MY STORY

My name is Manda, I am an artist, a nurse, a midwife, a wife and a mother.

My paying day job is currently working part time hours as a triage nurse, and providing antenatal classes for a rural town.

My family and I live in a small town of under 1000 population named after an amazingly beautiful rock formation. I am mother to two girls, ‘R’ who is 6 and ‘H’ who is 4. We have a dog called ‘Shelby’ and two cats called ‘Mercury’ and ‘Cougar’.

MY ART

I am very creative, and very big on self-expression and personalising everything I have. I paint, draw, knit, sew, make and alter everything. I am very fortunate to have received my grandmother’s talent for drawing and extremely fortunate she has helped me nurture and develop my gift.

Through my work as a midwife I have been privillaged to share so many beautiful moments with people. This and being a mum has opened my eyes so much to this amazing world and cemented the need to capture every moment in life and preserve it.

I initially started just sketching, my main focus was on portraits of people, but have branched out to sketch animals and places too. Recently I have started experimenting with other mediums such as ink and coloured pencils. My favourite pieces are my mixed media ones that use a little bit of everything. I do still enjoy going back to basics though and doing a simple pencil sketch of someone. My main ambition is to be able to draw portraits from life, not just from photographs.

MY BLOG

With this blog I hope to share my creativity. I will be posting my creative process as well as I can. Sharing progress shots of works in the pipeline, and of course putting up completed works
Each post is categorised as one of four things: Creative Process, Inspiration, Works In Progress, Art Showcase.
Creative Process is just that, things directly linked to my art, could be works in progress, my supplies, general musings about art etc…
Inspiration is something not directly related to art, but something irl that I find inspirating eg.. A pretty bird or flower, a quote etc…
Works In Progress is a progress shot of pieces I am currently working on.
Art Showcase is a photo of a completed piece and its story.

Each piece of art is hand done, no computer program software, just me with my pencils, pens, sketch pad and cuppa.

I do take commissions from people, if you give me a photograph I will draw it for you. Please see the extra page for price list.

Some reference points to who the leading stars are in my life and will most likely appear this blog.
The General ~ My amazing husband, who insanely puts up with me and enjoys it =)
‘R’ ~ My 5 year old daughter
‘H’ ~ My 3 year old daughter
Shelby ~ Our dog – Great Dane x masstif
Mercury and Cougar ~ Our cats