courgettes

I'm going to have these for dinner tonight but before I do I thought I'd sketch them...

I used Derwent Graphitint water-soluble pencils - not my favourite medium but they were quite useful for getting the stripy effect. 

umbellifer

Tried my hand at a little botanical study! I had no idea what this was when I picked it at the edge of a field planted with rape but when I got home and consulted my wild flower guide I found it's a Thorow-wax. Strange name but fascinating plant. It's an umbellifer which is part of the carrot family.

Still trying to get the hang of writing in my journal with the dip pen!

drawings of Rosie

I've been trying to draw my beautiful Irish Wolfhound, Rosie, for one of the classes in Sketch Book Skool . Luckily she's been staying still for me because her cousin, a border collie, came to visit yesterday and wore her out! Here are my attempts

I did them both using a Pilot Lettering Pen 2.0 - it's a lovely pen to use for gesture drawing like this.

tomatoes

M. Graham watercolours, pen and ink. I did the writing with a dip pen which takes a bit of getting used to as it makes blots all over the place. I don't mind that though. Pity I had trouble spelling 'choice' - I tried to cover my mistake but it didn't work!

garlic

I really enjoyed doing this page. It's part of the Sketch Book Skool course and this week it's Jane LaFazio whose work I absolutely love. This was all to do with composition - where to put each element on the page to make a balanced whole.

I loved the challenge of painting the garlic which was quite detailed and fiddly but it really made me look at the subjects more fully than I'm apt to normally!

ready to start stitching

This is my piece for my Mastered course and I'm all ready to start stitching. I've transferred the design onto a piece of linen using tacking stitches and have stapled it to the frame - good and tight.

I've chosen my colours and the only thing I'm not too sure about still is whether to use Perle cotton no. 5 or no. 8. The whole thing will be stitched in twisted chain to try to preserve the painterly feel and this stitch will also be robust enough to take the wear and tear a cushion has to put up with. I may do a little more sampling before I start because I don't want to get it wrong.

sketch book skool

I'm doing Danny Gregory's (et al) Sketch Book Skool course and these are the sketches I've done so far this week. Each week there's a different teacher with different styles and I'm really enjoying it so far. I have a huge amount of respect for Danny.