LEGO® Minifigures 51: White-clad Astronaut on Eggbox Moon

This is another of my old minifigures. He dates from the early 80s and has several friends, all of whom are also wearing white space suits. I made him an eggbox set, initially because I didn't really want to paint white on white... Maybe I should have chosen a green eggbox.

Acrylic on canvas, 7x7 cm
SOLD

LEGO® Minifigures 50: Ambulance Driver

This is a very old minifigure. She was my first such toy, and - according to my son's copy of the Dorling Kindersley book, "Standing Small: A Celebration of 30 years of the LEGO minifigure", this model was also one of the very first sold. "Standing Small" has her birthdate at 1978 -which would be about right. She came with a small ambulance, which she didn't  actually fit in without some  vehicular modifications.  She's in pretty good nick, all things considered. The white plastic is a little discoloured (l tried to make it a different colour to the white tile background), and her legs are a little floppier than they ought to be.  But she's intact, and she still  has her sticker; LEGO hadn't started printing directly onto the bricks at this stage.

Acrylic on canvas, 7 x 7 cm
FOR SALE

LEGO® Minifigures 49: Swimmer

When I picked up this figure, originally to tidy her up, she was leaning forward on her stand. It occurred to me that she might be on a diving board, leaving forward, about to - literally - take the plunge. So that is how I have painted her.

Acrylic on canvas, 7 x 7 cm
FOR SALE

Live Bands Every Week

I have plans to feature a more complete view of this public house in a bigger painting, but, for now, here is a small acrylic of its prominent advertisement for regular live music.

Bike at the Back

This bike caught my eye, so I took a photograph with the intention of painting it. Should I tell you that I didn't include all of the railings? I decided not to paint the ones in front of the bike. I didn't want to make it too difficult to spot!

EDIT: Renamed. "Bike at the Back" is catchier than "Bike round the back of the Compass," I reckon.

Acrylic on canvas, 7 x 5"
SOLD (in Bromley)

The folks at LEGO® , they say...

I sent an e-mail to LEGO, partly because I thought they might like to see my LEGO minifigure paintings, and partly because I wanted to enquire about their position on my representations of their product, and my use of the word LEGO. I also mentioned the possibilities of a future self-published book, and of greetings cards based on the LEGO paintings.

Lego Minifigures 48: Olympic Gymnast

This little figure is still basking in the light of London 2012. She belongs to my daughter, who has been asking me when I was going to paint her gymnast for quite a while now. Well, today it was an INSET (teacher training) day and I had some time off work, so we all sat down and did some painting (the children had some paint-your-own nested bird sets - like Russian dolls, but owls and penguins). And when I was asked to paint the gymnast again... well, it seemed churlish not to.

I considered painting her balanced on her beam... but that didn't seem to work terribly well with the square format.

Acrylic on canvas, 7 x 7 cm
FOR SALE

LEGO® Minifigures 47: Knight

Odd though it may seem, this is the first of my own childhood LEGO figures that I have painted. I'm not saying that I didn't buy any new ones just to paint them, but most of the figures featured previously belong either to my husband or to my children. I was particularly keen to paint this little fellow, as he was one of my favourites, albeit one of my later acquisitions (and my only knight). I distinctly recall buying him from a wonderful toy shop in Tavistock, Devon  (where we were on a family holiday) that sold LEGO by the piece. A rare occurrence, back then!

But all of my LEGO was still at my mother's house, mixed up with my sister's - where it served as a useful diversion for visiting children, mostly my own. So I "borrowed" a few figures, including this one.

Acrylic on canvas, 7 x 7 cm
SOLD

Cotton Bag: Coffee for Two

This is a special bag, done for a charity coffee morning. It's based on "Coffee For Two" - can you tell which version?

Dexter Cattle on Tadley Common, Lunchtime sketch

Can you see the Dexter cattle?

Lunch Hour Oil Pastel Sketches

I recently bought myself a box of 12 Sennelier oil pastels. They're the limited edition ones made only with natural pigments - which is cool, although slightly challenging, as the colours are a bit limited. The range is still pretty amazing, though; as far as landscape goes, the main lack is a blue that accurately depicts the sky on a sunny day. There is a blue; it's indigo. There's also a purple, which is cochineal (there's a stunning red made from another variant of the same pigment).

New Forest Ponies 1

This is a special not-quite-a-card-not-quite-a-present for my lovely sister, on her birthday. The painting was done on the 3rd (Monday), from a set of photographs. It needed to be dry enough to post in fairly short order, so it had to be acrylics.

Acrylic on canvas panel, 5 x 7"

EDIT (28 February 2014): I used the same set of photographs for a larger oil painting

Trees, Gorse and Heather

I spent the afternoon on Greenham Common today, and this is the result. I wanted to show that the Common isn't just about the old air base.

Fire Hydrant - new pictures

Above, a new photograph of "Fire Hydrant", taken this afternoon.

Fire Hydrant

The UK doesn't really do overground fire hydrants. Not on streets, anyhow. We may have them on airfields, I suppose, but I don't tend to hang around on many airfields... except for this one.

Trailer Park

Technically, I suppose these aren't actually trailers. They don't have wheels. They are shipping containers, stacked up in New Greenham Park, the industrial park that was created on the built-up area of the former USAF base at Greenham Common, Newbury. The view point is from Greenham Common itself, from the heathland area that used to be the runways.

The painting was done from a photograph; I liked the contrast between the bright, artificial colours of the containers and the scrubby greens and browns of the heath. I've brightened the colours a little compared to the photograph (which was taken on a cloudy day) so that they reflect my memory of the scene better.

Oil on canvas, 50 x 20 cm