I have A4 giclee art prints of these if anyone is interested in purchasing one, £25 each. Please contact me at yvonnejenningsart@yahoo.com for more information.
Tuesday, 19 February 2019
Dog portraits
After seeing some work on Facebook by an artist using Pitt pastels, I wanted to try this medium, but, the downside was cost. They are quite expensive. By chance though, I was told by a friend, of a woman who was returning to live in Australia after many years here. To save on shipping costs she was selling much of her artist materials, so I contacted her and went over to see what she had. I managed to get hold of a substantial amount of supplies, including more oil paints, acrylics and a huge collection of Pitt pastels. What a stroke of luck! I didn’t waste long having a go and here are two A4 portraits of my dog, a Parson Russell, and a Springer Spaniel which belongs to a young lady on my course.
I have A4 giclee art prints of these if anyone is interested in purchasing one, £25 each. Please contact me at yvonnejenningsart@yahoo.com for more information.
I have A4 giclee art prints of these if anyone is interested in purchasing one, £25 each. Please contact me at yvonnejenningsart@yahoo.com for more information.
The Gray Lady
Following on from 21st Birthday I began work on ‘The Gray Lady’. This work is taken from a photo of my daughter by one of her fellow students at De Montfort University, Leicester, Hari Chandana Mabbu who graciously gave me permission to use. Again, I found oil easy to work with. I like the slow drying time because it can be manipulated until you get it right. If you get the colour onto the canvas and it’s slightly out you can blend into it until you get it to where it needs to be. So.... here it is.
I have A3 giclee prints available if anyone is interested in purchasing one. They are £60 each. Please contact me at yvonnejenningsart@yahoo.com for payment details.
I have A3 giclee prints available if anyone is interested in purchasing one. They are £60 each. Please contact me at yvonnejenningsart@yahoo.com for payment details.
21st Birthday
I’ve always been relatively decent at drawing, but that is all I’ve done, but for Christmas 2017 I asked for a set of oil colours. As soon as I got them, I set off. I knew what I wanted to paint, a portrait of my daughter on her 21st birthday. I drew a grid on the canvas a copied a line drawing across and then set to work. It just seemed to flow so easily and was a pleasure to work with. I was soooooo happy with the result it now sits in pride of place above my fireplace. Here is a picture but I’m afraid it’s not a particularly good quality photo so I do apologise. I really must take a better one.
WOW! Time flies.
Looking back I didn’t realise it has been over 3 years since the last post on here, and yet, so much has changed in that time.
In July 2017, I took the decision to leave the school where I was working. I didn’t really want to because when things were going good, I loved the job, but, they were making it very difficult for me to do it, with a disability. I won’t bore you with the specifics, however, I think I could have made a good case for constructive dismissal.
The year before I had been going to Universities with my daughter, attending interviews and open days. Looking round all the art facilities made me want to do this for myself. When I was 16 I had been working part-time at Tesco’s whilst I did my ‘O’ levels at college and when college finished they offered me a full-time position. My dad said I should take it, even though I wanted to go on to an Art foundation. In the late 1970’s I wouldn’t have dared to stand up to my dad so I found myself at Tesco’s and from there, I went from job to job, only ever happy when there was a challenge, then I would move onto the next job. The school was my longest ever employment and I was there for 11 years.
Leaving the school was a huge relief, not just in respect of the disability but also because of the behaviour of the students and that they wanted to make teaching assistants accountable for grades as well as the teachers. Considering that in the academic year of 2015/16 I had over 60 SEN children on my timetable split over 25 hour long lessons per week, how was that ever to be achieved? Most of the kids I saw was just for one hour every week. It’s just not possible to make a difference to a child’s education when you only see them for one hour a week. Behaviour was horrendous! Disrupted classes, departments manned by supply who couldn’t control/motivate. Kids came to school with the sole intention of disrupting classes because they didn’t want to do the work. So, they’d misbehave and get sent to the behaviour suite where, they got what they wanted. Seriously....... they should bring in the American model. If a student doesn’t reach an acceptable standard in that year, then they are held back and must repeat the year. One of the saddest thing I saw was a young lad who was so addicted to Xbox gaming, he didn’t go to sleep till 3/4am in the morning and then would have to be up for school by around 7am. He drank energy drinks to stay awake, but would be bouncing off the walls being disruptive for most of the day, then he’d go home and repeat the cycle. This was a lad who could have succeeded in class if not for this.
Anyway... back to the story. In 2016/17 I had a lovely little class of at max 15 students, all SEN but not a bad group on the whole. It was a nice way to end my employment there.
My daughter had been at Uni for a year by then and my two boys lived with their father, so it seemed like a good time to look into returning to higher education. I made the application at the beginning of the summer holidays. I had an interview two weeks later and was given an unconditional offer and the rest of the time was just waiting for student finance to go through.
So.... I have been at Bradford College of Art for a year and a half now and I’m absolutely loving every minute. I’m getting good grades (2.1) so I’m mega chuffed with myself. We have a group of 5 of us , which is really good. We have learnt so much. It’s fantastic. I just wish I could have done it when education was free.
I did stop doing my card making classes because I wanted to concentrate totally on my art without distractions, and that is why I haven’t posted for so long. I also started up a new blog on WIx, but, I’m not sure whether it’s live, as I can’t find it through an internet search, so I’m going to update this one instead.
In July 2017, I took the decision to leave the school where I was working. I didn’t really want to because when things were going good, I loved the job, but, they were making it very difficult for me to do it, with a disability. I won’t bore you with the specifics, however, I think I could have made a good case for constructive dismissal.
The year before I had been going to Universities with my daughter, attending interviews and open days. Looking round all the art facilities made me want to do this for myself. When I was 16 I had been working part-time at Tesco’s whilst I did my ‘O’ levels at college and when college finished they offered me a full-time position. My dad said I should take it, even though I wanted to go on to an Art foundation. In the late 1970’s I wouldn’t have dared to stand up to my dad so I found myself at Tesco’s and from there, I went from job to job, only ever happy when there was a challenge, then I would move onto the next job. The school was my longest ever employment and I was there for 11 years.
Leaving the school was a huge relief, not just in respect of the disability but also because of the behaviour of the students and that they wanted to make teaching assistants accountable for grades as well as the teachers. Considering that in the academic year of 2015/16 I had over 60 SEN children on my timetable split over 25 hour long lessons per week, how was that ever to be achieved? Most of the kids I saw was just for one hour every week. It’s just not possible to make a difference to a child’s education when you only see them for one hour a week. Behaviour was horrendous! Disrupted classes, departments manned by supply who couldn’t control/motivate. Kids came to school with the sole intention of disrupting classes because they didn’t want to do the work. So, they’d misbehave and get sent to the behaviour suite where, they got what they wanted. Seriously....... they should bring in the American model. If a student doesn’t reach an acceptable standard in that year, then they are held back and must repeat the year. One of the saddest thing I saw was a young lad who was so addicted to Xbox gaming, he didn’t go to sleep till 3/4am in the morning and then would have to be up for school by around 7am. He drank energy drinks to stay awake, but would be bouncing off the walls being disruptive for most of the day, then he’d go home and repeat the cycle. This was a lad who could have succeeded in class if not for this.
Anyway... back to the story. In 2016/17 I had a lovely little class of at max 15 students, all SEN but not a bad group on the whole. It was a nice way to end my employment there.
My daughter had been at Uni for a year by then and my two boys lived with their father, so it seemed like a good time to look into returning to higher education. I made the application at the beginning of the summer holidays. I had an interview two weeks later and was given an unconditional offer and the rest of the time was just waiting for student finance to go through.
So.... I have been at Bradford College of Art for a year and a half now and I’m absolutely loving every minute. I’m getting good grades (2.1) so I’m mega chuffed with myself. We have a group of 5 of us , which is really good. We have learnt so much. It’s fantastic. I just wish I could have done it when education was free.
I did stop doing my card making classes because I wanted to concentrate totally on my art without distractions, and that is why I haven’t posted for so long. I also started up a new blog on WIx, but, I’m not sure whether it’s live, as I can’t find it through an internet search, so I’m going to update this one instead.
Saturday, 21 November 2015
Where did this year go?
Well I have no idea where this year has gone! I've just posted the last card I did in class and I know there is the one from September still to do. Upcoming tomorrow I am doing this festive little number using Tonic dies.
But back to the subject of time.
March - this was when I had radio frequency done on my lower back. It was supposed to make the pain better but instead it has magnified it threefold. It's the same old story 'if I'd known then what I know now'...I'd never have had it done. I used to bad days with a few good days. Now there's only worse days with bad days and the worse thing is pain cannot be seen so to a casual observer you may be having a good day when in fact all you want to do is curl up and sleep because you are so exhausted from the pain. People ask if you are O.K in greeting but they really don't want to hear again how bad a day you're having so you just reply 'yeah, I'm fine'. And I sometimes just want to beat up the people who call you 'speedo' when you're hobbling along or 'Ooo, I know how you feel, I've got backache today' Really! wipee wow! You have no idea!!
Anyway rant over.
May -June Meetings at work about how things are going to be reorganised. How if we don't do an NVQ3 qualification our jobs may be in jeopardy. So a girl has to do, what a girl has to do! get on with it. So I'm unofficially a student again. Studying, writing essays, answering question, and not one sentence answers.
July - August. Summer holidays! yeahhh. Chillaxing, studying, preparing my next 3 card classes and sleeping. Plenty sleeping.
September. Back to School. I must admit the changes are working out better although some things aren't changing fast enough. but on the whole I don't wake up dreading going to work. I just don't like getting up in the cold and the dark now that it's approaching winter. Dragging my never ending butt (now that exercise is not an option) out of a lovely, cosy warm bed.
November - nearly payday and I have no idea where the last 3 weeks have gone never mind the time since March. I did take Sami to look around De Montfort University in Leicester last weekend. 109 miles one way. I came off some of my painkillers because I was so scared I might fall asleep at the wheel but I paid for it walking round and up to this past Thursday (5 days). But another side is I now want to go to University and study Photography. We went to the Photography section and listened to the seminar then had a tour. I didn't see what was so special about some of the work being exhibited and thought "I can do as good as this". We went into a studio with cameras on display, backdrops, lighting tables and motion picture equipment and all I wanted to do was get my hands on it all. Sami meanwhile never broke a smile. SERIOUSLY? not even when she saw the editing room where there were banks and banks of apple Macs.
Well....... maybe one day. I'll win the lottery or some unknown relative will leave me a load of dosh! LOL
And now Christmas is almost upon us and I have no enthusiasm what-so-ever. I just want to hibernate and wake up in the Spring.
2100hrs. Time to go. I still have jobs to do before I turn in for the night.
Toodles.
Yve
Snowflake shaker card
What you need
Creative
Expressions Snowflakes Die CED3020
Creative Expressions Let it snow die CED30041 x A4 White card folded OR an A5 white card blank
2 x A4 White card
1 x A4 Pale blue card
1 x A5 sheet acetate
Tim Holtz Distress stickles Clear Rock candy
Embellishment Attic Snow Ice
Sparkly glitter White or Silver
Shaker adhesive tape (3D foam tape)
White cotton thread
Glue gun
Salty Ocean
Tumbled Glass
Shaded Lilac
Chipped Sapphire
- Cut an aperture in your base card and cut a larger mat in white to accommodate the width of the shaker adhesive tape.
- Take the waste piece of the aperture and randomly emboss using the snowflakes dies. You are not cutting so remember to use a tan mat and the embossing plates recommended with your chosen machine. When finished run through again but without the dies.
- Randomly distress with your distress inks. (debossed side for shaker card and embossed for complementary card)
- Cut 4 sets of snowflakes (2 x White card 2 x pale blue card) and one blue and one white “let it snow” sentiment.
- Glue a piece of acetate to the inside of the aperture on the main card.
- Place the embossed and distressed piece of card and glue it centrally on the mat. Edge with the 3D foam tape ensuring there are no gaps.
- Hang the smaller snowflakes from the shaker tape with white cotton thread and tip a small amount of glitter, rock candy and snow ice.
- Remove the protective covering from the shaker tape position the main card aperture over the mat and press down to seal.
- Decorate the outside of the card.
Friday, 27 March 2015
White on black portrait of Daniel Gillies
I don't know any woman who doesn't like a bit of eye candy and in addition to Johnny Depp and Ian Somerhalder I also lurve to swoon over Daniel Gillies (shame he's married - lucky lady).
Anyway............... I just happen to work with an amazing artist (part-time professional) who does white on black portraits/studies. So inspired have I that I've attempted one myself. With the return of 'The Originals' my first portrait is of Daniel Gillies.
My next one of Ian Somerhalder is now underway but don't hold your breath for an early viewing. It took me a few weeks (on and off) to finish this one.
Yve
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