I have decided to try to write my blog once a week, to keep on practicing, until I am awesome at it!! To be honest this technology thing is tricky for me. Im not an instructions kind of person, I just press random buttons which look kind of right and hope for the best. Its a wonder I got that quote above there at all!
 Anyway, its there because it relates to slate and creating things and as you know,  I create art on slate. And you also may know how I discovered that slate is such a beautiful canvas if you read my first ever blog... I went to the reclamation yard, picked up a slate to do a house sign, saw that it was cool to paint on, worked out how to present them as a finished piece of art.... There you go, you're up to speed!
I just thought you may be interested in hearing a little bit more details of the process of that, as with a lot of things it has been something that takes quite a bit of effort. So the first thing I do is collect the slate from here...

This is the reclamation yard where I go to choose my slate... Im very choosy, there is a lot there, but most of it isn't suitable. It has to be the beautiful ones with lots of colours from years on a roof. If I'm lucky I even find ones with fossils in. 

I like the cornish slate as that usually fits the bill. 

Sometimes the slate is high up in big crates and if so I get some help from the lovely people who work there...

Then I get them home, bash them about a bit so that they fit on the board nicely and also don't look too uniform. I then sort out the boards... I buy the board which comes all long and uncut, so I ask my gorgeous husband to cut the board and then sand the board...he's good like that! 

The boards are then painted and ready for the slates. Once the slates are cleaned I am ready to paint them. 

I haven't got any photos of me painting them, I haven't even got any photos of my new studio, something to look forward to in future blogs  

I paint the slates with either Gouache which is lovely to use for the fine lines I often paint. I used to use it for the other details, until I discovered Golden acrylics and experimented with the colours. I can't even say how much I love using them now. The colours are rich, bright and totally gorgeous. They are expensive especially as they are liquid and it is not a rare occurrence that I knock one of them over and have to try desperately to scoop it up or use it in my paintings before it dries!

I sometimes just use white gouache to paint the wild flower slates, because they work so well in their simplicity..

 Once painted, I seal them with varnish to further enhance the colours of the painting and of the slate. The varnish also protects the painting. 

And finally, finally, I mount them on the board and put the fittings on the back. Ready to go... Phew! 

Painting a picture from the beginning..

So this is actually just my second blog having promised myself that I would regularly write one.. Sorry about that. I guess I was focusing on family and other aspects of my business and couldn't quite think what else people would want to know! So, I thought that I would start at the beginning, because I think its nice to get an idea of the person behind the art.

This is a picture of me and my older sister, Janette. She is the one on the right and it was her first day at school. I don't know why I also had a little brown suitcase by my feet and look so excited. I guess her enthusiasm was catching!
 Anyway, it is one of my favourite photos I have of us. It is a bit faded a picture as it was taken probably about 39 years ago, as we are now getting on a bit! Its also pretty sunny, as we were both born in Zimbabwe and we lived there and South Africa, until we came back to England for a holiday when I was six, before moving to New Zealand... but never left! It was a bit of a culture shock for us coming to England. I now only have vague memories of our life in Africa. I tell my children I had a pet cameleon which we found in the garden, when I think the reality may have been that I was only able to keep it for a day or two as it was a bit mean to keep it any longer! I also recall to my children the time that my sister came running in crying because a monkey had opened her little suitcase and stolen her banana!
I know that at least one time we had lion footprints through our garden! It was all pretty cool in my little child head!

So we left all that behind and came to England, where we were teased for saying things differently and very soon didn't say things differently at all!
 We went to stay with loads of different family in Scotland, Essex and Cornwall and finally settled in Sussex, where my parents still live.
Life wasn't easy for them I don't think, its hard starting a fresh with a young family to support, but a lot of my childhood was filled with awesomely simple perfect memories. My dad was the gardener for a boarding school when I was nine to fifteen and we lived in the grounds. (in a house obviously!!)  There we had a lake that we swam in all summer. It had a jetty and a diving board and logs floating in it that we swam out to and dived off.  I can't actually tell you how much I loved it there.
We used to use the old tennis courts to roller skate and when I grew out of my roller skates my dad cut the ends off so my toes poked out..oh yes, I was cool even then, especially going to roller discos.... I knew it was an good look!......
I climbed trees like a pro and when the big storm of 1987 hit, as we lived next to a big wood, we took the opportunity to climb a lot of fallen down trees and built camps in under the branches.

I don't want to paint a perfect childhood, it wasn't always easy, but out of it my sister and I knew that we were loved and utterly supported. Our parents taught us that kindness is the most important thing. To treasure what you have is about treasuring who you love, not money or stuff. That's real success, isn't it?