Toothpick Pot

Hi all,
What a fantastic week of weather we have just had. I have never known it so warm for so long in February. The garden was full of butterflies and bees and I was sitting there in my tee shirt enjoying the sunshine and doing a bit of pyrography. It doesn't get much better than that at my age because I have given up almost everything I enjoyed that ends with "ing."  Smoking and fishing I missed the most but it's no good moaning you just have to get on with.

Anyway, the weather was most welcome and it took away any excuses about being too cold to go into the workshop. I even managed to finish the toothpick pot that I started a couple of weeks ago. I made this pot because I was fed up with loosing my toothpick. I wanted something that was both practical and looked good on the shelf within reaching distance of my chair.

The pyrograhy decoration was one of my favourite designs and it was all done with a spoon tip. I do like the smaller woodturning projects and I'm about to start turning a bottle opener which I hope to show you in my next post.

Besides the woodturning and pyrography, I have managed to spend a few hours in the evenings on my ipad doing some more art. Towards the end of 2018 I did group of pencil sketches that revolved around flowers growing on a trellis. Here is a couple of them to give you the idea.

These turned out very nice, they were realistic but they lacked a bit of colour. So, armed with the ipad I got at Christmas, I thought I try something similar on my ipad. I wasn't bothered about it coming out very realistic, I just wanted to create an image that is pleasing to the eye.
Anyway, I had a go and even taught myself to make some stamp brushes to make the process easier and quicker.

I use the stamp brushes to allow me to make adjustments to the composition and to make sure I am consistent in shape and size of object. If you are interested in finding out more, I have uploaded the first part of the painting to my channel on youtube. If you would like to see it please  click on the video below and it will take you to "the Armchair Artist" channel.

Thanks for watching. If you enjoyed it please consider subscribing, I only have one at the moment and they are probably very lonely.