and now for something completely different...

Time to breathe at last, the shop is open and getting a lot of trade, repeat customers and very happy customers, so we are doing something good. Now things are 'ticking along' I have had a chance for a bit of work and also time to play.

A few months ago a chap emailed me saying that this year is his wife's 40th birthday, she has written a children's story and wants to self publish as a pressie for her, would I do the illustrations. Well I said yes, read the story and sketched some ideas. The client was happy and said go ahead with the final images. A nice job, client happy all the way through. well today I got this email from his wife....

Dear Emma, 

I just wanted to say a really big thank you for the beautiful and amazing art work you did for my birthday book. It was a truly wonderful surprise and I absolutely love it!  Thank you also for the paintings, I definitely want to get some of them framed! You are so talented and I instantly recognised Barney, you captured his personality perfectly! 

With very best wishes and love,

Rebecca 

I do love it when a plan works out well, these are just 3 of the images from ' Barney and the Sausage Tree'.

I have also be having a play about with my style, wanting to loosen it up a bit, so gone back to basics, having wonderful fun, making a mess and enjoying the results so far. Fine tuning to do and more experiments. But a day out sketching at Colchester Zoo, with three art students on Thursday will help in the development.

Here's a taster so far...

now just pray for sunshine and no wind or rain on Thursday!