Welcome to 2025, it's already a twelfth of the way through! It was a chilly January so there was much hibernation, sensibly so, but I'm relieved to look back and see I also made some marks. I plan to dedicate much of my practice in 2025 to an over arching project tentatively called 'Invitation to Haunt', also known as ItH, and have started the exploratory stage with a line up of new sketchbooks.

I'm not going to introduce ItH too concretely until I've had these first couple of months to expel (or exorcise, ooooh) a mess of initial images and experiments. Right now the main goal is to let the idea run riot without a predestined objective and I'll start thinking in terms of outcomes further down the line.

For now I'll introduce you to the 2025 gaggle of sketchbooks. Each has it's own gallery in the Art 2025 section which will be updated as we go. I've just put composite images here and you can click through them to see the individual galleries.

This Wee Book is about A5 and is a notebook from the Great Tapestry of Scotland gift shop here in Galashiels. The cafe always has good vegan soup! This is a book for warm ups or quick ideas alongside some off-cuts from my hand painted stickers, displaying them on their own page to see what shapes come through.

This Yellow Book was actually barely started a couple of years ago with about ten odd pages and block colour backgrounds using left over paint. Now Yellow Book's time has come and will be a place for mixed media experiments.

The Brown Book is more drawing focused and a place to sketch ideas and visual notes.

This square Watercolour Notebook will house colour ideas and experiments and be a place to warm up for watercolour sessions.

The Pink Book will play with painting and drawing over coloured bases to see how it nudges atmosphere and effect alongside more mixed media madness.

I'm also starting a series of small loose watercolours, mostly botanical so far, because it's just so pretty! Watercolours are so pretty! Whatever form ItH takes there will definitely be watercolours in there so I want to keep the practice up. They've got their own gallery right here.

Another loose goal for the year is to do a self portrait every month so here's the January offering. It was actually pretty difficult to make! It's the first 'completed' piece of 2025 and I think I really need to shake the hibernation cobwebs off and that was a little painful! But I feel better after finishing it, I feel a little more awake and ready for more. The monthly self portraits will gather here in their own gallery.

I also did a gold leaf taster session for Galashiels Studio Club, it was fun and less messy than I feared! I forget that not everyone is as clumsy as I am...

I mentioned in the December journal that I was getting in to Warhammer 40k (the Rogue Trader CRPG is a gateway drug) and in January I built and primed a bunch of miniatures for the first time. I was hoping to start painting them but the temperatures were too cold to go outside and spray prime them for most of the month! But they're now ready for paint so I'm gonna get some colour on them over February.

That's your lot for January! I'll be back at the end of February with an update that I'll link below when it's up. The Weeknd releases his final album today so I'm going to log off and get to listening, ciao!