The Dancing Queen

I've done it: I've taken 10€ of the church's money and I've made 20 sample greeting cards. I've taken them to a rather empty (this week) church and I've made it back in orders.

It's actually been quite a challenge to produce something on such a tight budget. It's involved scouting missions to Staples, experiments with none too sharp scalpels, the butchering of precious watercolour pads and heavy usage of my mother's overburdened Epsom printer, but I have come out the other end with a set of twenty, let's say, "professionly handcrafted" cards. I have lef the insides blank so they can be used as notecards as well as traditional greeting cards.

"Silves By Night"

I have worked out a complicated pricing structure, then made it simpler. Basically, it's 1.50€ a card, which fits a C6 envelope (provided). There's a discount for quantity purchases.

My artwork has been available in card format for a while on Moonpig and they look just yummy, slick and shiny, but they are expensive. This way I can offer you a personal touch for a fraction of the price. Granted, they have a bit of a home printer look about them, but if it takes off I can get them laser printed locally and hopefully not raise the price!

To make your choice easier I've grouped them into sets.

"Girls"

Consists of 10 dancers. Set of 10 with envelopes; 11€

"Gypsies"

Consists of 6 painted dancers, with envelopes; 7€

"Dancers"

Consists of 4 pencil dancers, with envelopes; 5€

Then the animals:

"Wildlife"

Consists of 8 animals, with envelopes; 9€

"Big Cats"

Consists of 5 wild cats, with envelopes; 6€

If any of you beautiful people want to join in the fun and raise some money for a good cause, just contact me. You can mix and match any of the cards or order multiples of the same one. It's 1.50€ for one, 3€ for 2, 4€ for 3, 5€ for 4 and so on.

For my international customers, I will ship them out to you for cost of postage. I can accept paypal, we can do it through my shop here on facebook or through Ebay if it gives you more peace of mind!

Well, here I am again, and this time it's been a whole year since I last inputted to this website. Not to say that I haven't been busy, in life and art, I've just completely ignored my little web corner in favour of my Facebook page.

It's just so easy to update my Facebook page (facebook.com/katiebodsworth) and it's such a hassle to do it here. I'm nothing if not lazy, apparently. Actually I think it's more of a case of spending quite enough time messing about online as it is without doubling my workload. Im supposed to be a painter, not an HTML genius.

Anyway, apology (that's what that was, can you tell?) over, let's get on with it. To all you folks out there who give me a pained look when I say "Do you have Facebook?"; I solemnly swear I will now work from my website. In return, please tell everyone you know about me and my work. Send links, preach on doorsteps, email your friends and generally make such a nuisance of yourselves that no one likes you anymore. Oh wait, that's my job. That's a lot easier on Facebook too!

I have done a lot in my work since speaking out on here. I will be posting entries over the next few weeks bringing you up to speed. My most current project is actually an incentive run by my church; the Warden's Lenten Challenge. Most people focus so much on the giving up of Lent that the positive aspect can be lost. Jesus went out into the desert and got a bit thinner, but multiplied his strength of mind, character and faith a thousand times. So this year we are on a mission to multiply ourselves. Our church warden has given all the participants a crisp ten euro note and one command: Go Forth and Multiply! The only rule is to give back more than ten euros at the end of Lent.

So far I have tasted marvelous cake, seen pretty crafty notebooks and bookmarks and even been asked if I would take advantage of someone's ironing skills! Me myself, it seems pretty obvious that I should get involved and supply some sort of artwork. So I'm thinking, mini prints, cards and small commissions.

So get your pet portraits, oil on canvas, for 10€

This is a picture of my old family cat Doobrie just hanging out on the sofa, catching a few z's.

Check out my animal gallery for examples of the different styles of animals I have done.

Or you could have a small family triffid plant for 10€.

Obviously, that's a big one. I'm thinking A4 size, probably just immediate family. Of course, if you want a biggie, just ask and I'll give you a quote. Check out this tree in more detail in it's very own gallery.

Other than that, I think that I'll be supplying small prints of the drawn dancers, and maybe some of the pen and ink stuff too. See something you like, get in contact.

Cheers! Kx

I am finally getting on with stuff. Well, mostly.

I still can't work at the weekend, it's just not possible to be child entertainer and painter in oils at the same time. So I face Tuesdays with a divided mind. Tuesdays are my Mondays. I have got through the weekend, alternately shouting at and entertaining the kids and animals. David seems to see the weekend as his chance to sit down and do nothing, including any kind of child/animal welfare or discipline. Therefore I get no rest! This, I have decided after much soul searching, is fair enough, he works hard all week. My weekend is Wednesday and Thursday. But first I have to navigate Tuesday. On the one hand, I have to clear up from the weekend. I work as a baker on Mondays, which means leaving the house early with husband and kids in tow and closing the door on the mess. So Tuesdays involve a lot of washing, washing up, sweeping, mopping, bathroom cleaning and the like. On the other hand, the kids are at school, David is at work and I have time to sit and breathe. Well, after I've taken the dog on his morning run, anyway.

It will completely depend on my mood as to the success of any particular Tuesday. If it's not good, housework won't get done, which is bad as it affects the whole week. If I'm uptight or angry, housework will get done with gusto and far too much detail and take over the whole day. This means no painting, which usually unbalances me for the rest of the week. Thankfully, usually I am reasonably well balanced and do enough of both to keep me happy.

Wednesday I am out with the girls. Into town for coffee and lunch and then the bus home just in time to pick Claudia up. Claudia finishes at three on Tue, Wed, and Fri. Then Thursday is "Katie Day"; My mother and I think up something we need to do and use it as a basis for wasting an entire day and getting as much cafe time in as possible. It could be something as prosaic as needing to get chickenwire or something wildly interesting like checking out a new gallery. So these two days are my weekend.

Then Friday comes along, minimal housework, paint. And it all starts again.

So I only really have two good days to paint. In that case, I'd better get off the pooter and start!

Today I have spent the entire day on the computer, fiddling with this and mucking about with that. The results, I think, are reasonably spectacular.

Firstly you will have been bowled over by my intro page (unless of course, you've been directed straight here. In which case, try this: http://katie-danielle.webs.com). Pretty cool, huh? I hope it's working on your browser, please tell me if it isn't!

Secondly, I have set up shop right here from my website! Just visit the shop tab and you will find some dancers' prints waiting for you to snap them up. I'm using Paypal for it, so I'm not sure if it will take cards or not. If you want to pay by card, head on over to my Facebook page where there's actually a bit more to choose from.

I hadn't realised how much my goals have changed since I set this site up! I was trying everything back then, I hadn't found my dancing niche. I've tried to sort everything out, but I think there's still a couple of old jpgs hanging around, I will weed them out as soon as possible.

So it's a new look, a new beginning (ish) for the site. I've renamed it "The Dancing Queen" to match the shops. I should rename my Facebook page, I suppose, but I'm not sure that's possible! I've changed blurb and updated galleries. I'm hopeful that it's a good representation of who I am and what I'm about and that you will feel moved to tell people all about it!

Right now I'd better get on with some actual painting, I suppose.....!

Hi everyone!

Gosh, I've just had a peer around the old website and realise that it was September that I last updated it! I've done a few more pieces of work since then, but really not enough. Those of you who follow me on Facebook will know that my family and I have had an eventful few months that have really taken my painting oomph away from me. As the Hatter tells Alice in the new Wonderland film, "You were much more, before. You have lost your muchness". I feel like that! September saw the start of a long, stressful house buying progress which we finally managed to move into in December. The house where we were before, whilst beautiful and wonderfully placed, did however only have on bedroom, which was not really adequate for a family of four! Add to that the dog which adopted us late November and I pretty much gave up trying to keep up with the painting as oils end up eaten and canvasses used as toilets!

Once we moved, the drama didn't stop. The furniture we were promised just wasn't there, and to add insult to injury the place where we had stored electrical appliances and much of our stuff got robbed and trashed. We have literally started our life anew with the new year!

We have now been in our marvelous new house for nearly three months and slowly things are sorting themselves out. I have been feeling put offy about painting - no, I won't start until the bathroom is done; I won't start until the kitchen is painted, but slowly I have been getting the urge to just sit and paint again. My muchness has returned.

I have been trying new stuff since I took up my brush last year with the intent to make something of myself and my art. I have flitted about doing sketches, different types of painting, illustrating, you name it. I have now sat down and checked out all the response I have had to my internet presence and postings and have come to the conclusion that you all like my dancers. This is great, I like my dancers too! Although again, I have gone off target with a couple of them, I've tried to make paintings when they want to be portraits. The magic of my gypsy girls is in their faces and the tilt of their heads, not where they are. Plain backgrounds are the way forward, and less background, more body!

So, that's it. I have finally set up my studio in my garage, you are all welcome to come lounge on the sofa and watch me paint. I have coffee, tea and homemade low fat cakes. I have at this moment a huge canvas calling to me, with a beautiful trio of medieval women swaying their hips already sketched on. I've bought MORE white paint and I'm raring to go. I have made myself a promise that I will have a stall at the next Silves medieval fair, so I need to create some stock.

I can't wait to show you what I've got....

Lampworked beads in all the colours of the rainbow! Michal Silberberg makes beautiful bright jewellry and I want it all. Click the pic to see his Flickr photostream.

You can also visit his shop and auctions here.

Today I completed (bar a few touchups, I'm running out of white AGAIN) my second oil painting. I got such a good reception to my first attempt, Marta, that I thought I'd ride the wave for a while. Believe me, David took enough photos to keep me going 'til next August!

So I trawled the collection and picked a new one. This young lady danced for us at a lot of the drama shows, and she and her male bellydancing companion have danced with fire and snakes in various performances. Her name is Marta and she dances in a fantastic group called Mozarabe.

This time I thought it would be interesting to do a 'work in progress' mini diary of my work, don't worry, I don't plan on doing it on Facebook again, I don't want to swamp everyone. I think that I will show them here on the finished page again though.

So that's it, really! I changed the background and had a (extremely successful, I think) go at a light source, but apart from that, she's pretty much as she came. I have got better already, remembering things that I tried with the last one, and generally getting used to how oils behave. I am already looking forward to the next one!

I love Mike Skelton's fun mix of photo and digital editing. He puts together two aspects of the same thing and comes out with a smile. Click the pic then click 'Campaigns' to see the fun stuff.