Hi all,

Its Christmas eve and I hope that everyone is ready for Christmas. To reflect on this year, for us it has just flown by. I hope that you have all enjoyed it as much as we have. I think this is the hardest we have ever worked, its been our busiest year with portraits and we are keeping our fingers crossed that next year is as prosperous. With all the news with these long running shops and stores closing down (in the Uk) it doesn’t seem as though anyone is safe. So I wish you all the very best of luck for your ventures and work in 2009.

I normally adapt one of my portraits to give it a festive feel for my last post for Christmas, however I just haven’t had time this year. So I have added a festive-ish photo of the front of our cottage instead. We now have the new front door installed and we love it and its so much better than the old one. The door is quite large, especially compared to our dinky windows, and we had to have it custom made. I’m not quite sure why the old welsh cottages had wide doors, especially on a small cottage, perhaps something we need to research!

Anyway, I wish you all a very Happy Christmas, have a wonderful festive season and no doubt I will blog after Christmas at some point. Eat, drink and be merry!! Enjoy! : )

Melanie x

Hi All,

Here at last is my final portrait of 2008. It was a local portrait and one that was commissioned way back in October and they collected it last week and were delighted.

Although this is my final portrait of the year I still have much to do and have been working hard right up to the run up of Christmas. With work and Christmas preparations my eyes are somewhat sleepy. We have had some wonderful times with friends though this week, we have had visitors galore, cups of tea the kettles been on non stop and we had a wonderful meal with our framer up in the mountains. I joked that if we got snowed in we would have to sleep in the barn with his two donkeys! Very festive!

Anyway another email will follow as we have had the door done and it looks very festive. So a final blog post before Christmas will follow with lots more news.

Hi All!

Well what a few days, its been so busy here and I finally have a few minutes to blog and post my latest pet portrait of the Pug. I really like this one, it was a joy to paint and I think it looks very peaceful. I’ll definitely need to add it into my website gallery when I do my next lot of updates. I haven’t updated the galleries since the summer, but I cant imagine when the next update will be, I have lots of new work to add but very little time to implement due to all the portraits we have for deadlines in the new year, which come first. I am planning to change one part of the website though, im tinkering in the odd hours I have spare so you’ll have to watch this space to find out what it is :-)

I love this time of year though as we only have a few portraits left to do and we are now planning to see lots of people, invite people for meals, being invited out for meals, its wonderful. its official, the festive season has nearly arrived!

Its very exciting too as we are having our new front door arriving on Monday/Tuesday. Because we have an old cottage everything is an odd shape and size, nothing is ‘normal’ here and our doorway is supposed ot be very wide, or wider than a normal door. The very old door that probably hung for 200 or so years was replaced in the 80′s and they boarded up part of the gap and replaced it with a thinner door which is pretty much made of ply, you can see through it lets put it that way! So we have found an amazing carpenter/ craftsman to make us a full sized door out of oak and he will open up the doorway and remove the boarding and restore it to its full glory. When its done and its not raining I will add a pic to the website. I was meant to add one of our new Clearview wood burning stove we had installed, but I forgot. It has made a huge difference to the temperature in the house and of course the damp. Old cottages are bound to be a little damp and we are built on bedrock, no foundations, so its goes hand in hand, but the fire keeps everything at bay. That’s the quirks of living somewhere old!

Ok, on to the next portrait now, im working on a double pencil drawing for a local client so I’ll scan it when I’m complete!

Hope everyone is well!

Things are going well with my portraits, I am on schedule and this is my latest portrait. I’m in the process of painting a horse in oils which is in a mid drying stage and im starting a lovely portrait of a horse tomorrow which will be sent to the framers next week. The portrait below is a large  20 x 16 in pastel.

Hi Everyone!

One of my clients has just emailed me a photo of their portrait framed from a couple of months ago and i am so delighted with it, its really exciting to see the portraits framed as I love to see the customers choice of moulding and style. Everyone has such great tastes and I think this one works perfectly, it really brings out the dark tones and colours in the dogs.

Things are on target here in the studio, one of Nicks portraits has finally arrived in California today, we were getting a little worried. We are always concerned about portraits going overseas this time of year as they can so easily get caught up in the Christmas post. It took 12 days instead of the usual 10 days which is understandable. Really we like to get all over seas portraits done and sent before the start of December, this one was actually sent in November but we have sent a couple only a few days ago as we have had so many to do this year, so fingers crossed they arrive in time. I think this year has been our busiest on record which is great news.

The Pug pet portrait in oils is now complete and I will scan it tomorrow and blog it for you to see, im really pleased with it, I love pugs, my friend has one and I get to look after her every so often. Hope you are all getting into the festive season!

14 days till Christmas day…and counting : )

Hi All,

Here is my latest portrait, I completed about 3 days ago. Its a 16 x 12 pastel on velour and its my final overseas portrait. Will post more soon.

Just dropping by to post my pet portraits final scan of the spaniel. Sooo busy here, am nearly finished the pug so will post that tomorrow : )

Here are 4 new pastel pet portraits for everyone to see on my blog. As you can see I have been working Solidly this last week on my portraits, the first ones i completed were the cats for a birthday just before Christmas. The client wanted me to portray both cats the same size, and one was laying down in its typical pose so that’s how they wanted him in the portrait. The portraits are flying off to palm Springs as we speak…I have to say I think I would love to be on the plane with them, its sounds warm and inviting. its very cold in Wales at the moment.

The next portrait I completed was of a lovely little dog called Chloe and this is off over seas hopefully on Monday too. This is a 16 x 12 portrait and the mount/matting really brings out the white fur of Chloe, I hope the owners will be pleased as i have just emailed the final photo to them.

The final portrait I have to blog today is a large double portrait 20 x 16 of two wire-haired terriers called Tally and Fenn. This pet portrait is my first portrait for France, and so needs to be sent early next week along with all of the other overseas portraits to arrive in time for Christmas. I am currently on my last pet portrait for America which I will blog hopefully later today or tomorrow.

I hope that you have enjoyed viewing my portraits, I will hopefully start adding some work in progress ones, once things start to settle down here a little in a few weeks time. I am fully booked for quite a few months ahead and have a couple of portraits to complete over Christmas too that need to arrive very early January 2009, so I will continue posting work over the festive season : )

Nick