Painting of the week - Standing Stones

Completed a new miniature  - a triptych, mixed media using stones, sand, foliage etc on wooden mounts

It is inspired by standing stones found throughout the UK - I am fascinated by our ancient history and the stones in our landscape, the mythology that surrounds them also fires my imagination....

New miniature Diptych

I have just completed a new miniature diptych -  measuring 30cm wide and 10cm high. I have used rock and sand on a wooden base for the work, with acrylic paints.

As a lot of my work is 3D multimedia it is hard to take prints and so I am in the process of working on miniatures of the work, plus other stand alone subjects for the miniatures as well.

More details on iansanday.com or you can keep up with regular postings on Twitter @ian_sanday

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.