Happy Earth Day

Humankind has not woven the web of life.

We are but one thread within it.

Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves.

All things are bound together.

All things connect.”

Chief Seattle, 1855

Shells

This was an exercise in using line for shading and no colour. I used pen and ink, pencil and water-soluble marker.

Falling Leaves

This was inspired by a silver pendant I have and love dearly. I also have a feather pendant so who knows - maybe I'll sketch that too.

3D SHAPES

This is one of the exercises I've done for my Sketchbook Delight online course with Alisa Burke. I love her courses - there's no pressure but lots of inspiration which I need at the moment until I find my muse.

I threw the whole lot at this - watercolour pencils, watercolour paint, Zig Art Pens, and ink!

Honeysuckle

Design taken from an old photo of honeysuckle in my garden last year. I'm beginning to despair of anything ever growing in my garden again after this freezing cold spring and now constant downpour of rain. It looks like a lake!

I used Ecoline watercolour inks for this. They are beautiful intense colours which can be diluted with water or not. I'm going to have to explore my love of bright colours.

STARTED SKETCHING AGAIN

I've picked up my sketchbook again with a promise to myself to try to keep it up for a bit. Good tip to start with if you can't think of any inspiration - paint your tools!

Start of another Tapestry experiment

This started off as a planned tapestry with a cartoon which I inked onto the warps (you can just see the marks) but seems to be turning into an experiment. I've played around with colour gradations and different types of joining verticals (both sewn slits and interlocking. The interlocking seems to give a much smoother result but that may be because my sewing wasn't brilliant so this needs more work. I also wove some gold floss through in a couple of places but my photo hasn't really picked that up very well.

The really strange thing is that it's developed an extremely droopy bottom (wonder where it got that from!) and is now also developing a rounded top - both of these anomalies on the left-hand side. I can see how the bottom started bending - probably because I didn't tie off the base wefts tightly enough - but I can't figure how the top started bulging. Maybe when it's finished I'll call it a shaped piece and pretend it was always designed this way!