Tis the season of the pumpkin...

In keeping with the spirit (ha ha) of the season, I have become mildly obsessed with pumpkins. No surprise then that today's images are pumpkins. The first one is a glass tealight holder (available to buy for around £30 or to swap for other artyness, do let me know if you're interested!!)

room for one tealight, 80mm x 100mm approx

I went through a phase of making little houses, there is a haunted house, a christmas pudding and a gingerbread house, I may think of some more.....and I will of course post pictures.

On to the second image, I've been experimenting again, this time because I wanted to reuse an old piece of board. I covered the board with white emulsion mixed with interior filler. I wanted texture and I wanted to start to draw the image in texture before applying any colour or detail. The board had already been covered with acrylic medium and the emulsion mix went all crackley in an unexpected and nice way.

I am a pumpkin...honest

The problem with using interior filler as a ground for drawing is that it isn't very hard wearing, it's soft and absorbsent, good qualities for toilet paper I think you'll agree, but less so for drawing on. I may have to redo this on on a better surface. The oil bar dried too quickly and it's hard to get subtleties in tone, because it is so easy to just gouge chunks of filler out. Well, lesson learned....I will use proper primer next time.