Finally I’ve crawled out from under that duvet! Been a while though hasn’t it? Well, after a very emotionally charged and challenging year I did promise myself a break. Problem is it now feels like I’ve been asleep pretty much through the whole of Christmas and New Year…

In truth, I haven’t been completely idle. I did a half-hearted acrylic sketch some gorgeous Narcissi from the Isles of Scilly. It coincided with #stilldecember on Twitter so at least I had one contribution to make.

Testing the New Wave ‘Easy Lift’ palette

For a while I’d been meaning to test the New Wave ‘Easy Lift’ plastic palette, and the festive break seemed the ideal time. This is designed with acrylics in mind although at first I was fairly sceptical. I like to work off a clean palette, but all previous plastic palettes I’ve owned have become caked very quickly with immovable dried paint. Determined to give this a tough trial, I let the paint dry on it for a week before trying to clean it.  Have to say I was very impressed with the result. You can read my full review here on Jackson’s Blog.

I also tried out their ‘Grey Pad’, a large disposable palette comprising mid-grey sheets rather than the usual white to help with tonal judgement. To be honest I found it’s most useful attribute was its larger size. Its very generous dimensions allow lots of room for mixing. The grey tint is an interesting idea, but for me it needs to slightly darker. Other than that in use it functions no better or worse than similar disposables.

And two new acrylic paintings

And while I was testing the palettes I did stray from my original intention not to be creative and accidentally squeezed out a couple of new acrylic paintings.  The first, on 14″ by 10″ canvas board, was inspired by an old photo of a snowy lane at Northycote Farm and Country Park. I was careful not to be too influenced by the photo. Like many snaps of snow it was fairly flat, blue and bland. You’ll see that I spiced it up a little with a new wintry sky and some warmer reflections. I’m pleased to say that this sold very quickly at its first public airing last week.

My second painting is on a 20cm by 40cm linen canvas. I’d had this hanging round for a couple of months. So I dug out my Devon and Dorset sketch book and chose a misty, autumnal view of Golden Cap looking east down the beach from Charmouth. Although I also had a photo I didn’t refer to it, taking all my information from my watercolour sketch. Without the photo I felt a lot more freedom to ‘make things up’. I’m sure I’ve remodelled the cliffs but, shhh, don’t tell anybody! This will be available for sale shortly, unframed, through my Twitter feed, but if you are interested do email me. For the moment I only ship to UK addresses.

So my New Year has started well, hope yours has too.