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New life blowing in

After the terrible terrific storms battering the country yesterday I’m just pleased that my only casualty was a piece of solid garden fencing  breaking away from the wooden post holding it, and a large decorative pot outside the front door that holds a camelia I am very fond of blowing over. The pot and shrub didn’t suffer any harm and were righted this morning and the fence is just showing signs of being slightly out of alignment that a couple of strong nails should knock back into place. But I’ve got away extremely lightly compared to others on the east coast. And looking at the photos and hearing the news reports really shows the fragility of life and property and it always seems to be magnified when it’s Christmas time and everyone is full of jollity and good cheer. Or supposed to be.  I always find Christmas a strange mix of  happiness and sadness.  

So now that its quiet for me at least, I’ll tell you that I’ve finished some website updates this week, adding new images in the Landscapes Gallery and Animals Gallery, adding an interview I did in January this year with Deliciously Deviant to the Testimonials page, adding a couple more images to the Demonstrations page, and most importantly adding a new Workshops page – both showing  suggestions for subjects for the workshoArt Workshop 4 2013ps I can do, and offering a one-to-one for anyone wanting personal teaching to improve their art or wanting to learn new skills…. the most popular one seeming to be  requests for “Can you teach me how to paint in acrylics, Jackie?”  although it could just as easily be “Can you show me how to use a palette knife” or “Can you show me where I’m going wrong with his picture” or “What shall I do with this life drawing pose to make it look erotic?”

And that reminds me that I was greatly amused last weekend when I saw a friend and her opening line was “What’s this about a male model Jackie?” showing me that she reads my blog, and opening up a long conversation with her and her man about life drawing, art, jigsaws and airplanes (don’t ask, I’m not sure how we got onto that subject either! 🙂 )