I wanted to make my boyfriend something special for his 40th birthday but what to make? Well a few years ago he asked me if could make him a model of the Lichking from World of Warcraft. I knew something like that would take me ages to make so I started making it three months before his birthday and I was only a week late in finshing it so not too bad!.
          The base of the model is made from four layers of foam board covered in air drying clay. The body is made from air drying clay over a wire fame and the whole thing is painted in acrylic paint.
          I've never made a clay sculpture of this size and detail before so a lot of it was guess work and trial and error. I'm really pleased with the end product. Some of the proportions arent exactly what they should be and I had to simplify some of the details but overall I think it looks awesome!

Last summer I decided to finally try my hand at painting landscapes outside. I've done it once before whilst on holiday in Scotland but it was winter and freezing cold and I had to keep going back inside every ten minutes to warm my hands up!

The first thing I painted was a practice sketch of the bird bath in my garden. I wanted to see how the paint reacted differently to being indoors. I used acrylic paint and found that it dries a lot quicker outside. I also noticed that dark colours seem brighter outside, which means when you take the painting indoors it looks darker, so I had to try and paint everything brighter than it looked.

My first trip out was to Castell Dinas Bran in Llangollen. I made this little study of one of the castle walls using acrylic paint on canvas paper. It was pretty windy up there so I had to chase my paper down a hill a couple of times but I'm really pleased with how this turned out. I also tried out a chalk pastel sketch but I found that wind and pastels is a messy combination!