Sktchy and Sketchbook Skool

I'm doing Sketchbook Skool's 'Exploring' course and the first week has been all about hatching with Danny Gregory. Here are my attempts:

My beautiful teapot and first attempt at sketching with hatching

A Sktchy portrait - too light I think, needs to be more confident, but I like that there is no hard outline containing the hatching.

Guess who - the morning after she announced another General Election in the UK and a woman from Bristol went viral with her comment, "Oh no! Not another one!"

Sktchy Portraits

I've discovered Sktchy app and have been really enjoying making portraits. I didn't think I was any good at faces at all but I think I'm improving. All these are using Copic marker pens in a Rendr sketchbook.

This was the first one I did and I had a major blot caused by one of my marker pens sending a flood onto the page. If you haven't guessed it's her left eye. I tried all sorts of ways to try to get rid of it and it helped a bit but it's still much too obvious. I should have matched her left eye to it!

I loved the happy face this girl has - it was a joy to sketch her.

This lady is very exotic and I haven't completely nailed her - the eyes were very difficult.

What beautiful bone structure this lady has and what a long neck. I loved doing this one but need to learn more about how to deal with hair rather than just scribbling it in.

dead sunflower head

This is from a photo I took last year. I don't like sunflowers but I love dead sunflowers - they are so much more interesting and have a soft beauty that the live ones don't have.

A whole mess o' bowls

A lot of messy bowls for the Sketchbook Challenge. Ink, watercolour and Zig art pens.

Desk, study and irish wolfhound

This is one of my trays of art stuff. I'm very overdue for a tidy up! My little study room (I daren't call it a studio - it would make me feel as if I was pretending to be an artist) is difficult to navigate with a huge Irish Wolfhound lying behind my chair. I get pinned up against the desk unable to move anywhere :-)

Monoprint

This was great fun to do and is part of the Art of Abstraction course I'm doing. It's acrylic paint on a Gelli printing plate, scribbled over with a cotton bud and printed twice which is why one of the prints is paler and less textured. I love Gelli plates - they're so easy to use and worth exploring using different mediums.

Oh, and I fiddled around designing a new banner for my blog!

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

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.

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!

bamboo

A few days ago, before winter returned (!), I sat in the garden with a cup of coffee and sketched the bamboo. I'm not sure what type of bamboo it is but mine grows in a pot and at this time of year the colour of the leaves ranges from golden brown to palest green and it has tiny red fruits.

Painted with my lovely M. Graham watercolours (one of the ingredients is honey so I may try them on toast later :-)

stamps

I've been playing around making my own stamps. The bullrush at the top and the goose were both cut on lino and the trees were cut on a soft, rubber material. I was really pleased with the goose but the shading was pure serendipity - it should have come out as a solid colour but for some reason the acrylic paint I used decided to do its own thing and make it look like a proper goose! The trees came out better than I thought they would as there was some quite fine cutting involved but the softer material was much easier to cut than the lino. I suspect it won't have such a long life as the lino though.

I'm beginning to think about trying to make a proper lino cutting on a block that I can make several prints from - say for Christmas cards. I think I need to practice for a while first on the small stuff and at the moment I have two fingers that I've cut quite deeply so I need to try to avoid that. What we suffer for our art!!

I'm getting excited about this which is a bad sign!

Sketching

It's so long since I posted anything and, despite there being no need to blog regularly, I still feel guilty. I've been working on a sketching course and this is one of my studies.

Tapestry Landscape

I've finally started weaving my first tapestry. I had a problem right at the bottom (or the start of the weaving) with the weft not covering the warp properly but I think this was because I had the weft pulled too tight as it seems to be better as it grows and as I get used to it. I'm not sure at this stage whether I'm pleased with it or not and until I get more weaving done I won't know. I marked the design on the warp to make it easier for me to follow and then put a sheet of black paper behind the warps so I can see what I'm doing. The bobbin on the table at the left is my prized possession - it has a brass tip and it feels so much nicer to weave with than the all-wood ones. It was hugely expensive though so I'll have to collect a few at a time and put them on my birthday and Christmas lists for years to come!

A close up of progress so far.

Tomorrow I have a day off work and I'm going to the David Hockney exhibition at the Royal Academy. I can't wait; I'm so excited - all that wonderful colour!

NEW YEAR'S JITTERS

After seeing pictures of several of my blog friends' studios I decided the time had come to 'fess up to the mess I work in and post some photos. Here is my desk/work table:

It shows my tapestry sampler in progress which restricts the amount of space I have left to work on as it attaches to the table on clamps for comfortable working. The monitor belongs to my old PC which I rarely use now as I have a Mac notebook which I love. But I still need it for a few things so I keep it.

This view is the wall behind my worktable:

I've been careful not to include the floor area in the photograph because there's a lot of stuff down there that REALLY needs to be tidied up! The two collages are by a favourite artist of mine, Nagib.

This wall has my project/inspiration board and containers below for art materials and yarns.  My studio also houses our wine rack which can be seen bottom right! How's that for good planning :-)

This was a great opportunity to use my 20mm wide angle lens which I don't use that often. It also reminded me that I need to tidy my camera equipment away somewhere in this room.

I found taking these photos and writing about them quite emotional. It confirmed my worries about the fact that I'm such a butterfly, moving so rapidly from painting to embroidering to drawing to photography to weaving and on and on without really settling on one thing, making it my own and developing it properly. This actually worries me a lot - it seems to me that it's a big flaw in my character and something that I need to do something about. With another New Year nearly upon us I find myself thinking a lot about these things and wondering what I can do to change. I'm not a fan of new year's resolutions, but I do certainly get that feeling at this time of year that if I need to make changes now's the time.

But how to make them is the problem...

FINGER PAINTING FUN

This week's first assignment for the Experimental Art e-course I'm doing is finger painting. Using acrylics the only instrument you're allowed is your hand. I never had so much fun in my life. The mug may look a bit wobbly but I think it's recognisable - just!

This one is more abstract - I just love the colours and I even used my nails in this one. I think it's going to take me the rest of the week to clean myself up. A wonderful back-to-childhood exercise!

MIXED MEDIA EXPERIMENT

Watercolour wash, oil pastels, acrylic ink, soft pastels and onion bag.

WHAT FUN!!

I'm doing a course called the Experimental Art e-Course and I'm having such fun. This experiment contains coffee and tea stains, watercolour paints, acrylic ink splashes spiked with a toothpick, wax pastels and soft pastels plus gold acrylic paint.

And this one is magazine pictures stuck onto water coloured paper stained with rubbed beech leaf, oil pastels and acrylic paint applied straight from the tube with a cotton bud.

More will follow!

COMMUNITY ART PROJECT

Isn't this wonderful! It's one tile in a community art project installation at Pallant House Gallery in Chichester. Each tile is the same size but some are inscribed onto bronze, some are ceramic, some are mosaic and this wonderfully textured tile is... I don't know what it's made of to be honest. I took a picture to use as an inspiration in my altered textiles project. I hope they don't mind.