It has been forever since I managed to pop onto here and share some art with you. In fact I hadn’t even shared the last Queen from last year, so I thought I would spend the next couple of weeks catching you up with the art that has been happening in the LilliBean Designs Studio in the last six months!
The Queens, to refresh your memory, were a series of four paintings that I painted in Augustish last year. I have shared previously Nix, Tillie and Circe. (click on their name to read about their back stories!)
So today I am sharing with you Celeste who is the Queen of humming birds and moonlight.
I wanted to try and create something darker than these ones, and although the background has my signature colour, I feel that it is a little darker than most of my art.
CELESTE: THE QUEEN of HUMMING BIRDS AND MOONLIGHT.
I love how she turned out, that darkness and light. And together the queens make a magnificent sight!
THE QUEENS AT RIVER AND WREN IN MAY
ORIGINAL PAINTING | ART PRINTS
And I can’t wait to share CELESTE and CIRCE with you in the coming weeks.
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THE QUEENS: CIRCE
The Winter Princess
CIRCE. Circe is the queen that started this series! A couple of years ago I painted the Winter Princess, which although bares a striking resemblance to a certain Disney princess, was actually inspired by one of my favourite authors Kristen Ashely and her Fantasy Land series. (I will share her in one of my flashback posts in the future so you can read the back story!)
Since finishing off Finn, I have longed to paint Circe. (who is the heroine from the second book in the Fantasy Land series.)
Circe is the golden queen – in a land that is mainly desert, and her crown is made of golden feathers.
She also has a pet white tiger which when I was a kid, was ALL I wanted as a pet! So when I imagined the Queen Series I knew I had to include Circe in the quartet!
CIRCE: THE DESERT QUEEN
I would have loved to include her tiger – maybe next time….
Circe is available as the original painting, as a print, or in my entire jewellery line. Check out the Circe Collection here.
I have one more Queen to share with you – but you can read about Tillie and Nix before I share Celeste with you next week.
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IF IN DOUBT SMOOSH SOME PAINT AND START AGAIN….
I always say to my class participants that there are three rules in art
- There are no rules in art
- There are no mistakes in art (just beautiful blunders)
- If at first you don’t succeed smoosh some paint and start again!!
SMOOSH is such a great word. SMOOSHING PAINT. It sounds like what you are actually doing. Smooshing, playing and creating .
The beauty of the smoosh is that it doesn’t have to look like anything, or become a final painting. You are just smooshin’ paint.
And you don’t even need a paintbrush – you can smoosh with your fingers (my preferred method) or a card or a sponge or a stick.
There are no rules to smooshing, and you can smoosh again and again and again until you love the result.
I wish I could apply the same principles to life. I wish I could smoosh over the things I don’t like. I wish it were that simple to move on and start again.
I’d love to smoosh paint over a hurtful comment that made me doubt myself and feel pain.
I’d love to smoosh paint over the feelings failure and of being not good enough because an event or a committee or a person says I am not enough.
I really want to smoosh over those times when I felt a storm brewing in me and feeling like I am going to implode
I’d really love to smoosh some paint over my neighbour and her judgment of my family and me 
So Instead of dwelling too long on the things I’d love to change I try to remember that smooshing some paint on the page and making some art makes me feel centered and restored. (And hand on heart there are many times I spend FAR too much time overthinking and dwelling on these things.)
I know not every one has an affinity with paint like I do. And I know that there are many of you who have told me (in one way or another) that you would love to smoosh paint over the crappy stuff you’ve been through.
I smoosh paint and try again – what about you?
P.S Try the smoosh! It feels so good.
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THE QUEENS: NIX
The Queen Series ended up being a series of paintings that just seemed to magically flow from my paint brush.
Not one of the queens gave me grief, or had me second guessing my colour choices. And when people ask me which one is my favourite, I can honestly say I love all of this series.
So the other week (pre the holy shit my computer has just died, what am I going to have to pay to get it up and running saga!) I shared with you the first queen: Tillie the Bush Fairy Queen.
This week I want to share with you NIX: The Mermaid Queen.
Inspired by the colours of the ocean I saw in my travels in Turkey – deep blues, turquoises and greens Nix is joined by TILLIE, CIRCE and CELESTE in the queen series.
NIX: THE MERMAID QUEEN
In some exciting news, I am currently (and laboriously) overhauling how you can buy LilliBean art, prints and jewellery, so soon you will be able to purchase any of my paintings, in any of my ranges of products (Whoot!!)
But just know if you wish to own a print or even the original Nix painting – just click on the links below.
ORIGINAL PAINTING | ART PRINTS
And I can’t wait to share CELESTE and CIRCE with you in the coming weeks.
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THE QUEENS: TILLIE
Tillie was the first of the queen that I thought of. I was out on a walk in my neighbourhood and on it there is this huge big gum tree. The bark has peeled off and drapes over the branches like the old mans beard that I saw every where when we traveled through Louisiana.
And I thought about Tillie – the bush fairy. Queen of the bush fairies who would flit in and out of the Australian bush playing with the koalas and kangaroos.
Inspired by the colours of sunrise in the winter – deep blues, purples, yellows and greens Tillie is joined by NIX, CIRCE and CELESTE in the queen series.
ORIGINAL PAINTING | ART PRINTS
The entire queen series is one of my favourites ones I have ever painted. Partly I am sure because I knew what each and every one was going to be before I started!
And I can’t wait to share NIX, CELESTE and CIRCE with you in the coming weeks.
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BEATRIX + GRACE: A QUIET AFTERNOON
Beatrix and Grace have made an appearance in two paintings this year so far.
I have already shared the Beatrix and the Butterfly painting in another post.
The next painting I did with Beatrix was with her friend Grace.
As a kid I would often climb my tree in the backyard. My tree (mine because I didn’t want to share it with my sibs) was this big ole gum tree which had a branch perfect for spending long summer afternoons on it reading or playing.
I would often take a book out there and read in it, but when I read the Black Stallion the game totally changed.
I can’t tell you how obsessed I was with this book. The book, the movie, the sequels. All of it. I bought into with everything I had the whole Black Stallion story.
The school librarian joked that I should just permanently borrow the book because I borrowed it so much and I was probably the only student that read all the sequels to the book two or three times!! I loved The Black and Alex and their story.
And after that everything revolved around the Black Stallion.
I had a gang called the Black stallion gang (it included me and my brother and sometimes my other brother and sister!) we played a kicking game on the trampoline called ‘black stallions’, in every game I played I had a black stallion. I spent an entire years allowance on a porcelain black stallion statue that when it broke from old age when I was older I cried a little.
So back to my tree. After reading the book, I found an old rope and tied it to my branch like a bridle and that became my Black Stallion. And on lazy summer afternoons I would pretend I was riding my Black Stallion.
I would pretend we were on that deserted island together (but with food and my books) and we would end up sleeping next to each other just like Alex and his Black Stallion.
In my games I would read my books snuggled up to my Black in the forest before we’d go to the beach and race along it playing in the waves.
So when I was painting my next Beatrix and Grace painting this memory came to mind, and I wanted to incorporate that memory into my painting:
Beatrix and Grace: A quiet afternoon.
Beatrix and Grace: A quiet afternoon is available for purchase (click on the image or here for more)
What was one of your favourite childhood lazy summer afternoon memories?
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MY NEW STUDIO COMPANION
Two weeks ago our little family was changed forever. On a cold and rainy Saturday Mac popped over to the neighbouring town and came home with Mac’s and my best-kept secret!
Previous to this Saturday afternoon, the terrible trio has for months been asking, pleading and slyly pointing out that we need a pet.
Bean told me she would pick up the poo. Bug told me she would love it. Beastie told me she would brush it. Mac and I rolled our eyes – it would be us who did all these things I told them.
I suggested a gold fish.
They weren’t interested in my compromise….
What about adopting a panda or a tiger through one of the zoo programs? I asked
Well they were super keen to do that too but they really felt that a cat or a dog or even a hamster that ran around the house in a ball would be much better.
So Mac and I started to talk about it. At first half-heartedly and it became a bit more seriously.
And now that the kids are just that little bit older and wee beastie is in kindergarten, and since I work mostly from home, and Mac is about to become more flexible with work, it kind of seemed like now could be the right time to go for it.
So we did.
Mac took his trip to Bathurst that Saturday and returned with a very large bundle of fluff.
Shadow Baxter the very cute but not so little eight-week old German shepherd became part of Casa Mac.
Overwhelmed by the girls, Mac’s sheer size (and his boots) and the chaos of our household, Baxter decided that I was going to be his safe haven.
He was my shadow – always at my feet, he’d following me from room to room. When I went upstairs he would cry, when I closed the door to the toilet he cried, when I tried to leave him outside by himself he cried.
Suddenly I remembered the time when wee beastie grew out of that totally co-dependent stage of her childhood. That period where I had to keep a constant eye on her because she was that child who would climb to the top of the bookcase and jump off it. And I remember thinking once we made it over that hurdle that I would never, NEVER have to go back to that co-dependent hyper-vigilant state.
Well I have.
Baxter has since decided that the terrible trio aren’t all that bad – he loves to play with them, but now he is comfortable in his new space nothing is safe – not our feet, not the girls toys, not the metal stools, or my paintbrushes.
But despite these teething (haha! #sorrynotsorry!) issues our lives have been irrevocably changed.
And my workdays have dramatically changed too. I take breaks now – I don’t sit at the computer or work desk for hours at a time anymore.
I don’t procrastinate as much – because I have to take these breaks and have less time to get things done!
I am up earlier (and therefore asleep earlier) because I don’t want Baxter’s howls to wake the girls and I have loved taking advantage of that extra half hour in a quiet house.
And I no longer make excuse to get out of my morning walks because if I don’t walk him he is a very unhappy little pup!
Would a gold fish have been easier? Yes probably.
Although you don’t get morning kisses from a gold fish!
Wait that may be a point for the pro’s column…
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GOLDIE AND THE BABY BEAR
After I finished my Sheltered painting I was bitten by the big canvas bug! I really enjoyed the freedom that a bigger canvas was able to afford me, and seeing my big eyed girls on such a large scale was super exciting.
So I had been thinking about a series of paintings that were inspired by the fairy tales that I grew up on, the ones that for centuries have stood as warnings to young children about talking to strangers, going off into the woods, eating someones porridge etc
And I had often thought about Goldilocks and Red Riding Hood and the ‘creatures’ that they were so afraid of. And in my mind as a kid I thought it would be silly to be scared of a wolf and a bear, I thought they would make much better companions!
When I started this painting I thought that was where it was going. And it kind of did. But I didn’t intend for the baby bear to be so fearful and hiding behind Goldie’s skirt.
When I finished this painting my wee beastie came into the studio and looked at my painting.
‘Mama’ she said ‘you have painted me and you’
HUH!
She went on to tell me that there she was behind my skirt, and mama was protecting her and look mama there is a tattoo of you and me on your arm – that’s you giving me a hug!
Subconsciously I had been thinking about Wee Beastie a lot when I was painting this one – I had been worried about how she was doing at school and how she had been it a little bit of trouble because she was this beautiful wild and free child who suddenly was thrust into the education system.
A child who went to the local preschool where she was encouraged to play in water, climb trees and jump around when she felt like it. And suddenly she was in trouble for playing with water, jumping around and climbing trees.
And there she was in my painting, and me feeling all mama bear about the situation at school there I was standing in front of my wee beastie.
The thing that I love most about this painting is that my wee beastie actually figured out the painting before I did!
Unfortunately this painting doesn’t translate onto a print yet but the original is still available here and can been seen in person at Studio36a in Cowra.
What were your favourite stories as a kid? I think for me my ultimate favourite is still Riki Tiki Tavi – the story of a mongoose and a nasty snake!
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