Laura Mallaghan Illustration

What’s behind this flowers? Hints; a greeting card, a big bird in the nest and the foreign wildflowers. What could it be. It’s a White Stork with her chick, with Lithuanian wildflowers. This greeting card is a new baby/new arrival to the family, hence the obvious portrayal of white stork. This card is for my work friend, who’s expecting a baby next month!  However, this isn’t just the new baby greeting card, also my work friend is from Lithuania. So this is a personal card for her, and her partner who’s also Lithuanian, it’s a very meaningful illustration that would makes her think of her home country. Let’s say I was inspired to paint this by her. Heheh 🤭  To make it understandable about the meaning of this bird and the wildflowers. White Stork; is the national bird of Lithuania, this bird is very common as there’s about 13,000 of pairs, as well as they breeds there in summer. Lithuanian believe they’re the symbol of birth, family and wealth. Yellow flower is the Rue “Ruta” (Ruta gra

  In this blog, I’m talking about the painting process of this big painting, as well as what inspired me. First things first, what inspired me to do the big painting, for the first time. All thanks to my work colleague! She’s not really a painter but she actually found her new talent with the painting recently. When she said, many months ago, that she’ll try painting for the first time with the canvas that sat in her house for ages, this canvas is not the small size for the first try, no, it was huge, roughly A1 size. I thought that was very brave of her to do it, especially for the first time. Each time she painted it, she showed me the photos of her process and we talked about what to add, the inspiration, the colours, the failure and success. She even surprised herself with how good her painting is, I also was very impressed by her big painting! Speaking of inspiration, she searched the images search of large paintings, including the birds for me. With every image she showed me, the

  Hello hello. This is about an update on the big painting project that I started back in April, around Easter weekend. How far have I done? Well, I’ve finished painting the wildflowers so it’s the Kingfisher left to paint.  Here’s a photo for a sneak peek; I was planning to finish this by end of June, but unfortunately, I was so busy for most of these weekends as well as had a holiday last week, that I was struggling to find some free time to continue what’s left. Today it’s July, this painting is not finished, and the next few weekends are going to be busy. So I thought not needed to set a deadline, I just have to paint as much as I can whenever I have some free time. But the funny thing is, I have started the second big painting, even though I haven’t finished the first one. Heheheheh. 😂 Anyway, thanks for reading and the weekend had been good.

Happy Saturday, and guess what, yesterday (17th June) was the hottest day of the year, also it was my aunt’s birthday! I imagined she had a really good birthday that she has been outside sunbathing with a glass of cold wine with her family. What a blissful day to spend. Speaking of birthdays, I have been painting a personal birthday card, for my aunt, of course, using the birds and wild plants with their meaning. Let’s start with the bird, this is the Lesser Redpoll, a finches type of bird and small, slightly bigger than blue tit to compare the size. It has streaky marks and is brown with red spot on its forehead and sometimes a patch on the breast. They’re commonly in Scotland, northern and eastern England, they’re seen in woodland, also visit in the garden. They like to hang upside down on the small twigs from the tree, an easy way to spot them, especially in the season when leaves fall from the trees. A reason I chose this bird is that my aunt lives in Yorkshire, which is in the nor