Under the Oak designs

Plasencia Dreams 1&2 So, scarily, I have today placed a couple of nicely framed originals for sale in my local fine art gallery (as seen above). I let the proprietor set the price and so this experience is a new one for me.  I'm viewing the whole thing as an experiment that I'm going to try to enjoy and learn from. I thoroughly enjoyed crafting these hand modified prints (HMP). They started life as a print of a watercolour I painted during our Autumn 2021 trip.  Early in the trip we'd stayed just outside Plasencia towards the bottom end of the Jerta valley.  A lovely cycle path ran from our campsite to the Presa del Embalse where my sister-in-law and I had spent a lovely afternoon wandering around and swimming in the lake.  Later in the trip, when we were parked up and chilling just outside Isla Cristina for a few days, I'd grab my paints each afternoon as the temperature rose, and slowly but surely I painted one of my favourite scenes. Presa del Embalse de Palse...

My husband always refers to my art as 'neat & tidy'.  I know it's not a compliment, although (to be fair), it's not a  criticism either.  It's his honest observation, I do feel a need to be neat.  This often manifests itself in a fineliner of some description being used to outline watercolour (or acrylic) flowers for example.  Because I am aware of this  'abstract acrylics' do have a permanent place on my to-do list.  This past week I have ticked this off and, much to my delight, I'm quite pleased with the results. Working on Daler Rowney 190gsm Acrylic paper, I used a mixture of soft body acrylics applied with palette knives and brushes, an acrylic pen and my lovely ArtGraf Viarco Taylor shape in white to add the highlights.  I felt something was missing so I added stamped flowers and/or shapes as the finishing touch.  For future series I am hoping to carve my own stamps to use.  And yes, I did say future series because I enjoyed th...