coordinating pattern with just the ferns and the dots, to accompany the collection:

The Painted Flowers are all being uploaded to my stores these few days, and as soon as that's done I'll post a few of the gifts and cards over at my Floating Lemons Treats blog, so keep an eye out for them!

Newsletter News:

I've decided to extend the availability of my 2014 "I Choose" free printables until the next newsletter is posted out to subscribers on Saturday 7th February 2015. So if you'd like to download the whole series or any one of the months from last year, you have another week in which to do so! Just sign up for the newsletter HERE if you haven't already done so, or on the top left of this page.

Have a wonderful & joyful week. Cheers.

I've been busy at college. Started learning metalwork recently and it's wonderfully fascinating. I've done a couple of rough, small pieces and will show them off soon. Meanwhile I've managed a few doodles when time permits, adding colour to my Float Like A Balloon drawing and sketching a few ravens for fun, all in my moleskine blank book ...

So yes, I'm still fascinated by the black birds and their mythologies and fables, so will pursue that further whenever I find spare moments to do so. Right now I'm occupied with filling in college sketchbooks and drawing tons of shoes ... so expect to see loads of footwear up here soon.

Wishing you a week full of blessings and lightness. Cheers.

It's been incredibly busy around here lately - getting ready for some huge personal changes, and enjoying the company of visiting family and friends - so busy in fact that I missed posting something here on Saturday. ooops. Have barely had time to breathe never mind draw, so I dug around for something I did a couple of months back, just for fun.

Here is my proliferation of peculiarly painted pets. Not sure whether to continue with these and turn them into a pattern or not ... what do you think?

Have a pleasant day packed with potty peculiarities! Cheers.

Did a bit of doodling. Not quite sure what this is meant to be but I like it and may carry on and explore further to see what it decides to turn into ...

Here are doodled gift boxes. Why gift boxes? No idea. They just tumbled out, all wobbly and imperfectly cute, onto the blank page. I'll have to consider turning them into a pattern or something ...

All proof that I do occasionally take a break just to have a bit of fun. Back to work now. Have a fantastic day. Cheers.

I'm finally back in France after a wonderful two week holiday, and it's taking me ages to get back into the 'routine' and catch up on stuff, and e-courses. I'm working on the text design for next month's newsletter at the moment, but apart from that haven't had the chance to do any new art really, though I'm full of ideas after the trip to Istanbul, that I hope will eventually make it out into the light of day.

Meanwhile however, remember the Cat Blobs that I drew last month? I did get around to creating a pattern out of them, though it still needs a bit of further re-fine-tuning. And I have some doodles that were hidden in the moleskine sketchbook that might not mind being shown off ...

I'd really like to create some patterns from those bees, and I'm not quite sure what I'll do with the Sharing is Caring bear and owl, or the sleepy cats, but as I'm quite fond of them I'm sure they'll get improved on and worked into something in the near future.

Now it's time to start catching up on two weeks worth of my e-course! Wishing you wonderful learning experiences. Cheers.

Yes, I'm in London. Which is wonderful, especially as I'm with family, about to go on an amazing trip to celebrate my dad's 80th birthday ... yet a wee bit frustrating as well, as I'm missing two whole weeks of the e-course that I've been so thoroughly enjoying ... But yes, I am definitely counting my blessings.

I did manage to take some time off and doodle. We're having a few internet connectivity problems so I'll keep this short and sweet, and post it before I get cut off. Here's the black and white sketch:

I'm not sure if I'll be able to carry on blogging much till I get back home, but I'll be posting photos and updates over at the Floating Lemons Facebook page so pop by there if you'd like to accompany me to Istanbul ...

Have a wonderful day. Cheers.

Still working on sketches for my e-course, The Art & Business of Surface Pattern Design Module 4 ... I did some doodles and sketches with geometric, floral, and typography themes in mind.

I'm not sure if the final results below would be considered strictly geometric but hey, I drew grids and shapes and then got carried away filling them up. There are florals there too, so perhaps I managed to work on two of the themes at one go. Oh, and some typography too ...

The second one is still unfinished. I 'work' on it whenever I have time, i.e. when I'm uploading designs onto stores. I used to have a dodopad in high school, and used to colour it in with magic markers, does anyone remember those? These grid doodles reminded me of that, and the whole exercise is teaching me tons about colour, and is fun to boot.

I did some typographical sketches with a holiday theme:

I love playing with text design. And some of you may know that this year I've decided to do a monthly design based on "I Choose ..." as a positive affirmation, that I make available as a free printable to the subscribers of the Floating Lemons Newsletter. It's a hugely wonderful experiment in typography for myself, and these are the ones I've come up with so far, for January till April:

They count as typographical exercises, wouldn't you say? Next month I'll be doing "I Choose Courage", as I'm going through huge changes in my life that require a large amount of deep breathing, and I'll be plunging into a different life and lifestyle. Scary, but also very exciting. I'm thoroughly enjoying the text designs and the affirmations that are emerging, and hope to do a calendar with them at the end of the year.

Meanwhile, I'll be away for two weeks as of next week. I shall try to blog as much as possible, but as it's my dad's 80th birthday that we're celebrating, I may not be able to do that, so forgive me in advance. I'll be posting up at the facebook page, so follow me there if you want a peek at my updates, and to see photographs of whatever inspiring bits I pick up from the United Kingdom and Istanbul (yay).

Meanwhile, have a fantastic week and don't forget to experiment joyfully. Cheers.

I've been working on class exercises and on submissions to competitions, which has left me with not much time for anything else, and, oddly enough, slightly uninspired this week.

I brought the pens out to do a bit of doodling with spring blues and greens in mind, and this is all I came up with ... those sun doodles remind me of the ones I used to do in high school, sigh. So I could consider them either very retro (does that give my age way?!) or a sign that I'm regressing into a second childhood phase - either way I suppose it means I'm having some fun after all ...

Wishing you all a lovely day with more sun than showers! Cheers.

It's National Doodle Day in the UK today, and they support of the work of Epilepsy Action. So I've decided to post one of my Moleskine doodle pages in their honour.

Yes folks, this is what I do when I'm stumped for something to draw ... these doodles seem to have a bit of a floral theme, I might use some of them for illustrations or patterns one of these fine days ...

Any preferences? I do like the blue one myself, but that's probably because colour makes such a difference, so it stands out. I'm going to take a quick break now and trot off to the Friday village market with my guests ... might find some flowers to buy and draw! Have a lovely day. Cheers.

Now that I've started on a cupcakes theme, I'm going all the way with it this week! So I doodled some quirky cupcakes ... they're a bit odd, whimsical, playful and lots of fun to draw. I doodled flower cupcakes, a sailboat cupcake, coffee cupcakes, a heart cupcake, a colourful iced cupcake, one with a cherry on the top, and even a landscape cupcake with mountains and a stream ... Here are the doodles:

I then scanned them in and started working on them individually. Don't like the bottom left and bottom right ones too much so those will be scrapped, but I think the rest might make for a cute pattern and as individual images to place on cards and gifts. So I made sure I scanned in a relatively high resolution and went to work on the rest. Here are what I've done so far with the first two ...

A pretty pink Daisy cupcake, and ...

... an orange Rose cupcake. What do you think? I digitally 'painted' them and cleaned up edges and finally applied a photoshop filter. I normally repaint them using Corel Painter 12 but since my last Mac OS update that no longer works, which is truly disappointing. I'm hoping that they catch up on the updates soon as I do miss it, but meanwhile, photoshop handled these cupcakes pretty well.

I'm still working on the rest of them. I may post those once I'm done. Cheers.

Still in the spirit of hearts, love, and Valentine's Day, I decided to doodle some flowers with heart petals, inspired by Provençal motif designs. Whipped out my large Moleskine journal and my marker pens and here are the results:

There's something I quite liked about those top flowers, though I can't pinpoint exactly what it is. So I scanned it in and cleaned it up a bit, just to see how it would look. Here's the scanned original:

And here's the cleaned up version:

Is there something odd but cute about it? I'm really unsure whether to work on it further and place it onto products, or create a pattern design from it or not. Perhaps I'll just put it in the To Do queue and look at it again sometime in the future and decide then. What do you think? Cheers.

I love the fact that I'm putting a doodle up for the first day of the New Year, as this year I'd really like to approach my art with a more relaxed feel, and put my perfectionist-bully away -- and these little sketches are so enjoyable, drawn with less 'serious' attention to having a 'final result' in mind.

The fact that this particular doodle is of a heart is perfect too, as it's a reflection of my gratitude for everything in my life: being of sound body and sound mind, having a roof over my head and food in my mouth, and being able to work at something I love, as well as having such amazing, positive support from my family and friends, both off and on-line.

Here is the original doodle, sketched out in a hand-made book crammed full of lovely, coloured kraft papers that I found at one of the local markets. There's a particular joy I find in drawing in a book that has been created with love, especially when you get to actually meet the people who crafted it so beautifully.

And here's the doodle in close-up ...

As usual I got carried away, cleaned it up and then played with colours, placing it against ... red (the original), blue (see below), lime green, yellow (I didn't put those up here as I thought it might be toooo much), then changed the black outline to white and set it against a pink and black colour scheme ... and really, I could have covered all the colours of the rainbow, I was having so much fun, but I stopped there. For now.

Valentine's Day is coming up, and as we're trying to get some new designs up for it, my Heart Motif (in all its colour variations) will be joining the queue, so watch out for it on cards and gifts at my online stores soon!

2012 was my year of education and of building a stronger foundation for the future. I've made huge changes in my life and work, all quite amazing, and I'm now hoping to build on those, and look forward to exciting challenges this year. I am filled with gratitude.

I have a long way to go as yet, but I'd really like to thank my online friends who've been with me from the beginning of my journey, when I stumbled around trying to draw straight lines (of course I now know that they don't have to be straight, but I had to figure that one out bit by bit), and those of you who have recently joined me, for being so hugely supportive. I would never have continued with my art journey these past 6 years, without the encouragement and motivation I found online. Blessings, and a brilliant 2013 to all of you. Cheers.

I've no idea how this little sketch of candy canes transformed itself into a pattern ... I was just fooling around and well, this is what happened ...

I started off doodling some candy canes - no surprise, it being the festive season and all, and the mood of the moment:

Don't they look like they're dancing? I then decided to scan it in and just experiment a tiny bit, but got carried away. So, this happened ...

I then thought, oh well, I've gone this far, might as well add some stripes, a different background, etc. And a simple, cheerful collection emerged ...

Too late to put up on cards and gifts for this Christmas, I know, but watch out for it next year. I'm thinking it's going to look pretty cute on fabric and giftwrap, especially if I add polka dots somewhere along the line! Cheers.

Just another quick, messy, doodle ... flowers in a square-ish sized box. A bit too rigid in style to be made into patterns, perhaps. Will just leave it be as it is, in the Moleskine journal.

I usually doodle into a small moleskine journal that sits beside me and gets picked up whenever I have to wait for something to happen, such as when I'm uploading large images to one of my stores. I've been flipping through its pages recently, and found this tree silhouette, so of course decided to see if I could take it a bit beyond its scribbly confines to and use it on cards or gifts somewhere somehow ... Here's the original sketch, warts and all:

And here are some of the steps I worked on. First I 're-painted' the background digitally so it wouldn't look so marker-pen-ish:

I then had the brilliant (debatable I know) idea of working on the tree itself:

And finally, as I have Valentine's Day ideas in mind, I carved a heart on the trunk ...

All of the above was done in Corel Painter 12 (I love it!) and Adobe Photoshop. I'm a mere beginner at both but I couldn't live without them now.

I'm still undecided as to which one to use or whether to use it at all, though I guess I could put up some cards with the carved heart on it and see if anyone would like that for Valentine's Day. Would you send it to someone you loved? Cheers.