Finished the 'Ferns' Picture

Finished the 'Ferns' Picture I have been working on

Put the picture into a temporary frame to see how it hangs on the wall. More details of this and other work can be found at iansanday.com

I started off with placing dried fern leaves on the canvas, then painted the whole canvas in grey acrylic. Then dripped PVA glue trails and added sand. When dry I dropped acrylic inks on and moved the canvas about to get them to run around. As the ink was still wet I added some multicoloured glitter to give it a sparkle (which you can't see very well from the picture) and then finished off the ferns with metallic green.

New Website launched

Well, it's been a while, but I have finally got my new website up and running.

Please click through to iansanday.com and have a look, I have posted all my latest art work, plus you can click through to the book page as well and see how the writing is going.

You can now find me on Twitter as well @ian_sanday

I am enjoying working on my mixed media art work, and to broaden my skills I have joined the Rosemary Hale art group in Derrington. Rosemary is a great teacher and she has been helping me develop my watercolours.

Here is a landscape from the Norfolk Broads in winter.

Space Ace and The Flying Shed has now been published as an eBook - available from Amazon on Kindle, also from Smashwords.com, Apple, Barnes & Noble, Sony etc.

It is an action packed, humorous book for children - but the adults who have read it have also enjoyed the book immensely, so it appeals to a range of readers.

It has been quite an exercise to get the manuscript ready for publication as an eBook in the different formats, but I am very happy with the result.

I am now splitting my time between marketing 'Flying Shed' and drafting out new works. A second installment of 'Space Ace' called 'Space Ace and the Roaming Romans' is on the drawing board, and the fantasy saga 'Children of Aurora' is currently being worked through.

New Exhibition

The painting 'Becalmed' (which can be viewed in previous blog) has been chosen to hang in a new art exhibition at the Wedge Gallery in Lichfield - the gallery is situated within the Lichfield Campus of South Staffordshire College and runs throughout January.

As for my writing, I am currently working on the second edition of Space Ace and The Flying Shed, which will be released simultaneously as an eBook as well as in print. It will be published through Smashwords and Amazon KDP for the eBook, and by FeedARead for the print version.

I thought converting print to eBook would be a simple exercise, but not quite as simple as one would have hoped. It is certainly worth spending the time on doing the research, but as always there is a lot of conflicting views and opinions on the subject depending on people's own personal experiences - you pays your money and you take your chances !!

Gallery Exhibition

I entered this painting called 'Beclamed' in the Staffordshire Open Art Competition run by Weston Park Gallery and I was lucky enough to have it selected to hang in the gallery for the month of August 2012, along with a selection of other amazing paintings. Unfortunately I did not win the top prize, but to be exhibited only a year after taking up a paint brush seriously is recognition in itself.

Having had my work recognised I have just completed a commission called 'Remembrance' which is a large canvass depicting a cornfield of poppies, which I am glad to say the client was very pleased with -to transfer their thoughts onto the canvass was  quite challenging and I was also extremely pleased with the results.

I am still working on a number of interesting writing projects, both for children and adult genres, which will hopefully bear fruit in the fullness of time.

I have been getting more reviews of 'Space Ace and The Flying Shed,' which is encouraging me to attempt to get it into e-book format for the Kindle - watch this space.

Creating a new Young Adult novel

Having completed a first draft, the process of creating the novel has only just begun - the hardest part is the editing process - to go through the work and take out the bits that don't work and add some bits that you hope make it read well, and also to remove any bad continuity - placing the characters where they couldn't possibly have got to in such a short space of time - the ''believability factor'.

So that's where I am now with the Young Adult book with the working title 'Spellcaster's Apprentice'

Editing can also be the fun part too - half the time I can't remember writing some of it and I surprise myself with how good things are looking, and equally how bad some things appear too.

It looks like the Amazon Kindle is taking off in a big way, so look out for 'Space Ace and The Flying Shed' on Kindle over the next few weeks.

Now into my art

'Sunset over Polzeath'

Well, if writing wasn't enough I have now taken up art - which is why I haven't added to my news feed for a while (gosh, is it February when I last posted? Doesn't time just fly away!) and why I still haven't finished my second novel. I thought I'd try one for teens this time.

They always say the second novel is the hardest and it's true, I just dilly dally around it and make excuses why I haven't got around to finishing it yet.I also make the excuse that I want to concentrate on marketing 'Flying Shed' but then I am waiting for the 'youwriteon' people to complete their new publishing service so I can get out the 2nd edition with all the typo's gone and a new cover and everything.

It's true that authors find any excuse to put off their writing, then they don't have to get it out to try and get it published, or marketed - the reason being is that then you don't have the hurt of people rejecting it or telling you how bad it is !!

Now art on the other hand - well, that's totally different - you can do anything, and call it 'art' and someone, somewhere pay money for it. Isn't that great!

I saw a half finished drawing on a huge canvas with a few splodges of emulsion in a fine art galery a couple of weeks ago with a £7500 price tag on it - wow!

There is hope for me yet folks.....