Ooops!

Has it been that long already! Can't believe my last post was nearly three weeks ago! I was doing so well too, with regular postings!

My only excuse is that I've had my head down working... but not on paintings, sad to say. Since my last post I have prepped for and tutored a silk painting workshop... and there was a lot of prepping, as I was out of practise big time with painting on silk. And since then I have been prepping for a five day batik workshop and a six day stint as an artist in residence. During my artist in residence week I shall be giving an hour long talk to fellow members of The Wildlife Art Society on my work at the zoo; for which I have been working on a powerpoint presentation. It's quite a lot of work, but hopefully will be worth it as once it is done... I can use it time and time again for other talks to art groups. Powerpoint is actually very easy to use, and I say that as a complete beginner to the application, and I'm hoping what I have done will not only be of interest to my fellow members but a bit of fun as well, here and there. The hard work has been the amount of hours I have spent scanning in and adjusting photo's and images of my work in preparation. Of course, the proof is in the pudding, as they say and time will tell if this ease of use translates and continues when I do the actual presentation.

On top of doing that I have been printing out cards and promotional leaflets for both events and sorting out paintings for two forth coming exhibitions, making email and telephone enquiries in pursuit of a very exciting project (which I won't say too much about that now in case I jinx it but once things are more definite I won't be able to contain myself and will no doubt be blurting it out everywhere!). Over one weekend I had to catch up all our baby fish... well some were over a year old but as we have only a very small pond the 30 or so youngsters were causing a huge problem. The ponds' ability to maintain itself was struggling and it would not cope with them all come the winter. So I had to fish them all out... quite a job because for some reason the fish did not want to be caught. And whoever says they only have a 3 second memory.... don't know my fish! In the end, I had to empty the pond (not the best time of year to do that kind of job!), I scoured the plants I hooked out for invertebrates and young newts, which took some time. Luckily it rained on and off all day... I say luckily as this prevented the plants I hooked out from drying up. Eventually I managed to get all the fish out, putting only the adults and the youngsters I wanted to keep back. I had homes lined up for the youngsters so I kept them in holding containers with some of the plants until they could be collected and taken to their new homes. This 'little' job took over the whole weekend and gave me a killer backache for a few days! And of course there's all the other householdy things to do as well.
So, all in all, my posting priorities took a back seat, but this morning I decided I really must change that and at least explain my absence to my regular visitors.

I also wanted to make sure I post about the silk painting workshop before the batik workshop and my artist in residence happens.

The batik workshop is at the Gloucester Summer School of Arts and Crafts, Glos running from 23rd July to 27th July.

My Artist In Residence week is at The Nature In Art Museum and Art Gallery, just north of Gloucester, from 31 July to 5th August. If you are in the area and have the time, do please pop in and say hello, whilst I am there.